Wednesday 2 September 2015

Three different faces, but in tight places, we think and we act as one









We bid a sad farewell on Monday to Joy Beverley, one third of Britain's favourite vocal harmony group the Beverley Sisters.

Facts:
  • Born to parents who had a Music Hall act, Joy, together with her twin sisters Babs and Teddie, was helped on the way to fame and fortune with the support of none other than Glenn Miller.
  • In the early 1950s, the Beverley Sisters were the highest paid female act in the UK, earning more than £700 a week at a time when the average weekly wage was £5; they were also the first British female group to break into the US top 10.
  • The sisters (scarily) always appeared in public in identical matching outfits.
  • Joy was one of the first "WAGs", famously marrying England football team captain Billy Wright in 1958, a move that led the trio into semi-retirement at the height of their fame.
  • In the 1980s the Beverleys made a "camp comeback" of sorts, performing on the gay pub and variety club circuits.
  • The sisters entered the Guinness Book Of Records in 2002, as the world's longest surviving vocal group without a change in the line up.
Here are the girls, with a couple of their typically tongue-in-cheek numbers:

RIP Joy Beverley (born Joycelyn Chinery, 5th May 1924, died 30th August 2015)



FOOTNOTE

Such was the "camp icon" status of the girls, even Rod Stewart, Elton John and Freddie Mercury desired their "look":
[In 1978 the trio discussed] "...the possibility of the three of us forming a supergroup; the name we had in mind was Nose, Teeth & Hair, a tribute to each of our most remarked-upon physical attributes. The general idea was that we could appear dressed like the Beverley Sisters. Somehow this project never came to anything, which is contemporary music’s deep and abiding loss."

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for the lovely post and ringing them to my attention. They are fabulous!!!!! We really must treasure these performers......so few of the good,retro talented ones left.

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    Replies
    1. The "Golden Age of Variety" is slipping away, bit by bit, I fear... Jx

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  2. Now that would have been some super group.

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