Today’s classic Girl Group songs of the day are “People Say” and “Chapel of Love,” both by the Dixie Cups. We’ll start with “People Say,” which was released on Red Bird Records in July of 1964. This one peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #7 on the R&B Singles chart. Billboard magazine placed “People Say” at #53 on their list of the 100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time.
“People Say” was written by the ace songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, who wrote hits for a lot of the big Girl Groups of the day, including the Crystals, the Ronettes, the Chiffons, the Jelly Beans, and the Shangra-Las. The song was produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller; Mr. Stoller did the arrangement, complete with its “Chapel of Love”-like chimes.
This was the second collaboration between Barry/Greenwich and the Dixie Cups, the first being the group’s #1 hit “Chapel of Love,” released earlier in 1964. The Dixie Cups, originally known as the Meltones (that’s the Mel-Tones, not the Melt-Ones), were singers Barbara Ann Hawkins, Rosa Lee Hawkins, and Joan Marie Johnson. The girls, all from New Orleans, first started singing together in grade school and decided to pursue a professional career in 1963. Their manager, Joe Jones (who hit a hit of his own in 1960 with “You Talk Too Much”), took the girls to New York City, where they hooked up with Leiber and Stoller. The boys signed the girls to their new label, Red Bird Records, and picked up a Barry/Greenwich song that had previously been recorded by Darlene Love. That song was “Chapel of Love,” and it was a winner.
Jeff and Ellie, along with producer Phil Spector (who always had to grab a cut of the songwriting action), had originally written “Chapel of Love” for Darlene Love. Ms. Love’s version, produced by Spector, was appropriately Wall of Soundish but at a much slower tempo than the Dixie Cups’ version. Mr. Love’s vocals are much more soulful and the Wrecking Crew (including ubiquitous drummer Hal Blaine) do their thing quite well, but the song needs a little more pep than what Spector produced. Spector himself was dissatisfied with the track and didn’t release it at the time. (It finally saw the light of day in 1991, on the Back to Mono (1958–1969) boxed set.)
That left the song free for the Dixie Cups to record, which they did in April of 1964. Their version, as produced by Leiber and Stoller (and Barry and Greenwich) was much peppier and included those chimes that seal the deal. It was good enough to land at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three whole weeks in June of that year, knocking the Beatles from that position. “Chapel of Love” ended up selling more than a million copies and ranked #32 on that Billboard list of the 100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time.
The Dixie Cups broke up in 1966. Barbara Ann and Rosa Lee Hawkins moved back to New Orleans and became successful models, while Joan Marie Johnson retired from the music business. She passed away in 2016 of congestive heart failure, aged 72. Rosa Lee Hawkins died from complications from surgery in 2022, aged 76. Her sister Barbara Ann is still alive today, aged 69.
