The Fleetwoods
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The Fleetwoods were a singing trio from Olympia, Washington, USA.
Gary Troxel and Gretchen Christopher were two high schoolers waiting for Gretchen's mother to pick them up after school to take them home. They started singing and humming a song together, and liked it enough to ask Gretchen's friend and singing partner, Barbara Ellis, to join them as a trio to perform it. The song was at first called "Come Softly" and the group was named "Two Girls and a Guy," but both were changed en route to the song's becoming a hit. They performed the song twice at school functions and their classmates wanted recordings of it so they could learn the song. After six months, they got the song recorded. They sang it a capella, then dubbed the instrumental accompaniment, consisting only of Latin-styled acoustic guitar and the rhythmic shaking of Troxel's car keys.
Bob Reisdorf, the owner of Dolphin Records (later changed to Dolton Records), was responsible for the name changes. He thought that the title was too risque, so he had it changed to "Come Softly to Me," and he also thought that "Two Girls and a Guy" didn't sound commercial enough. The three singers all lived in an area where the local telephone exchange name was Fleetwood, and they took their new name from the exchange, becoming The Fleetwoods.
The song was also recorded by some other artists, and Frankie Vaughan and the Kaye Sisters in particular had a chart hit in the United Kingdom with it.
The Fleetwoods continued to record into the 1960s, with a number of other successes, though none so big as "Come Softly to Me" Their second hit, "Mr. Blue," however, was one of the few recordings by a white group to make the rhythm & blues chart as well as the pop music chart.
Fleetwoods' Hits
- Come Softly to Me - 1959 (Gold Record)
- Mr. Blue - 1959 (Gold Record)
- Graduation's Here - 1959
- You Mean Everything to Me - 1959
- Runaround - 1960
- Outside My Window - 1960
- The Last One to Know - 1960
- Tragedy - 1961
- The Great Imposter - 1962
- Lovers by Night, Strangers by Day - 1962
- Goodnight My Love - 1963
External links
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