You have to love 60’s music to remember this great group. Today I learned something I never new about the Chantels. It’s great Catholic trivia:
Considered by many to have been the best of the girl groups, the Chantels were one of the first female R&B vocal groups to have nationwide success.
Arlene Smith (lead), Lois Harris (first tenor), Sonia Goring (second tenor), Jackie Landry (second alto), and Rene Minus began their musical journey in their preteens while attending choir practice at St. Anthony of Padua school in the Bronx. By 1957, they had been singing together for more than seven years. A staple of their diet was Gregorian chants taught to such perfection that changing notes and parts were second nature.
Unlike their male counterparts, girls weren't able to "hangout" on street corners at all hours practicing. So in 1957 much of their practice took place in the girl's lockeroom at St. Anthony's. Arlene Smith was a member of the girl's basketball team and, win or lose, the group would sing after every game.
Smith who had been trained as a classical singer had performed solo at Carnegie Hall when she was twelve. All the girls had sung in the choir where classical music was interspersed with Latin hymns. Their ages ranged between thirteen and sixteen.
The Chantels began doing talent shows with the Sequins and the Crows at the P.S. 60 Community Center and St. Augustine's church. That same year their school team played St. Francis de Chantelle. One of the girls suggested that they end their seach for a group name by calling themselves the Chantelles. It soon became the Chantels.
6 comments:
That’s great Catholic trivia, Father. They were a good group. In fact, there were several good girl groups. Their music also spanned the 50s. I have Sirius radio automatically tuned into the 50s music channel as top favorite every time I turn it on (even though, like you, I am a “child [teenager] of the 60s” as the expression goes). It always improves my mood, without fail, to listen to this music.
I can really recommend Fr Hunwicke and his blog “Mutual Enrichment”.
How rare today is it to hear or read something like the following:
“The root of the PF-and-Same-Sex-Problem can be summed up in the question: When did you last hear him emphasise the importance of Paul VI’s encyclical Humana Vitae? And of Casti Connubii from the pen of Pius XI? Those 2 great encyclicals robustly emphasised the tradition of two Christian millenia about the licit use of marriage. And about the disorder inherent when that teaching is ignored. And, prophetically, S Paul VI saw the great Tsunami of sexual incontinence which the Enemy was planning to unleash upon the Church and the World. And has done.
If we forget the teaching of HV, then condemnation of SSM, and of SS genital activity, are bound to seem to the World to be pure discrimination. Indeed, they probably are.
If PF, and other Ministers of God’s Word,, are too terrified to teach, opportune and inopportune, what the Papal Magisterium, from Casti Connubii to Humanae Vitae emphasised with such clarity, then they....we....condemn ourselves to the incomprehension, the ridicule and the opposition of the World.
What if we teach what Scripture and Tradition teach? The World is very likely to say: ‘You want to cut out most of the sex that most human beings have!! You even want to condemn a lot of the sex Catholic married couples have!! What a weird lot you are.....’ They will be making something very much like the point made by the Disciples in S Matthew 19: 10 ...
BUT they will be less able to hammer us with the unfair and illiterate accusation of ‘homophobia’......”
Romulus Augustus here, wow what a nice story I did not know that and Gregorian chant to boot! Lovely Ladies indeed.
What a great story! Thanks, Father. How did you come across it?
Some more trivia.
Peggy March was 14 when she recorded her 1963 blockbuster "I Will Follow Him," and it hit the top of the charts a couple months later. She holds the record for being the youngest female singer with a #1 hit; she was 15 when it went to slot #1. She graduated Catholic high school in the mid 60s and later married her manager, remaining married until his death several years back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgPMYQTINNk&ab_channel=mazdaishpahan
I heard it on XMs 60’s channel on Saturday as I was driving back to Richmond Hill from Savannah.
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