The Andrews Sisters

The Lives and Legacy of the Famous Singing Trio During the Swing Era

By: Charles River Editors

Narrated by: Kelly McGee

Length: 1 hr and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

“I wanted to become an Andrews sister. My wish was that they could become a quartet and I’d be the fourth singer.” (June Allyson, actress)

The vaudeville era of the early 20th century dominated American entertainment with an endless array of “specialty” acts. Thousands of performers emerged from familiar American lives to test their novel talents with a voracious public in search of the next fad. Violin concertos were played on bicycle pumps, and contortionists defied gravity and the limits of human anatomy. Animal acts of every variety sought to up the ante in bringing the exotic to the American stage. One thread held most of these oddities together. Whatever the talent, it was virtually obligatory in most cases that both humans and animals incorporate singing and dancing into the act. This was particularly true for women regardless of the talent level or genre of specialty.

Acts based on family groups became increasingly common, and the genre of sister acts caught fire in the 1920s. Many of these female sibling groups emerged from Midwestern farms and small towns outside the large cities, a phenomenon that is still in play as young women from the American heartland arrive in Las Vegas and Los Angeles on an annual basis to search for stardom. However, in the vaudeville era, the exotic and the odd were often prized above quality, and in the words of author Colleen Cowie, many “performing girls were just pretty young things” of negligible qualifications at best. The appetite for simple beauty and acts based on mindless themes extended to men as well and typified the sort of entertainment a family member might devise for shows in a typical American living room.

One female singing group, a hometown trio from Minnesota, stepped into the waning years of sister acts with a quality that at least in their case revived a national interest in the genre. The public psychology that opened the door to the Andrews Sisters has been analyzed extensively through the decades, and their extraordinary success likely originated from multiple fascinations. Gary Giddins, noted biographer of Bing Crosby, is particularly qualified to venture his theory. Crosby worked extensively with the trio from the small town of Mound in the east central portion of the state. Giddins asserts that Patty, LaVerne, and Maxene Andrews created their “unique sound” in part through the development of a “very bright harmonic sense,” first achieved by the older sister, LaVerne. The trio mastered a virtuosic use of close, intricate harmonies, coupled with a precise and a seemingly telepathic rhythmic sense that could be honed for performance in a short period of rehearsal time. These qualities were enveloped in a timbral sheen reminiscent of multiple trumpets. At the root of it, the trio represented one of many thousands of families in which the children attempted to imitate the reigning stars. In this rare case, they did it better than anyone.

While building on the genre of boogie-woogie, generally a feature of the African American music scene, the home-grown trio tapped into the grief of the First World War, then rode the ensuing wave of nostalgia that typified WWII. They filled a wartime and post-war need for emotional restoration in the same way vaudeville had served in 1918. Establishing a national boogie-woogie fad as an alternative to the typical 4/4 swing of white society, the sisters coupled the repertoire with an inherent quality of optimism and celebratory Americanism. Unlike most fellow performers, they eschewed the endless theme of brooding romantic love and instead exhorted a country at war to raise its collective morale through a rare demonstration of musical zest.

©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors

Quality level: 8th-grade term paper

This inexcusably brief and shallow book delivers a tiny fraction of what is found in the biographies by Arlo Nimmo (recommended) or Tony Sforza (also worth reading.) Little fresh insight is provided, large areas of interest are ignored while blips such as “One Meatball” receive inordinate attention. The performance is annoying, with the same falling cadence in every sentence, and mispronunciations such as “Diana Shore” and “Louis Pry-ma” and “Mounds, Minnesota.” Even diehard fans and completists can skip this one.