Like their New Jersey pals The Shirelles, The Cookies (from Coney Island) piqued The Beatles‘ interest.
When the Fab Four covered their 1962 single Chains, it assured these three girls with their quixotic harmonies would become a footnote in musical history, if nothing else.
Led by Dorothy Jones, they had sung sessions with Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker, recorded for Lamp and Atlantic, and watched two-thirds of their line-up defect to Ray Charles, before signing with the Dimension label and vocalising the ravine-deep yearnings of bee-hived, panda-eyed street princesses.
In 1960, Darlene Love’s sister, Earl-Jean joined the group and went on to have a big American hit in her own right with the original version of Herman’s Hermits UK #1, I’m Into Something Good.
Dorothy Jones died on Christmas Day 2010, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, in Columbus, Ohio. She was 76.
Dorothy Jones
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Darlene “Ethel” McCrea
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Beulah Robertson
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Margie Hendricks
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Earl-Jean McCrea
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Margaret Ross
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