October 20, 2023
The Legendary Chantels/Facebook
On Saturday, Oct. 21, the Kimmel Cultural Campus will host a tribute concert for the late Jerry Blavat. Lois Harris Powell, an original member of the '60s girl group The Chantels, will give her final performance there.
On Saturday, a lineup of musical legends will take the stage at the Kimmel Cultural Campus to pay tribute to Jerry Blavat, the longtime Philly disc jockey who died in January. The show will serve as another farewell to the singing career of Lois Harris Powell, one of the founding members of the trailblazing girl group The Chantels.
Powell, who joined the group as a teenager, says she will officially retire from show business after her performance at the Academy of Music. "I'm 82, I have sung all my life," she said ahead of the show, joking, "I would rather go out on a high note than a note I can't even get."
The Chantels are considered one of the first major girl groups in American pop music. They hit it big with their 1957 single "Maybe," which climbed to #15 on the Billboard Hot 100, and later inched even higher to #14 with the 1961 single "Look in My Eyes."
"They're one of the first girl groups in the national public imagination," Emily Sieu Liebowitz, coauthor of "But Will You Love Me Tomorrow? An Oral History of the '60s Girl Groups," said. "What that really means is that though there might have been other groups of girls singing vocal harmonies in their communities and touring around there, there wasn't really one that the whole country could point towards."
When the group's record label ran out of money in 1959, however, lead singer Arlene Smith left to pursue a solo career and Powell decided to study medicine. She worked as a psychiatric nurse for decades but continued singing on the side. After reuniting with fellow group members Renée Minus White, Sonia Goring Wilson and Jackie Landry Jackson at a 1995 induction ceremony for the United Group Harmony Association Hall of Fame, Powell officially rejoined the group. The quartet also recruited newcomer Ami Ortiz to replace Smith, who declined an invitation, but the group sadly shrunk again in 1997 when Landry died of breast cancer.
Looking back on her career, Powell laughs remembering their mothers' concerns over their matching dresses and that prankster Paul Anka. But she also recalls being paid much less than she was promised by End Records, the company that signed The Chantels, and her unease touring the American South before desegregation, an experience that shocked the Bronx-based group. She shared some of those memories as she prepared for her retirement performance:
Lois Powell: Oh God. We did a show, I'm trying to remember where it was. I don't think it was Canada, but it was somewhere in the Northeast. And we did a show with Paul Anka, and there was another young female singer, I can't remember her name, but she was a lot of fun. Paul Anka was kind of a practical joker, so he would always do stuff that would make us laugh. But back in the day, there weren't that many memorable shows for me, because I got pulled out of high school. And my senior year, then I wasn't on the road for a whole, maybe nine months. Felt like 10 years to me (laughs). Then I rejoined, and the next big tour that we went on was in the South. And that was memorable because of the time that it was, but it wasn't pleasant. So, I mean, we had fun with the people on the show, and we could do our own thing, backstage and whatever. But it was not easy doing those shows because we had to sing many times for separate audiences, and it just didn't feel good.
Yeah, we were kind of fearful. We had an experience in Lubbock, Texas, where we went into a clothing store and there was a blouse I wanted to try on, and I was told I couldn't try it on. I guess the [Black] people from the town would, number one, probably not go there. And number two, they probably wouldn't have questioned it. I did. I said, "How do you expect me to know if it fits if I don't try it on?" And the reply was, "Well, you can't try it on." So we walked out. But, you know, it didn't make it easy. If we tried to protest because we left, we would leave the city and people who were native to the city would have to stay. We didn't think about that at the time.
No, I don't think so. I mean, we knew Arlene had the strongest voice, it was her idea to start the group in the first place. And we were happy to do the group part or backup part. I mean, we had a specific type of harmony that set us apart. People didn't really know what to do with us, in terms of what genre to put us in. We really were not classified because we did pop stuff and we did what's called doo-wop now. It was rock and roll back in the day. But we really kind of defied categorization and we still do.
Probably I would have if they didn't go bust, but I knew that wasn't the only thing I was gonna do in my life. I think the rest of the girls felt the same way, too. They just did it in a different time frame. We all eventually became professionals in our own right. I just did it a little earlier because I had the time and they were still working.
We were hurt, we were angry. But, you know, in those days we didn't know about entertainment lawyers. I just knew that there were certain things that weren't right. I always had that kind of mind to think about, you know, who's making the money? I would question several times what's happening with the money and we would get vague answers. And it was funny because I was decluttering my office and I found a ledger from End Records toward the end of our time there, where it showed how much money we actually made and how much money we actually got. And there was such a big discrepancy, it was just mind-blowing. But they never told us.
We got a $25-a-week allowance. $20 or $25. And we paid for everything. Usually the record companies make deals and then they pay for this and they pay for that. (But) if we got new uniforms, we paid for that. If we had a car service, we paid for that. And then everybody else got paid before we did.
No, they didn't dictate how we dressed. Our parents had the final say on a particular outfit. And if they didn't like it, one of the mothers would figure out a way to make the dress look less grown-up.
I mean, the dresses came out to be pretty cute, and we thought we were cute (laughs). I have a picture of one of the (outfits) that was kind of a straight dress. It would've shown a little bit, you know, everybody's body was developing at 15, 16. And then my mother said, "Oh, no, no, no, that's too wrong." So they made some kind of glittery netting that went around the dress and sort of stuck away from our waistline and gave it a totally different look. We did look our age and not too grown-up. But we got to wear heels, high heels. So that was kind of nice.
Well, what happened was we were getting calls from the press. We had gotten that (United Group Harmony Association Hall of Fame) induction and then, in 1996, the Rhythm & Blues Foundation had us come out for their Pioneer award. And that was a big deal because it was right on the heels of the Grammys.
So we had a meeting and we talked about it, and we said, "Yeah, why not, but we gotta find the lead singer." We asked Arlene first, and she declined, and that was okay. And then we serendipitously found Ami Ortiz at a wedding reception. It was Ronnie (Italiano)'s wedding reception, and I think Jackie, Renée and I went to the reception. Sandy, Ronnie's wife, had asked if we could sing one of Ronnie's favorite songs. And we said, "How are we gonna sing that (considering) we don't have a lead?" So she said, "Well, my best friend knows every one of your songs, and you could rehearse in the kitchen." So we went in the kitchen, we did the song, it was a perfect fit, and we came out and sang the song. And then again, another surge with the press. So we called Sonia and we told her we thought we found someone. The next time she came up, she met Ami, and we rehearsed and we said we're ready. We went back on the road.
Well, we've known Jerry for years, and he always told us we were one of his favorite girl groups. And he was always just very kind and gracious to us, a lot of fun. We did an interview with him (in 2021) on YouTube, and I think that was the last lengthy time we spent with him. We were also on the Malt Shop Memories Cruise, and he was the emcee, and that's when he asked us about doing the show. We got interrupted with (COVID-19), and then he asked us to do the show in January, and unfortunately he passed away. I mean, that was such a shock and very, very hard to digest. So here we are, a year later, celebrating him and his life and what he's done for so many people in the business. It'll be interesting. I have no idea how everybody's gonna react. I think it's gonna be bittersweet.
No, because she's always with us. We always say a prayer before we take the stage, and we always include Jackie. So now it'd be Jackie, Jerry and Richard Barrett, who was our manager.
Because I'm tired. I'm 82, I have sung all my life. I would rather go out on a high note than a note I can't even get (laughs). Traveling takes its toll, even though this is an easy one because it's Philadelphia.
But it's difficult for all of us. Because we are females, and I think this has been throughout (history), females have had to fight for money, for everything. But in particular, when it comes to show business and recognition, we fight for everything that we've gotten. When you put that all together, and at this point in time when it's so difficult to travel, it's just not worth it. I love singing for the audience. They're always very receptive. That's what makes us sing the way we sing. We get the energy from the audiences. We've always known that, we've always believed it and we've always respected it. But there comes a time when you say, look, I've been doing this for peanuts.
That we left a legacy of music that people loved, still love and can relate to. It's, I think, time immemorial and, you know, people like love songs, and that's what we did. By and large, that's what we get told. "Your song was the song at our wedding" or "my daughter's baptism" or "my daughter's graduation party," "my mother's 80th birthday." Janis Joplin even paid us a compliment, and who knew? I had no clue she even knew who we were. But she covered "Maybe." Did her own way of it, but I said, good for her. I'm just sorry I didn't meet her in person.
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