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Girl groups are most often understood to have emerged from the context of Baby Boomer youth culture during the late 1950s, taking an elegant step forward (in matching patent leather pumps) into a spotlight suddenly devoid of rock 'n' roll's earliest stars. Elvis Presley was on active duty in the U.S. Army between 1958 and 1960; Chuck Berry sat in jail from 1960 until 1964 for a violation of the Mann Act; Little Richard left show business for a career in the ministry between 1957 and 1962; Jerry Lee Lewis alienated American and British fans by marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin in December 1957; Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) were killed in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa, in February 1959; and the payola scandal focused unwelcome media attention on rock 'n' roll and the popular music industry during the 1960 U.S. presidential campaign. Jacqueline Warwick's new book Girl Groups, Girl Culture examines the subject not from this broad cultural perspective, but from the perspective of a distinct girl culture, drawing from girls' studies, a relatively new field that focuses on girls' lives, interests, and culture.1
Warwick defines the girl group genre chronologically and aesthetically. She pinpoints the genre "emerging in 1957 and dominating the pop charts from 1960 to 1963" (13), beginning with the Chantels' early recordings and fading somewhat after the Beatles' arrival in the United States. Although the British Invasion may seem to provide a convenient and logical end to the girl group era, she reminds readers that "the Supremes were the only North American act to offer any serious chart competition to the Beatles [during the early sixties], with eight number-one hits between 1964 and 1966, as compared to twelve number ones for the Liverpudlian band" (162). A thorough analysis of stylistic and aesthetic characteristics of girl groups--characteristics that have too often been dismissed and even scorned by rock fans, critics, and scholars, as Warwick explains--provides the engaging and insightful material for...