August 30, 2004

THE BOSWELL SISTERS

Shout Sisters Shout! 1925-34
Jazz Legends Jaz 2007

Ella Fitzgerald, The Beach Boys and Manhattan Transfer are just three of the monumentally popular singers who directly or by osmosis were influenced by The Boswell Sisters. Unfortunately, the three singing sisters from New Orleans are little remembered today.

But if the Boswells hadn’t helped establish a market for close harmony singing with a rhythmic thrust more than 70 years ago -- along with other pioneers like the Mills Brothers -- so-called jazz and later R&B and pop-rock vocalizing wouldn’t have developed the way it did. MORE