THE ANDREWS SISTERS Hit The Road

Original 1938-1944 Recordings

Between the two World Wars a trend for syncopated close-harmony vocalising flourished.  Deeply rooted in barbershop and further back still in Negro minstrelsy its more recent precursors had included the Revelers, the Comedy Harmonists, the Mills Brothers and, among the girls, the Boswell Sisters, the Andrews Sisters’ closest role-models.  The Andrews had their own characteristic style, however, allied to a rhythmic incisiveness which makes them still for many the Number One favourite close-harmony group, a partisanship borne out by record sales exceeding 60 million – making them the biggest girl-group success in popular recording history.  Like Glenn Miller and Vera Lynn, their sound is the very essence of wartime nostalgia.

The Sisters, who all hailed from Minneapolis, Minnesota, of part-Norwegian, part-Greek parentage, comprised Laverne (