Return to Rock-and-Roll Page.The Chiffons were one of the fabulous Sixties girl groups that came from the Bronx and cracked the top ten, once even reaching the number one spot on the charts.
The group included lead singer Judy Craig, Sylvia Peterson, Barbara Lee, and Patricia Bennett. They formed when the girls were high school classmates in the Bronx section of New York City. In 1960 they began to work as backup singers.
Their first minor hit came in 1960 with Tonight's the Night. They hit the big time in 1963 with their recording of He's So Fine, a song that had been written by a young songwriter named Ronnie Mack. Shortly after the Chiffons released the song, Mack died from Hodgkins Disease. Recorded on the Laurie label (as were all of the group's huge hits), the song became a mega-hit and reached the number one position on both the R&B and the pop charts. They had more hits, some with the word "fine" in the title: One Fine Day (top ten pop) and A Love So Fine followed later in 1963.
The Chiffons also recorded as the Four Pennies on the Rust label, and had some minor hits with such songs as My Block and When The Boy's Happy The Girl's Happy Too in 1963.
In 1965 the Chiffons cut a song that reached number 49 on the charts and is regarded by some as one of the first psychedelic records, titled Nobody Knows What's Goin' On (In My Mind Except Me). They followed with their final top ten record on the U.S. pop charts, Sweet Talkin' Guy, in 1966.
In 1971 George Harrison had his first number one song as a solo artist after the split-up of his former group, the Beatles. The title of the song was My Sweet Lord. The publishers of the Chiffons' He's So Fine claimed that My Sweet Lord was simply the same song written with different lyrics, and Harrison lost the ensuing lawsuit. Later, the Chifffons recorded My Sweet Lord themselves, but the record went nowhere. The controversy over the two songs led to a reissue of the Chiffons' Sweet Talkin' Guy in the UK in 1972, and it became the group's highest charting song ever there at number four.
One of the fabulous girl groups of the Sixties that left us with some memorable songs ... the Chiffons.
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