712 The Dixie Cups “Chapel of Love” 1964

“[Joan Marie] Johnson was only with the group for its first few years because she was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia. Their version of ‘Chapel of Love,’ written by Phil Spector, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, supplanted the Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’ as the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100…It turns out the trio arranged the vocals on the spot. [Barbara Ann] Hawkins recalled: ‘When Ellie and Jeff first played ‘Chapel’ for us, we looked at each other, like, You really want us to sing that like that? They said, Well, how do you want to sing it? So I said, Give us a minute. So we went to the corner and started singing. We walked back to them and when we sang it the way it was recorded, they were just, Wow! That was awesome’” (Mark Kennedy, Washington Post, 13 Oct. 2016). 

The Dixie Cups “Chapel of Love”