Displaying items by tag: Jaynetts

One of the simplest, yet most haunting songs of the 1960s, “Sally Go Round the Roses” hit right before the start of Beatlemania in August of 1963. The record is credited to a one-hit wonder, the Jaynetts, but the story behind the song reveals a history that’s a bit more complicated.

Abner Spector (no relation to Phil) was an A & R man for Chess Records who occasionally produced R&B sides for a small independent label known as Tuff Records. In the spring of 1963, Spector decided that he wanted to record a song with the girl group sound that was then a very popular genre (thanks to the Shirelles, the Chiffons, the Dixie Cups, etc.). So, he talked to the head of Tuff Records, Zelma "Zell" Sanders, and asked her to come up with an appropriate song and begin assembling some singers. Zell wrote the song in collaboration with Spector’s wife, Lona Stevens. The duo decided to draw their inspiration from the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” (itself kind of creepy – as its seemingly innocent lyrics are really about the symptoms of the Bubonic Plague).