With thanks to Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley's book The Birth Of Pop, I've been diving into stuff that never appears in any media of the 21st century, and it's quite interesting seeing the music of the 20th century develop from the start of the century. The Boswell Sisters weren't the first girl group - that was The Brox Sisters in the very Jazz Explosion 1920's - but they laid the foundations for the biggest girl group The Andrews Sisters to emulate in the 40's - and they cheered up the music scene of the Depression Era 1930's, mostly the early 1930's. Martha was born in 1905, Connee (Connie) 1907 note the spelling change for speed of signing autographs, and a wheelchair user from polio, and Vet (Helvetia) 1911. Inspired by the sounds of the 20's they were playful, original and dropped the classical training once they heard the saxophone and Jazz. After an early tough start they got signed up by CBS radio. They became stars an appeared in the first public television transmission in the USA - sadly the footage did not survive. But the studio recordings do, and this was where they did their thing - even when told to tone it down a bit for commercial purposes.

I've skipped through what survives of their 1930-35 stuff, and the ones I like best are more the Bluesey songs, but they certainly stand out for that period, not least because female singing stars were few and far between. And they were doing the Girl Band thing (they could play a lot of instruments) decades before it was thing...

Anyway, not their biggest hits, but these ones are the ones I like best:

Hope that's interesting!

I think song 2 is the best one with song 4 in second place. I see they are on Spotify as well. Their most streamed song is 'Old Yazoo' with 3.9 million streams which is quite a lot.

On 03/04/2026 at 01:29, King Rollo said:

I think song 2 is the best one with song 4 in second place. I see they are on Spotify as well. Their most streamed song is 'Old Yazoo' with 3.9 million streams which is quite a lot.

Thanks for looking Rollo! I wonder if those streams are for people typing Yazoo and getting curious about the song? I cant see why that would necessarily be played over other more famous songs they recorded. I was struck by thinking it wouldnt take much of a stretch to do updates on some of the songs for the 21st century. If only I could produce records and know some top singers...😄