The Andrews Sisters were an American close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters: contralto LaVerne Sophia Andrews (1911–1967), soprano Maxene Anglyn Andrews (1916–1995), and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie Andrews (1918–2013). The sisters have sold an estimated 80 million records. Their 1941 hit "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" can be considered an early example of jump blues. Other songs closely associated with the Andrews Sisters include their first major hit, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön (Means That You're Grand)" (1937), "Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out the Barrel)" (1939), "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" (1940), "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)" (1942), and "Rum and Coca-Cola" (1945), which helped introduce American audiences to calypso.
The Andrews Sisters' harmonies and songs are still influential, having been copied and recorded by entertainers such as Patti Page, Bette Midler, Christina Aguilera, The Pointer Sisters, and Pentatonix. The group was among the inaugural inductees to the Vocal Group Hall of Fame upon opening in 1998. Writing for Bloomberg, Mark Schoifet said the sisters became the most popular female vocal group of the first half of the 20th century. They remain widely acclaimed for their close harmonies, and were inducted into the Minnesota Rock/Country Hall of Fame in May 2006.
The sisters were born to Olga Bergliot "Ollie" (née Sollie; 1886—1948) and Peter Andreas. Peter Andreas (later "Andrews"), (1890—1949) was Greek and his wife Olga Andrews was of Norwegian ancestry raised in the Lutheran faith. The Sollie family disapproved of Olga's marriage, but the relationship was repaired once their first child, LaVerne, was born July 6, 1911. Their second daughter, Anglyn, died at eight months of age on March 16, 1914. Maxene arrived on January 3, 1916, and Patty was born February 16, 1918.
Patty, the lead singer of the group, was 7 when the trio was formed, and 12 when they won first prize at a talent contest at the local Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, where LaVerne played piano accompaniment for the silent film showings in exchange for dancing lessons for her and her sisters. Following the collapse of their father's Minneapolis restaurant, the sisters went on the road to support the family. All three attended Franklin Junior High School and North High School, both in Minneapolis.
They started their career as imitators of an earlier successful singing group, the Boswell Sisters, who had been popular until their breakup in 1936. After singing with various dance bands and touring in vaudeville with Leon Belasco (and his orchestra) and comic bandleader Larry Rich, they first came to national attention with their recordings and radio broadcasts in 1937, most notably via their major Decca record hit, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön" (translation: "To Me, You Are Beautiful"), originally a Yiddish tune, the lyrics of which Sammy Cahn had translated to English and "which the girls harmonized to perfection." They followed this success with a string of best-selling records over the next two years and, by the 1940s, had become a household name.
Instrumental to the sisters' success over the years were their parents, Olga and Peter, their orchestra leader and musical arranger, Vic Schoen (1916–2000), and Jack and David Kapp, who founded Decca Records.
In the years just before and during World War II, the Andrews Sisters were at the height of their popularity, and the group still tends to be associated in the public's mind with the war years. They had numerous hit records during these years, both on their own and in collaboration with fellow Decca Records artist Bing Crosby. Some of these hits had service or military related themes, including "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", "Three Little Sisters", "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)", "A Hot Time In the Town of Berlin" and "Rum and Coca-Cola". The sisters performed their hits in service comedy films, such as Buck Privates and Private Buckaroo.
During the war, they entertained the Allied forces extensively in Africa and Italy, as well as in the U.S., visiting Army, Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard bases, war zones, hospitals, and munitions factories. They encouraged U.S. citizens to purchase war bonds with their rendition of Irving Berlin's song "Any Bonds Today?". They also helped actress Bette Davis and actor John Garfield found California's famous Hollywood Canteen, a welcome retreat for servicemen where the trio often performed, volunteering their personal time to sing and dance for the soldiers, sailors, and Marines (they did the same at New York City's Stage Door Canteen during the war).
While touring, they often treated three random servicemen to dinner when they were dining out. They recorded a series of Victory Discs (V-Discs) for distribution to Allied fighting forces only, again volunteering their time for studio sessions for the Music Branch, Special Service Division, of the Army Service Forces, and they were dubbed the "Sweethearts of the Armed Forces Radio Service" for their many appearances on shows such as Command Performance, Mail Call, and G.I. Journal.
The sisters' 1945 hit "Rum and Coca-Cola" became one of their most popular and best-known recordings, but also inspired some controversy. Some radio stations were reluctant to play the record because it mentioned a commercial product by name, and because the lyrics were subtly suggestive of local women prostituting themselves to U.S. servicemen serving at the naval base on Trinidad. The song was based on a Trinidadian calypso, and a dispute over its provenance led to a well-publicized court case. The sisters later told biographers that they were asked to record the tune at short notice and were unaware either of the copyright issue or of the implications of the lyrics.
An ad in the 1951 Radio Annual showed photos of the Andrews as children, as contemporary singers, and as old women in the then-future year of 1975, although the act would not make it that long. In the 1950s, Patty Andrews decided to break away from the act to be a soloist. She had married the trio's pianist, Walter Weschler, who became the group's manager and demanded more money for Patty. When LaVerne and Maxene learned of Patty's decision from newspaper gossip columns rather than from their own sister, it caused a bitter two-year separation, especially when Patty sued LaVerne for a larger share of their parents' estate. Patty attributed the breakup to the deaths of their parents: "We had been together nearly all our lives," Patty explained in 1971. "Then in one year our dream world ended. Our mother died (in 1948) and then our father (in 1949). All three of us were upset, and we were at each other's throats all the time." The Andrews Sisters formally broke up in 1953.
LaVerne and Maxene tried to continue the act as a duo and met with good press during a 10-day tour of Australia, but a reported suicide attempt by Maxene in December 1954 put a halt to any further tours (Maxene spent a short time in the hospital after swallowing 18 sleeping pills, an occurrence that LaVerne told reporters was an accident). LaVerne and Maxene did appear together on The Red Skelton Show on October 26, 1954, singing the humorous "Why Do They Give the Solos to Patty" as well as lip-synching "Beer Barrel Polka" with Skelton in drag filling in for Patty. This, however, did not sit well with Patty, and a cease-and-desist order was sent to Skelton. The sisters' private relationship was often troubled, and Patty blamed it on Maxene: "Ever since I was born, Maxene has been a problem, and that problem hasn't stopped," she said.
The trio reunited in 1956 and signed a new recording deal with Capitol Records, for whom Patty was already a featured soloist. By this point, however, rock-and-roll and doo-wop were dominating the charts, and older artists were left by the wayside. The sisters recorded a dozen singles through 1959, some of which attempted to keep up with the times by incorporating rock sounds. None of these achieved any major success. In addition, they produced three hi-fi albums, including a vibrant LP of songs from the dancing 1920s with Billy May's orchestra. In 1962, they signed with Dot Records and recorded a series of stereo albums until 1967, both re-recordings of earlier hits which incorporated up-to-date production techniques as well as new material, including "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", "Still", "The End of the World", "Puff the Magic Dragon", "Sailor", "Satin Doll", "Mr. Bass Man", the theme from Come September, and the theme from A Man and a Woman. They toured extensively during the 1960s, favoring top nightclubs in Las Vegas, California, and London, England.