Barbara Ann Alston
Singer with the Crystals, the group who were a springboard for the visionary producer Phil Spector
BARBARA ANN ALSTON, who has died aged 74, was a founding member and the original lead singer of the Crystals, the American girl group produced by Phil Spector which enjoyed such hits in the early Sixties as Da Doo Ron Ron and Then He Kissed Me.
The group was put together by Barbara Ann Alston’s uncle Benny Wells, a big-band musician, who would rehearse his 17-year-old niece and four other music-mad teenagers he had found – Mary Thomas, Dolores Kenniebrew, Myrna Giraud and Patricia Wright – in a New York school out of hours. Performing in the fashionable doo-wop style, they came to the attention of Spector, then known for some minor success as a musician and for his work with the Drifters.
He was looking for a group on which he could experiment with his ideas about production and the Crystals would prove to be his springboard – though they were to do rather less well out of the collaboration.
Displaying early on his visionary if controlling tendencies, Spector pushed Barbara Ann Alston to the fore as the group’s singer, though she lacked confidence (especially on stage) and was more interested in choreography. On the night of their school prom, still wearing their dresses, they recorded their first single, There’s No Other Like My Baby.
Spector insisted on numerous takes, until Barbara Ann Alston’s voice had the hoarse quality he wanted. The first of many surprises came when Spector released it as the first single on a new label he had co-founded, Philles Records, instead of on the label with which the group thought they had signed.
It made the Top 20 in the US (and was later covered by the Beach Boys), and the follow-up, Uptown, which also featured Barbara Ann Alston’s pleasantly light voice, reached No 13. However, a song about domestic violence penned by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss), gave the group misgivings, and Spector was irritated when it failed to do well.
The girls were then shocked to hear a new Crystals single on the radio which they had not sung. Determined to be the first to record He’s a Rebel, written by Gene Pitney, Spector – who was based in Los Angeles – had got the local singer Darlene Love to perform the track and then had appropriated the group’s name. As the song reached No 1, the Crystals kept shtum, although they had yet to see any royalties from their hits.
By now, Spector had begun to perfect the symphonic “Wall of Sound” that would become his hallmark and, wanting a richer voice than Barbara Ann Alston’s, made the gospel singer Dolores “Lala” Brooks the new lead when Myrna Giraud left the group. It was Brooks who in 1963 notionally fronted both Da Doo Ron Ron
(a No 5 in the UK) and Then She Kissed Me (No 2). The latter later featured prominently in the film Goodfellas (1990).
Spector had, however, taken to recording all the voices separately and there is no agreement as to who actually sang on those records, the only certainty being the distinctive voice of a backing singer on Da Doo Ron Ron: Cher.
The Crystals’ popularity gave impetus to other girl groups of the time – such as the Chiffons (He’s So Fine) and the Shangri-las (Leader of the Pack) as well as Spector’s own Ronettes (Be My Baby) – but by 1964, they had tired of Spector’s shenanigans and left his label.
He would go on to produce such cornerstones of pop as the Righteous Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner and the Beatles (Let It Be, and later Imagine for John Lennon). In 2009 he was convicted of the murder of Lana Clarkson, an actress; but by then Barbara Ann Alston had long turned her back on music.
She was born in Baltimore on December 29 1943 but aged seven moved with her mother to live with her grandfather in Brooklyn. After graduating from the William H Maxwell Vocational School, she worked briefly as a secretary at the Institute of International Education. In the mid-sixties, she appeared in the original Broadway production of Cabaret.
After bringing up her children, she moved in 1984 to Charlotte, North Carolina. She had meant to go to Atlanta, but her car broke down en route and while it was being fixed she found a job as a property title examiner. Fond of knitting, bingo and crosswords, she was not averse to singing her hits while doing the housework.
In 2007 she published a memoir, There’s No Other, which recounted in a frank fashion the ups and downs of her personal life during her time in the spotlight.
Both her marriages ended in divorce and she is survived by a son and two daughters. Another son, Tony, whose father was the brother of the singer Sam Cooke, was shot dead in 2010.
Barbara Ann Alston, born December 29 1943, died February 16 2018