The Shepherd Sisters
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The Shepherd Sisters were a vocal quartet, consisting of Martha, Gayle, Judy and Mary Lou. All were related and really were sisters.
They came from Middletown, Ohio. In the late 1950s, they appeared on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts.
One of their first recordings, Gone with the Wind got them a "call" from Dick Clark. Subsequently they made many appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
In New York City, Morty Craft had a song he wanted them to record, Alone. In 1957 Alone (Why Must I Be Alone) would become their biggest hit and the song they would always be most assocciated with. In the US it reached No.18 on the Billboard chart; in the UK it made No.14. It may have climbed higher had it not been up against several rival versions on both sides of the Atlantic. In all the Shepherd Sisters recorded over thirty songs, many of them on one of Morty Craft's labels like Melba and Lance.
Morty also "introduced" them to the DJ Alan Freed, the man who first coined the term "rock 'n' roll." The Shepherd Sisters played the Brooklyn and Manhattan Paramount Theaters and toured with Alan Freed's "America's Greatest Teenage Recording Stars"--The Everly Brothers, Paul Anka, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Danny and the Juniors, Lee Andrews and the Hearts, the Twin Tones, Little Joe Dubs, Thurston Harris, Terry Nolan, and Jo Ann Campbell.
Besides rock 'n' roll the Shepherd Sisters were also a stage/cabaret act. They performed at big hotels, night clubs, NYC's Apollo Theater and casinos in Reno and Vegas. Music took them a long way from Ohio. They also sang in the Philippines, Canada, South America and parts of Europe.
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