| THE
FLEETWOODS (ARTIST BIOGRAPHY)
The
Fleetwoods were a singing trio from Olympia, Washington, United
States; formed in the late 1950s. They were responsible for the hit
song “Come Softly to Me”. The song was originally called “Come
Softly”, and the group was originally named Two Girls and a Guy, but
both were changed en route to the song becoming a hit.
Gary Troxel (b. November 28, 1939, Centralia, Washington) and
Gretchen Christopher (b. February 29, 1940, Olympia, Washington)
were two high school students waiting for Christopher’s mother to
pick them up after school. They started singing and humming a song
together, and liked it enough to ask Christopher’s friend and
singing partner, Barbara Ellis (b. February 20, 1940, Olympia,
Washington), to join them as a trio to perform it.
They performed the song twice at school functions, and their
classmates wanted recordings of it so they could learn the song.
After six months, they got the track recorded. They sang it a
cappella, then dubbed the instrumental accompaniment, consisting
only of Latin-styled acoustic guitar and the rhythmic shaking of
Troxel’s car keys. “Come Softly to Me” was also recorded by Frankie
Vaughan and The Kaye Sisters, who had a chart hit in the United
Kingdom with the song. The Fleetwoods’ version of “Come Softly To
Me” can be heard on a portable radio at one point in the 1986 movie,
Stand By Me, which was set in Washington state.
Bob Reisdorf, the owner of Dolphin Records (later changed to Dolton
Records), was responsible for the changes to the group name and song
title. He thought that the title was too risque and not
commercial-sounding enough, so he had it changed to “Come Softly to
Me”. He also thought that the group’s original name wasn’t
commercial-sounding enough. The new name of the group, The
Fleetwoods, was based on the telephone exchanges in the areas where
the three members lived, Fleetwood2-xxxx and Fleetwood7-xxxx.
The Fleetwoods continued to record into the 1960s, with a number of
other successes, although none so big as “Come Softly to Me”. Their
second hit, “Mr. Blue,” was one of the few recordings by a white
singing group to make the rhythm & blues chart. The beginning of the
end for the group came when Troxel was drafted into the U.S. Navy.
Additionally, the British Invasion of the mid 1960s ended the
public’s taste for sweet, melodic music.
By the late 1970s, Troxel was working in a plywood plant, Ellis was
managing a trailer park in Canada, and Christopher was a housewife
and modern dance teacher. In 2000, Troxel and his wife Jenifer lost
a landmark grandparents’ rights case before the Supreme Court of the
United States. The court held that under the United States
Constitution, non-parents seeking custody or visitation rights of a
child against the wishes of the child’s parents must prove that the
parents are not acting in the best interest of the child in refusing
custody or visitation. |
