The Vernons Girls
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The Vernons Girls were a British musical ensemble of female vocalists. They were formed at the football pools factory in 1950s Liverpool as a 16 strong choir and cut an album of standards.
In 1958 and 1959 they appeared on the ITV TV show Oh Boy! with the house band and made a series of singles for labels like Decca and Parlophone, in a more condensed group with between 3 and 5 members. These were mainly covers of American hits which would sell less than the originals.
As session singers for Decca they had appeared on dozens of hits into the 1960s and even had a couple of their own with what can be seen as the first ever raw Scouse accents in the top 30: You know what I mean—a line remembered by John Lennon as the song I Saw Her Standing There was created and which replaced the original line by Paul McCartney.
In the United States the group under their nom de disc of the Carefrees charted with the first Beatles tribute over there, We Love The Beatles.
Before long there were solo singers like Lyn Cornell (married to session drummer Andy White, notable for replacing Ringo on an early take of Love Me Do) and splinter acts like The Breakaways, one of whom married Joe Brown. Another former Vernons Girl, Maggie Stredder, went on to form another session group, The Ladybirds, who are today most famous for their long association with The Benny Hill Show.
The Vernons Girls appear on film as a trio on "Around the Beatles" with The Beatles, Long John Baldry, P. J. Proby and Millie.
The Vernons Girls are really the world's longest running girl group and still exist today in one permutation or another.
Three of them were in the Billy Fury movie Play It Cool, while Lyn Cornell and the Breakaways were in Just For Fun. In the later 1990s they appeared in Cliff Richard's Oh Boy from Wembley.
Interestingly the Vernons' name was also used by an '80s Liverpool band.
