The Hearts

R&B vocal group the Hearts formed when Bronx-based aspiring songwriter Zell Sanders recruited four local high school students—Louise Harris, Joyce West, Hazel Crutchfield, and Forestine Barnes—to rehearse material she had composed. With Sanders’ neighbor Rex Garvin supplying piano accompaniment, the quartet recorded “Lonely Nights” for the small Baton label; the single became one of the first girl-group successes, climbing to the R&B Top Ten in 1955. Eight years later the name resurfaced on the 1963 chart entry “Dear Abby,” yet none of the original teenagers remained. By that time Sanders had established her own imprint, J&S Records, where the same five singers—Johnnie Louise Richardson, Ethel Davis, Mary Sue Wells, Yvonne Bushnell, and Ada Ray—appeared under several different names, among them the Poppies, the Z-Debs, and, most prominently, the Jaynetts, to whom the 1963 classic “Sally Go ’Round the Roses” was credited. Garvin subsequently issued a string of cult-favorite soul sides with his own band, the Mighty Cravers.