This Is Our Story: Singles As & Bs 1954-1960 Plus [Import]

• Track Listing

The 'boy/girl' duet partnership was an integral component of black American music in the 1950s and 1960s, and a continuous presence on the charts throughout both decades. Some duos paired existing individual solo stars, but the majority introduced new pairings of young people who were involved professionally (and occasionally romantically) with no outside projects to distract them. Such was the case with one of R&B's biggest twosomes of the 50s. Transplanted Texans Gene Forrest and Eunice Russ Levy both had limited solo experience before they pooled their talent resources in Los Angeles in 1954 and came up with a string of singles that pretty much set the template for mixed R&B duos for the rest of the decade - starting with the original version of a record that turned out to be one of the first big hits (and most covered songs) of R&B's pre-Rock 'n' Roll era, the immortal 'Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)' in 1954. Over the next five years, and alternating between up-tempo rockers and sweet ballads - almost all of which they wrote themselves - G & E established themselves with a string of 45s that endeared them to young record buyers across the US and also in the Caribbean, where their fast and low numbers alike were staples of the local sound system culture in Jamaica and songs like 'This Is My Story', 'The Vow', 'I'll Never Believe In You' and 'Bom Bom Lulu' were revived by local artists many times from the 60s to the 80s. Chart books do not necessarily reflect just how popular Gene & Eunice were, or how many records they sold during six years of recording activity. This Jasmine collection - possibly the most complete anthology of the CD era - brings together as many of those records as we could fit on a single disc. This IS their story, and it will delight fans old and new to have it all in one place for the first time.