The Toys

The Toys were an American pop girl group from Jamaica, New York, which was formed in 1961 and disbanded in 1968. Their most successful recording was "A Lover's Concerto" (1965), which sold more than two million copies and reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.Barbara Harris started singing in her hometown churches at an early age and moved to Queens, New York City, when she was 11 years old. In high school, she joined a band with four other young singers: Barbara Parritt (later Toomer), June Montiero, Betty Stokes and Betty Blocker. Stokes and Blocker eventually left the group, so Harris, Parritt and Montiero formed a trio.Their friend Bobby Uri, a manager, named the band The Charlettes, making them work doing background vocals for several recording artists. At a talent show in Brooklyn, they met Eddy Chase, who in turn introduced them to manager Vince Marc and songwriter/recording executive Bob Crewe.The group was then named The Toys and landed their first recording contract on Crewe's DynoVoice Records. Marc introduced them also to songwriters Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell.The couple wrote most of the songs the trio recorded. They took a piano piece from a Bach exercise book ("Minuet in G major" by Christian Petzold), put a Motown bassline to it, and "A Lover's Concerto" was born: it was released in 1965 and soon rose to No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The band followed that up with another hit, "Attack!", also written by Linzer and Randell: released in 1966, it reached the Top 20.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.