Gene and Eunice • This Is Our Story - Singles As & Bs 1954-1960 CD
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. 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. These started 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 KoKo Mo in 1954. Over the next five years, and alternating between up-tempo rockers and sweet ballads – almost all of which they wrote themselves – Gene & Eunice established themselves with a string of 45s that endeared them to young record buyers across the US. They also gained popularity 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 BomBom Lulu were revived by local artists many times.
