The bandmembers met up in high school in Olympia, Washington. Originally the two women, Gretchen Christopher and Barbara Ellis began singing together; and they asked Gary Troxel to accompany them on trumpet. Once Christopher and Ellis heard one of Troxel’s songs, he began singing with the group as well. The attraction of the Fleetwoods is the paradoxically delicate yet full-bodied vocals of the three bandmembers.
A Greatest Hits or Best of package is what most people buy when they look for a Fleetwoods album, and that is what I did in the beginning also. The danger is that the hits often show only one side of a band; in this case, most people would assume that all of the music by the Fleetwoods features Gary Troxel on lead and the women singing back up. Not so – an album that I picked up recently, Good Night My Love (1963) shows that Gretchen Christopher and Barbara Ellis also perform flawlessly on lead vocals.
(November 2013)
