FACTORY RECORDS THE VERNONS GIRLS

The Vernons Girls (Parlophone PMC 1052, LP, mono, UK, 1958) £45

- David Pearson

The Vernons Girls are ideal material for a DFG piece, for they and their musical journey are unique. For starters, they were a unusually large group very large. At their rock'n'roll height they numbered some 16, though TV viewers might often see them in groups of three or four at any given time. But what also makes them that bit different to other pop acts is that, in the course of their roughly 10-year life span, they went through an astonishing number of changes and reinventions - in terms of their music, style and personnel. There are definite chapters to their story and here we'll look at the early ones.

Rewind to early-50s Britain. Doing the weekly football pools, hoping for the 9 score draws that might make you a fortune, filling in your coupon and posting it off this was a major social pastime for many. Consequently, the pools industry was big business, and the two major companies, Littlewoods and Vernons, employed thousands of people as pools checkers, secretaries and so on. Both companies had staff choirs, provided by management as recreational facilities for the workforce.

Vernons employed around 8,000 people in their Aintree, Liverpool headquarters. Their choir numbered some 70 women and girls, and they would often go about the place giving concerts. This was very much endorsed by the management and with good reason. Laws at the time prevented the direct advertising of gambling, which football pools were, of course, but if your company had a roving choir giving concerts with the Vernons name, you had a very powerful promotional tool basically free advertising.