I Love You Darling, 11 Year Old Faith Taylor & the Sweet Teens (1959)According to Luky 1966:
“Faith Taylor was born in Dumas, Arkansas, in 1948. She began performing at the age of four and won her first amateur contest in Little Rock. She came to Chicago with her family in 1957 and continued her music career by singing at small club affairs. She also worked in a few combos, including that of Muddy Waters. In June 1957 she entered and won the ‘Morris B. Sachs Amateur Hour‘ on WGN-TV. The following year a friend of Taylor, Charles Jones, was assembling a vocal group and brought her in as the lead. Other members of this group were alto Yvonne Waddell (17), tenor Saundra Long (16), soprano Mary Collins (17), and bass Curtis Burrell (17). Most of the group came from two South Side high schools, DuSable and Dunbar. Faith Taylor and the Sweet Teens were unlike most ‘teen tenor lead’ groups in being mostly comprised of females. From that start, the group was not going to be a ‘girl group’ but one patterned after Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.”
There’s a rumor that Sun Ra backed the Sweet Teens for some performances.
Tacky Raccoons 