The Shirelles
1961… #1 US Billboard Hot 100 #1 US Cash Box Top 100 #2 US Billboard R&B #3 New Zealand #4 UK Singles Chart.. Shirelles lead singer Shirley Alston initially disliked the song, dismissing it as “too Country and Western” for the 4-girl group from Passaic, New Jersey. Their producer Luther Dixon convinced her they could do it in their style, and asked King and Goffin if they could add strings and turned it into an uptempo song, which they did. This was written by the husband and wife songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. It’s a benignly sexual song with the singer wondering what will happen the day after an encounter with her man. It met with some resistance from radio stations, but not enough to stop it from becoming a huge hit, selling over a million copies.
Goffin and King were a husband and wife songwriting team who worked were signed to Don Kirshner’s Aldon music, Kirshner assigned them to write a song for the Shirelles as a follow-up song to “Tonight’s The Night.” King came up with the music, and Goffin, excited about writing for The Shirelles, quickly came up with the lyrics. Kirshner loved the song, and recognizing that he had something new and different, decided to use it to get in the door at Columbia Records, so he offered it to Columbia for Johnny Mathis, but their label head Mitch Miller politely declined, which Kirshner later said was “The best thing he ever did for me.” Back at Aldon Music, Tony Orlando wanted to record the song, but Kirshner, taking a cue from what he learned when he offered it to Mathis, explained that it was a girl’s lyric, and that no teenage boy would say these words. So finally, the song went to The Shirelles, where it was intended all along. Orlando did record an answer song called “Not Just Tomorrow But Always
Credit Classic Hits {Stereo}