See Persianettes and Beatlettes
Timmy Carr was a Camden New Jersey aspiring singer who knew Lucille Dunbar, a student at Camden High School who harmonized with her friend Vera Carey, a fellow student at the school. Vera recalled, "It was Lucille Dunbar who brought Timmy Carr [Carstarphan] to my house. She knew Timmy through his family and the church. Timmy was starting a group and he wanted some female backup singers. Lucille was one and, because we used to sing together, she came to my house with Timmy to get me involved.” Timmy was a small, 5”5’ weight lifter whose ambition was in music, though he looked more like a boxer.
Timmy became a protégé of Jamie in-house producer Bob Finiz, who wrote the group’s first release, “Only Now and Then” with Marge Baderak. The B side was “I Could Never Stop Cryin’,” also by Finiz (Guyden 2104). Vera remembered that Burt Bacharach did the arrangements for the session, which included “violins, oboes, timpanis, guitars, clarinets, the lot! I was so amazed that we had such rich music. I was expecting just a little quartet type thing. We recorded it in New York, I think, ‘Only Now and Then’ was cut at RCA studios.”
They then came out on Jamie/Guyden distributed Olympia Records with “Timmy Boy” b/w “There Comes A Time” (Olympia 100). Bob Finiz wrote “Timmy Boy” while Timmy Carr collaborated with Finiz on the B side, “There Comes a Time.”
By the time of the second release on Olympia, the Persianettes split with Timmy and recorded “Summertime Is Near” on their own. This may have been a prelude to their actual break, considering that the song did lend itself to Timmy’s more serious demeanor, but the real break came in early 1964, when Timmy acquired three male background singers for Timmy and the Empires, while the Persianettes continued on their own and for one release on Jamie as the Beatlettes.
