My son insists that songs like this sound like fingernails on a blackboard to his ears. He’s amazed when he meets my record collector friends who are huge fans of Teeners and Girl Groups. They, like me, can’t get enough of this stuff.

The Allan Sisters are Coralie and Jackie Allan from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Jackie started singing when she was just seven years old. After her sister joined the act, they began doing shows in Alberta. They moved to Toronto in search of a recording contract. Jackie married a musical arranger from Country Hoedown on CBC Television named Art Snider.

They cut their first record in 1963, a song called Larry that made it up to #35 on the 1050 CHUM Top 50 in Toronto in early 1964. The record was first issued in Canada on Art Snider’s Chateau label. This song, Never On Saturday, was the flip side of that single. This is Never On Saturday by The Allan Sisters on Shell 314 from 1963:

The girls landed a regular gig that lasted a decade singing on The Tommy Hunter Show, a musical variety show that aired across Canada on CBC Television. They left the show in March 1977 and went on tour across Canada. In 1983, the girls went their separate ways and stopped performing together, a move that disappointed many of their fans.

Coralie, who was married to a singer and guitar player named James “Jamie” Nolan until his death in 1987, did a couple of solo shows, but soon dropped out of the music scene to find work in the business world.

Sister Jackie went on to pursue a solo career singing country music as Jackie Allan And Tribute. You could hear her often at the Bar-K in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Coralie left the music business completely. Sadly, Jackie’s solo career was cut short when was diagnosed with cancer. She passed away on Christmas Eve in 1985.

After Jackie’s death, Coralie joined Splendid Entertainment and started singing at dinner shows and cabarets around Muskoka, Toronto, and even into the northeastern United States. She moved to North Vancouver in 2000 to take care of her daughter, Darcia Gayle Nolan, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Her daughter passed away in 2005.

Whether you like this kind of music or not, you’re bound to hear hundreds of songs from the 1950’s and 1960’s that you will love, and that you’ve never heard before, when you listen to MusicMaster Oldies. Let me know if a particularly good one finds you!