Hello
We're The Elgins
We're so excited to have our own MySpace page at last, to share with all our fans.
We were one of Motown's legendary groups in the 1960s, hitting big with "Put Yourself In My Place", "Darling Baby", and of course, "Heaven Must Have Sent You"
In 1989 we reformed for Ian Levine's huge Motorcity Reunion project, and we released two further albums, "Take The Train" and "Sensational", and after that a Motorcity Greatest Hits album, called "The Best Of The Elgins".
We're about to have a double CD released by Motown in England, full of unreleased tracks, with lead vocals by both Saundra Edwards, and Yvonne Allen. The monster Northern Soul track sung by Yvonne, called "My Love For Your Love", has already become the biggest new discovery on England's fabulous Northern Soul Scene.
Our record producer, Ian Levine, recently wrote this biog about us
When I managed to track down the Elgins to record for Motorcity, and get them to reunite again after so many years, the project I most wanted to do was to get them to re-record "Heaven Must Have Sent You", but in the style of Bonnie Pointer's wonderful disco classic of 1979. So that was the first project we did together. I always loved The Elgins. Along with The Velvelettes they were one of my favourite Motown groups. They were originally The Downbeats in 1962, with the three guys, Johnny Dawson, Norman McLean, and Duke Miller. They added a girl lead singer in 1965, Saundra Edwards, and recorded such classics as "Heaven Must Have Sent You" and "Put Yourself In My Place". In 1968 Saundra left and Yvonne Allen joined Motown and took over as lead singer. By the time The Elgins left the company, enough material had been stored up to allow Motown nowadays, in 2007, to relase a double fifty track CD of "The Elgins Anthology", forty years after "Heaven Must Have Sent You" was a hit.
In 1972, "Heaven Must Have Sent You" was reissued in England and became a huge hit, and the group appeared at The Torch allnighter in Stoke On Trent, where I was DJing. I met all four of them, Yvonne, Johnny, Norman, and Duke. So then, seventeen years later, in 1989, I persuaded them to reform for my Motorcity project. Duke had died, so Johnny brought in Jimmy Charles, and together with Norman and Yvonne, The Elgins had a whole new lease of life. And now, in 2007, they're about to return to England for the first time in sixteen years, to appear at a big Northern Soul Weekender in Northampton. And long may they continue, always smart, sharp, and timeless.
