Chip and Carrie
Chip Taylor
Carrie Rodriguez
John Platania
Evie Sands

Biography

Although her outstanding recordings in the late 1960's were critically acclaimed, and her fans and admirers included, The Hollies, Patti LaBelle and the late Dusty Springfield who said, "Evie was her favorite female singer," Evie was known as the "hard luck girl" of the era.

Brooklyn-born into a musical family, her mother was a singer and played her records by artists such as, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, and Frank Sinatra. This early exposure had a profound effect on Evie, and her own musical tastes grew to encompass, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Little Willie John, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin, amongst others. As a very young girl these artists inspired her to learn guitar and keyboards, as well as to develop her undoubted vocal ability. She dreamed of recording her own record and her chance came when she teamed up with songwriter Chip Taylor (Wild Thing) and guitarist Al Gorgoni (Brown Eyed Girl) to record for Lieber and Stoller's Blue Cat label.

"Take Me For A Little While," with a wonderful vocal, seemed destined to be a sure smash, especially to an unscrupulous promoter who stole a test pressing and had another singer record and release an imitation version within 24 hours. The subsequent confusion and litigation caused radio to back away from playing Evie's original and it only became a regional hit. Her next single, (Taylor and Gorgoni's, "I Can't Let Go") got caught in the wake of this fiasco when The Hollies' cover version became an international hit.

In 1967, Evie recorded another Chip Taylor composition, "Angel Of The Morning," for Cameo Records. In its first week of release, Evie's single was already the most requested song on radio stations across the country. However, Cameo went bankrupt a week later, and was unable to get any copies to the stores. A few months later, "Angel Of The Morning" became a #1 pop hit for Merilee Rush. A & M signed Evie the following year and she sold over 500,000 copies of Taylor's, "Any Way That You Want Me," which Rolling Stone called one of the best singles of 1969

In the mid-seventies, Evie had two top 30 hits for Capitol Records before giving up her dream of becoming a star in her own right, devoting her creative energies to songwriting, penning tunes for artists such as Barbara Streisand, Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick, Cher and Dusty Springfield.

Evie eventually grew frustrated with the vagaries of the music industry, and stayed out of the spotlight until a chance encounter with Chip Taylor in 1996. Taylor was playing a comeback tour and invited Evie onstage at a Los Angeles club, where the two performers delighted the crowd with still vibrant versions of the songs they had recorded earlier. Their reunion was so successful that they decided to get back together with Al Gorgoni (and producer Tommy Spurlock) to write and record a new album.

Evie's long awaited album, Women In Prison, was written and recorded n only a few short weeks. It is a brilliant collection that combines blues, swampy rock, and country soul, and recaptures the magic they had shared before.

If there is any justice in the world, Evie's luck is about to change.