Rosa Lee Hawkins, the youngest founding member of the celebrated New Orleans girl group The Dixie Cups, died in Tampa, Florida on Tuesday, January 11 of internal bleeding caused by complications from surgery, The New York Times reports.
She was 76. Hawkins formed The Dixie Cups — originally the Meltones — with her sister Barabara Ann and their cousin, Joan Marie Johnson, in the early 1960s.
They started playing local New Orleans shows in 1963 and were signed just a year later by Red Bird Records, a small New York label that released some of The Shangri-Las' most iconic records, as well an album of speeches by former Illinois governor and two-time Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II.
The Dixie Cups' first single, "Chapel of Love" — originally written for The Ronettes — reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Charts, bumping The Beatles' "Love Me Do" down on the list.
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