If you happened to catch sight of the Tennessee Tigerbelles on a grainy black and white telecast during the 1960 Olympic Games, you might – as an impressionable adolescent boy – have come to the conclusion that you had never seen anything, not even the Everly Brothers singing Bird Dog on The Perry Como Show, quite as stirring.
Had the Tigerbelles been singers rather than athletes, they would have been the first girl group: before the Bobbettes and the Chantels, before the Shirelles and the Chiffons, before the Crystals and the Supremes. There’s a photograph from the 1960s of their male coach leading them down the steps of an airliner, arriving at the Olympics. In his smart overcoat and hat he looks like Berry Gordy Jr proudly shepherding his Motown proteges to international stardom.
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