The Carrolls

Our pick of the pops

Liverpool-based brother-and-sister combo the Carrolls are best known for their Northern soul stonker Surrender your love and for lead singer Irene’s later career as comedienne/actress/impersonator Faith Brown.

The Carrolls were a four-piece family group featuring vocals by Irene Carroll, who was born in Liverpool, on England’s north west coast, on 28 May 1944.

She started out singing at clubs in the Woolton area of the city while still at school. At the age of 16 her strong vocals won her a singing contest at the Rialto Ballroom and she was offered a job as its resident singer.

In the mid-1960s, she teamed up with her three brothers to form the Carrolls. In the early summer of 1966, the group released its debut single, the stunning Surrender your love, which sounded like an offering from a black American soul singer. It was issued in competition with a beat version by Belfast-born Perpetual Langley, who had retitled hers simply Surrender. (The song is sometimes confused with Diana Ross’s 1971 similarly titled single Surrender, and there is certainly a likeness.)

Surrender your love made Radio Caroline’s chart, though not the official UK charts, and attracted enough attention for the group to move to CBS Records, where they released Ever since later that year.

Two further singles were issued in 1968, So gently falls the rain and the rather childish Lemon balloon and a blue sky (the flip of the latter, Make me belong to you, proved the better side).

1969’s We’re in this thing together, penned by American soul legend Van McCoy and on which Irene shared vocals with the boys, later became another in-demand track on the Northern soul dance scene.

Surrender 

your love

1966

Lock me in

1969

The folk I love

1966

We're in this thing together

1969

With a string of flops to their name, Irene quit the group and adopted the stage name Faith Brown. Lock me in became her first solo release. It sounded like a Clodagh Rodgers track – and indeed it was written by Kenny Young and turned up on Clodagh’s Goodnight midnight LP.

For the follow up, issued in 1971, US singer Evie Sands’ terrific Any way that you want me was picked for a British makeover.

Cover cuts

Any way that you want me

1971

Make me belong to you

1968

Further releases followed before Faith found fame doing impressions in the Who do you do? television series in 1975. She later hosted her own chat show and has, more recently, taken serious roles in TV’s Doctor Who and a touring production of the Sunset Boulevard musical.

In 2006, she took part in the reality TV show I’m a celebrity, get me out of here.

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