The Raelettes
American girl group; backing vocals for Ray Charles
The Raelettes (or occasionally The Raelets or The Raeletts) were an American women group formed in 1958 to provide backing vocals for Ray Charles. They were reformed from the group The Cookies. Between 1966 and 1973, the Raelettes recorded on Tangerine Records as a separate act produced and accompanied by Charles.
History
Reformed by Ray Charles from the all-girl singing group The Cookies, Charles first invited the group for a recording session in New York City, in August 1956, where they taped "Lonely Avenue", "I Want To Know" and "Leave My Woman Alone". The Cookies' lineup at the time consisted of Margie Hendrix, Dorothy Jones, and Darlene McCrea.
The Raelettes were officially established in 1958. The first lineup consisted of Darlene McCrea, Margie Hendrix, Priscilla "Pat" Lyles, and Gwendolyn Berry. The Raelettes were an integral part of Charles' organization and provided backing vocals on various hits, such as "Night Time Is the Right Time" (1958), "What'd I Say" (1959) and "Hit the Road Jack" (1961).
In the early years, Margie Hendrix was the Raelettes' foremost member. Ray Charles said about her: "Aretha, Gladys, Etta James — these gals are all bad, but on any given night, Margie will scare you to death." Ray and Margie had many affairs, but she started using drugs and alcohol and after a final argument in 1964, she was fired from the Raelettes and later died in 1973.
The public source identifies “The Raelettes” as american girl group; backing vocals for Ray Charles. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Raelettes, American and girl.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1250236. VIAF identifies the subject as 127721100. The Library of Congress control number is no91017711. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1966, 1973 and 1956.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Raelettes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.