The Third Wave - Here and Now

By today’s standards, The Third Wave were woefully under-exploited. Nowadays there would be the celebrity boyfriends, the heroin difficulties and the cynical solo projects, but when American jazz pianist George Duke discovered these five pretty and talented Philippino teenage sisters from Stockton, California, in the late-1960s, the thing that attracted him, apparently, was the sheer scope and beauty of their close-part vocal harmonising.

So named because they were their family’s third generation in the USA, Jody, Stevie, Reggie, Jamie and Georgie Ente became the vocal supplement to the George Duke Trio (themselves the backing band on ‘Here And Now’, originally released in 1970) and evidently caused quite a stir on the popular jazz scene for a few months. The girls bring their sweetly psychedelic approach to ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’, while ‘Waves Lament’ and ‘Don’t Ever Go’ are all sad Nico vowels and haunting arrangements which, 50 years on, still sound surprisingly fresh and vital.

Quite what happened to the sisters remains a mystery, but presumably, this minor lounge classic under their belts, they did the decent thing and went back to school.

https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-nme-1779-330801