All nineteen pages, in five sections

Number one in January 1961, the first by a Black girl group, and a lyric frank enough that some stations would not play it.

The record before the number one, and the one that proved the group could carry a session of their own.

A cover that charted twice, two years apart, and did better the second time.

A hook built out of a spoken phrase, and the arrangement that carried it.

Bacharach's melody, a celeste, and a vocal recorded closer than the era usually allowed.

Their second number one, cut quickly at the end of a session with time left on the clock.

Florence Greenberg ran Tiara out of her home, sold it, and built Scepter around the group it had signed.

Four schoolfriends formed as the Poquellos and were signed after a school talent show.

The group's earnings were held in a trust they could not reach, and the litigation that followed is a matter of record.

The label the group paid for went on to sign acts that outlasted it.

A married pair of staff writers in a cubicle with a piano, working to a quota.

The song arrived as a demo in a different tempo and a different key.

Staff writers, a quota, and a publisher taking the copyright — the system that produced most of the era's hits.

Luther Dixon slowed the song, added strings and put the drums where the lyric turns.

Arrangers, contractors and the players who appear on hundreds of records without their names on any of them.

Putting an orchestra behind a girl group was an economic decision before it was a musical one.

The subject matter was plain enough that programme directors made their own decisions about it.

Two Shirelles records went onto the first Beatles album, and the covers kept coming for forty years.

The group's later line-ups, the reissues, and how the catalogue was eventually sorted out.