A legend among fans of 1960s garage rock and R&B, Goldie & the Gingerbreads were the first all-female rock band to sign with a major label, and earned praise in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, though they never scored the hit record they deserved. Led by Genya "Goldie" Zelkowitz (later known as Genya Ravan), the group played tough, uptempo rock & roll as well as moody ballads -- reinforced by Carol MacDonald's incisive guitar lines, Margo Lewis' powerful keyboards, Ginger Bianco's lean percussive grooves, and Zelkowitz's powerhouse vocals -- and could sound like a cross between the Animals and the Shangri-Las at their best. They released a string of singles without getting a chance to make an album, but in 2021 most of those 45s comprised a definitive career overview, Thinking About the Good Times: Complete Recordings 1964-1966. The Goldie & the Gingerbreads story begins in 1962, when Genya Zelkowitz was playing a gig as lead singer with the Escorts, a group featuring future star record producer Richard Perry. Ginger Bianco (born Ginger Panabianco) was a drummer playing with another group on the bill, and she and Zelkowitz compared notes on the ups and downs of life as a female rock musician, a novelty at the time. Zelkowitz and Bianco got the idea to form an all-woman band, and they quickly came up with a name -- Zelkowitz's nickname was Goldie, and Gingerbreads was a play on the fairytale Goldilocks and the Three Bears. When the Escorts broke up after Zelkowitz's bandmates returned to college, she and Bianco recruited Carol O'Grady to play piano and organ, and set out to find a guitarist. While still a trio, the group was offered a slot opening for Chubby Checker on a tour of Germany and Switzerland, and they accepted; O'Grady was dropped from the lineup, and new keyboard player Margo Lewis (aka Margo Crocitto) signed on in time for them to head overseas. In 1963, the band finally found the right guitarist in Carol MacDonald, and the permanent lineup of Goldie & the Gingerbreads was complete. In 1964, the group put out their first single, "Skinny Vinnie" b/w "Chew Chew Fee Fi Fum," which was issued by the Scepter-distributed Spokane Records label. Later that year, they were hired to play a party for model, actress, and Andy Warhol superstar Jane Holzer, where the guests included members of the Rolling Stones and Ahmet Ertegun, the chairman of Atlantic Records. The band went over big with the crowd, and Ertegun signed Goldie & the Gingerbreads to a contract with Atlantic's Atco imprint, while they contracted with British Decca Records for the United Kingdom at the urging of Decca artists the Stones. Another British act, the Animals, caught the band and liked their show, and arranged for them to tour England and Europe as their opening act. Goldie & the Gingerbreads fared well in England, and found themselves sharing bills with the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, and the Hollies, and when visa problems forced them to leave the U.K., they found gigs in West Germany, first playing American military bases there and later headlining at the Star Club in Hamburg, and next finding an audience in France. In 1965, Goldie & the Gingerbreads released their first single for Atco, "That's Why I Love You" b/w "What Kind of Man Are You," soon followed by their Decca debut, "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" b/w "Little Boy." The latter, produced by Animals' keyboard player Alan Price, managed to rise to number 25 on the British Singles chart, but on both sides of the Atlantic, its progress was soon scuttled by a better-promoted version of the same song by Herman's Hermits. Several more singles followed from both Atco and Decca, including the excellent "Think About the Good Times" and "What Kind of Man Are You?" However, while they had earned the respect of their fellow musicians, radio and television saw Goldie & the Gingerbreads as a novelty act because of their all-female lineup, and they struggled to land prestigious gigs in the United States. In 1967, they issued "Walking in Different Circles" b/w "Song of the Moon," an ambitious mix of soul, psychedelia, rock, and girl group harmonies, and while it was one of their greatest moments in the studio, it failed to chart. By this point the lineup was starting to fragment, due to lack of commercial success and Zelkowitz's no-nonsense leadership of the group. By this time, Goldie had already cut a solo single, 1966's "Going Back" b/w "Headlines," produced by Rolling Stones' manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham, and in 1968 the group broke up and Zelkowitz moved on to a solo career. Zelkowitz adopted the stage name Genya Ravan and became lead singer of Ten Wheel Drive, a jazz-rock outfit in the manner of Blood, Sweat & Tears, cutting three albums for Polydor between 1969 and 1971. She dropped out before they issued a final album for Capitol in 1973. Her first solo album, Genya Ravan, was released by Columbia in 1972, and she jumped to Dunhill for 1973's They Love Me, They Love Me Not. Reclaiming the name Goldie Zelkowitz, she recorded an LP titled Goldie Zelkowitz for Janus Records in 1974, but went back to calling herself Genya Ravan for a pair of albums for 20th Century Fox Records, 1978's Urban Desire and 1979's … And I Mean It!, both of which received plenty of good press, but stumbled in the marketplace thanks to the label's indifferent promotion. She moved into production and was at the controls for the Dead Boys' 1977 debut Young Loud and Snotty, and also supervised sessions for another early CBGB band, the Miamis, that were belatedly issued on the 2016 anthology We Deliver: The Lost Band of the CBGB Era (1974-1979). She went on to a lengthy career in which she issued her own albums and regularly performed live, most often in New York City. Meanwhile, Carol MacDonald and Ginger Bianco formed an all-female jazz/rock group called Isis, who issued three albums between 1974 and 1977; Margo Lewis became their keyboard player in time for 1975's Ain't No Backin' Up Now, and she and McDonald would later collaborate with feminist singer/songwriter Alix Dobkin. In 1997, Genya Ravan, Margo Lewis, and Ginger Bianco staged a one-off Goldie & the Gingerbreads reunion show. Sadly, the missing member, Carol MacDonald, died on March 12, 2007. In 2021, nearly all of the Goldie & the Gingerbreads' sides were collected by Ace Records into the anthology Thinking About the Good Times 1964-1966. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi