The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

DINNING SISTERS AND MARK DINNING.

The John Boyd Dinning family of Oklahoma produced vocal-music stars who rose to fame in the 1930s and continued with successes into the 1990s. John and Bertha Dinning had nine children. With parents involved in church music, the children began singing early in life. Wade Dinning, born on June 6, 1914, in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, was performing on local radio as early as 1931. The Dinning Sisters, a pop-music singing and recording group from the mid-1930s through 1954, comprised twins Jean (Eugenia Day) and Ginger (Virginia May) and their older sister, Lou (Ella Lucille). Jean and Ginger were born in Grant County on March 29, 1924. Lou was born in Logan County, Kentucky, on September 29, 1920.

The Dinning family arrived in Blackwell, Oklahoma, in the early 1930s. The harmony trio of Jean, Ginger, and Lou became locally popular everywhere they lived. By mid-decade “the Dinning Sisters” trio traveled and sang with a professional orchestra, making appearances on radio in Kansas City, Wichita, and Ponca City before moving to California, where they worked in theaters. The family went along, but soon they returned to live in Altus, Blackwell, and Enid. The sisters performed all around western Oklahoma and had a show on Enid’s KCRC radio. The family moved to Kansas in 1939. Auditioning in Chicago for WENR, the Dinning Sisters signed a contract to perform on the station’s nationwide broadcasts.

Their expert harmonizing soon took them back to California, where they captured a long-term recording contract in 1943 with Capitol Records, as competitors for Decca Records’s hugely popular trio, The Andrews Sisters. In 1945 the Dinnings recorded an album titled Songs by the Dinning Sisters. They had a brief Hollywood career in which they sang in three movies, including Throw a Saddle on a Star (1946), and did background vocals for three Disney animated films, including Melody Time (1948). In the late 1940s the pop-music trio found success in the recording industry. Four of their recordings made top 100 on the music charts, including two in the top 10, “My Adobe Hacienda” (1947) and “Buttons and Bows” (1948).

The group continued together until the mid-1950s. In 1949 Lou Dinning left the group, replaced by a nonrelative who in turn was replaced by their sister Tootsie (Dolores) Dinning. She stayed until 1953, when she became a recording-session singer for a music studio. The Dinning Sisters stopped recording in 1955, but Lou, Dolores, and Jean Dinning remained in the music profession.

Jean Dinning had a brief post-Sisters solo career but is most noted for composing the song “Teen Angel.” According to Rolling Stone magazine, in 1959 she was “inspired to write the song after reading a magazine article about juvenile delinquents” that applied the term “teen angels” to those deemed to be morally “good.” “Teen Angel” has been credited with founding a style of teenage-heartbreak-and-tragedy music that lasted through the 1960s. It included numbers such as Ray Peterson’s “Tell Laura I Love Her,” Pat Boone’s “Moody River,” and Jan & Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve.” The first recording of “Teen Angel” was made by none other than Max “Mark” Dinning, the family’s youngest child.

Mark Dinning, whose real name was Max Edward, was born on August 17, 1933, in Grant County, Oklahoma, and raised in Oklahoma and Kansas. Like his sisters and brother, he was a child prodigy. After finishing school, he served two years in the U.S. Army in 1954–56. Then he sought a career in music as a solo artist, but his specialty was country, not pop. In 1957 Wesley Rose, of Nashville’s Acuff-Rose Music, contracted to represent Max under the name “Mark Dinning.”

Dinning’s recording of his sister’s song “Teen Angel” was released on MGM records in October 1959. The song climbed Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart, reaching Number 1 from February 8 to 15, 1960. It also reached Number 1 in the United Kingdom Singles Chart. Overall, it was Billboard’s Number 5 song for the year 1960. The “Teen Angel” original pressing sold more than one million copies, making it a Gold Record. In 1960 Mark Dinning recorded two albums, Teen Angel and Wandering. His career faded due to personal problems, but he continued performing in clubs and concerts.

Dolores Dinning had the most consistent career of all the sisters. With two other country-music session singers, in the 1960s she founded a studio-session quartet called The Nashville Edition in the 1960s. For two decades they recorded with many artists, including Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Barbara Mandrell, Marty Robbins, and Nancy Sinatra. In 1969, when the country-music variety show Hee-Haw premiered on television, the show’s music director, Shelby “Sheb” Wooley, selected The Nashville Edition to be the regular backup for guest vocalists. The quartet did so for twenty-five years. In 1975, 1977, and 1978 the Edition garnered three Super Pickers Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (now called The Recording Academy).

The Dinning Sisters briefly reunited in 1987 and performed at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. In 1993 they recorded a gospel album with The Jordanaires. “Mark” (Max Edward) Dinning died on March 22, 1986, in Jefferson City, Missouri. Lou (Ella Lucille) died on April 28, 2000, in Orlinda, Tennessee. Jean (Eugenia Day) died on February 22, 2011, in Garden Grove, California. Ginger (Virginia May) died on October 14, 2013, in Oakland, New Jersey. Dolores died on June 17, 2015, in Springfield, Tennessee. “Teen Angel” remains a classic and Songs by The Dinning Sisters was reissued several times, most recently in 1983.

Dianna Everett