In May of 1968, Billy Vera and Judy Clay teamed up to sing the future hit love song, “Storybook Children.” They performed in Apollo theater in Harlem, an all-Black neighborhood.
Clay walked in from the right side of the stage, a cream-colored gown shining in the light. Then came Vera in his olive-green suit and tie “That’s him? That skinny little white boy?” the audience exclaimed after Vera had walked onto the stage. No one would’ve thought the male lead for Storybook Children would be white. People were shaken, especially since they had still been recovering from the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination two weeks prior. Such a thing was unheard of in the 1960s, during the fight for racial equality. The performance moved some people to tears. “We finally came offstage and I saw [gospel great] Cissy Houston, Judy’s adoptive aunt, with tears running down her cheeks, holding four-year-old Whitney,” Vera said.
This was the first interracial duo to hit the charts in America. On the first night of their debut, there were so many calls for encores that they could hardly get off stage. “It was groundbreaking,” Vera said, who later won a Grammy for writing liner notes to a Ray Charles CD box set. “America was just on the verge of being ready for an interracial duo singing love songs – but they weren’t quite there yet.”
Their album was released three months after the 1967 US Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia in which interracial marriage was legalized. Their album marks a historic and social change in American history.
Vera wrote the song with Chip Taylor, who was inspired to write the song when he saw two children, a white boy and a Black girl holding hands in an open field in New York City. “It was a time when that wasn’t so acceptable and it was such a nice feeling, like a storybook,” he told BBC Culture. He was so eager to pen the moment down.
Although it was inspired by a white boy and Black girl, they did not look specifically for a Black girl. They chose Judy Clay because of how well their voices went together.
Clay and Vera recorded the song and album in September 1967. “Storybook Children” shot up the charts and reached number 20 on the US R&B charts and 54 on the pop charts. It also reached number one on Black stations and number three on white stations. “Storybook Children’s” strength in its message and popularity served as a catalyst for a huge breakthrough in social change. After “Storybook Children” in 1967, the music industry began seeing more and more interracial duo releases, while the number of interracial marriages continued to rise. Gayle Wald, historian and author of the 2006 biography, “Shout, Sister, Shout!” said, “It represented a hopeful narrative of some kind of attenuation of racism: it was a material enactment of King’s hope for a beloved community.”
Clay walked in from the right side of the stage, a cream-colored gown shining in the light. Then came Vera in his olive-green suit and tie “That’s him? That skinny little white boy?” the audience exclaimed after Vera had walked onto the stage. No one would’ve thought the male lead for Storybook Children would be white. People were shaken, especially since they had still been recovering from the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination two weeks prior. Such a thing was unheard of in the 1960s, during the fight for racial equality. The performance moved some people to tears. “We finally came offstage and I saw [gospel great] Cissy Houston, Judy’s adoptive aunt, with tears running down her cheeks, holding four-year-old Whitney,” Vera said.
This was the first interracial duo to hit the charts in America. On the first night of their debut, there were so many calls for encores that they could hardly get off stage. “It was groundbreaking,” Vera said, who later won a Grammy for writing liner notes to a Ray Charles CD box set. “America was just on the verge of being ready for an interracial duo singing love songs – but they weren’t quite there yet.”
Their album was released three months after the 1967 US Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia in which interracial marriage was legalized. Their album marks a historic and social change in American history.
Vera wrote the song with Chip Taylor, who was inspired to write the song when he saw two children, a white boy and a Black girl holding hands in an open field in New York City. “It was a time when that wasn’t so acceptable and it was such a nice feeling, like a storybook,” he told BBC Culture. He was so eager to pen the moment down.
Although it was inspired by a white boy and Black girl, they did not look specifically for a Black girl. They chose Judy Clay because of how well their voices went together.
Clay and Vera recorded the song and album in September 1967. “Storybook Children” shot up the charts and reached number 20 on the US R&B charts and 54 on the pop charts. It also reached number one on Black stations and number three on white stations. “Storybook Children’s” strength in its message and popularity served as a catalyst for a huge breakthrough in social change. After “Storybook Children” in 1967, the music industry began seeing more and more interracial duo releases, while the number of interracial marriages continued to rise. Gayle Wald, historian and author of the 2006 biography, “Shout, Sister, Shout!” said, “It represented a hopeful narrative of some kind of attenuation of racism: it was a material enactment of King’s hope for a beloved community.”
