The Chelette

By CHRISTINA HUGHES BABB

Carolyn Monté holds a photo of herself and sisters Judy and Mary Jo — the trio toured the country and shared a stage with Elvis Presley in the 1950s. Photography by Emil Lippe.

Sunshine sister

The Chelette Sisters had hits in the days of Big D Jamboree

Port Arthur, Texas, radio station KPAC used to sponsor a talent competition early each Saturday morning. If the performances weren’t a draw, the southern made sugar donuts were, so there was quite a crowd that day in 1947 when three Chelette children — Mary Jo (8), Carolyn (5) and Judy (2) — lined up to sing. There were too many contestants, and if all three girls wanted in, they would have to take the stage together.

They performed a winning rendition of “You Are My Sunshine,” and a musical trio was born.

The Chelette Sisters began appearing on entertainment stages in every major city across the southern United States; became fixtures on radio shows including Big D Jamboree, Dallas Saturday Nite and Shindig Dallas; performed live alongside Grand Ole Opry stars including Hank Snow, Moon Mullican and Lefty Frizzell and toured with Minnie Pearl, Eddie Arnold and Dell Wood.

In 1954, the whole family traveled to New York where the sisters performed on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour — an American Idol-style show — and landed a dozen subsequent TV appearances. In ’55, they sang at a Louisiana Hayride (radio show) benefit for the Port Acres fire department, where they were billed equal to a teen Elvis Presley. That’s just for starters.

The middle sister, fearless redheaded Carolyn, eventually married a doctor who took a job at Stevens Park Hospital. “She said, ‘You and your sisters are so lucky!’ You’ve gotten to do so many things — sing on Broadway, make a movie — she went on and on,” Carolyn says. “Well, that person was Janis Joplin.”

Now Carolyn Monte, she has lived in the same Oak Cliff home since the 1990s.

Upon our request, the 79-year-old grabbed her binder of memorabilia and met us at The Salty Donut.

The book holds at least 100 pages containing photos and news clippings, a signed headshot of Johnny Cash (“yes, he gave me this,” she says. “Yes, I met June Carter too.”) and a photo of herself, so tiny, bowing before hundreds of smiling fans (“I was 5 years old, it was one of the earliest things we did after the contest, singing ‘Sugar Blues’,” which was my favorite song, with a big band”). There’s a photo of Minnie Pearl wearing a hat made by Carolyn’s mom.

Pointing to black-and-white photos of herself and sisters, she says her mother, Josie Marie Chelette, made all the costumes. “Made and designed them without so much as a pattern,” Carolyn says.

“She also built the upstairs to our house … and was an aviatrix who learned to fly in the 1930s … but that’s another story,” she says. The girls’ father was a Port Arthur police officer and also was a pilot.

Once, upon returning to school after a summer of touring, a classmate sat beside her, expressing envy. “‘She said, ‘You and your sisters are so lucky!’ You’ve gotten to do so many things — sing on Broadway, make a movie — she went on and on,” Carolyn says. “Well, that person was Janis Joplin.”

The last time The Chelette Sisters performed in public was with Fats Domino at a Texas nightclub called The Big Oak, Carolyn says. She says they stopped performing publicly when one of her sisters “married a guy who, though he was a wonderful person, was very jealous.”

The last time they sang together was just before eldest sister Mary Jo died of cancer at 44.

“We got the hymnal out and sang everything we opened to. And we were kind of hugging one another. And then all of a sudden a white dove landed on the window sill,” Carolyn recalls.

Carolyn is the last remaining Chelette sister. Judy (Thomas) died in 2018.

In Dallas Carolyn worked for motivational speakers Tony Evans and Zig Ziglar, won a beauty contest, had children (including two proud sons, Steven and Tom, who drove her to our interview) and is able to look back on a “blessed life.”

A couple months shy of 80, she says she is not done finding new adventures.

“My dad had a saying, ‘If I think I can do it, I can, no matter what it is’,” she says. “I had aspirations then, and I still have aspirations now.”

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