Hearts of Soul

Biography

Hearts of Soul was formed by three Harderwijkse sisters: Bianca, Stella and Patricia Maessen. They worked in the late 1960s as session singers for, among other things, Dusty Springfield, until 1968, when they were discovered. In 1969, they recorded their debut album. In 1970, they sung "Waterman" (written by Pieter Goemans) as the Netherlands entry to the Eurovision song contest. They finished 7th out of 12 participants. The Eurovision experience did not further their career as expected. The si...

Hearts of Soul was formed by three Harderwijkse sisters: Bianca, Stella and Patricia Maessen.

They worked in the late 1960s as session singers for, among other things, Dusty Springfield, until 1968, when they were discovered. In 1969, they recorded their debut album. In 1970, they sung "Waterman" (written by Pieter Goemans) as the Netherlands entry to the Eurovision song contest. They finished 7th out of 12 participants. The Eurovision experience did not further their career as expected. The single "It's Great Fun" still draws some attention, but is no longer played frequently in the Netherlands. They collaborated in 1972, on a single with Marius Monkau. The song Oh Complete Jesus is still popular, especially amongst religious people.

In the mid-seventies the group moved to Belgium. There they formed Dream Express in 1975, with former Pebbles musician Luc Smets (who had married Bianca). In the summer of 1976 they scored a Flemish number 2 hit with the self titled song "Dream Express". On 5 February 1977 they won in the national finals for Belgium to enter the Eurovision song contest, which was held in Wembley, London on Saturday 7 May. This contest was the first time that Belgium had entered a song to be sung in English. With the song "A Million in One, Two, Three" they reached 7th place out of 18 participating countries.
Dream Express changed name again in 1979, to LBS, which stood for Luc Bianca Stella. Their singles "LBS" and "Uncle Jim" received much airplay in 1979.

Stella also released singles under the name of Stella Mason. She represented Belgium (singing in French) in the Eurovision song contest of 1982, with the song "Si tu aimes ma musique". On 24 April 1982 she finished 4th out of 18 contestants.

Bianca released several singles from the early 1980s through to 1993. The single Two Dolphins to the Range of Hawaii was released as a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Antwerp zoo.
During the Eurovision song contest of 1986 Patricia was a backing singer of the winning entrant Sandra Kim. In 1987, Patricia was also a backing singer for Plastic Bertrand's, Luxembourg entry.

Patricia died on 15 May 1996 at the age of 44. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.