R.I.P.: Rosa Hawkins, Member Of The Dixie Cups

Rosa Hawkins

Rosa Lee Hawkins of the Dixie Cups has died of complications from surgery less than a year after sharing her story in "Chapel of Love," a memoir named in honor of the New Orleans vocal group's chart-topping breakthrough.

Hawkins died in Tampa on Tuesday, Jan. 11.  She was 76, reports AZCentral.com.

Hawkins was fresh out of high school when the Dixie Cups displaced the Beatles' "Love Me Do" at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 with "Chapel of Love," a starry-eyed Brill Building classic captured at their first recording date.

That million-selling breakthrough spent three weeks at No. 1 in June of 1964, the first of three hit singles for the group, which also featured Hawkins' older sister Barbara Ann and cousin Joan Marie Johnson.

"She was a very strong woman," Barbara Hawkins said.

'Chapel of Love' was a heartbreaking memoir

The Dixie Cups' success came at a price, as Rosa revealed in heartbreaking and at times harrowing detail in the memoir she wrote with Phoenix journalist Steve Bergsman, whose other books include "I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins" and "The Death of Johnny Ace."

The Dixie Cups were subject to a pattern of abuse and exploitation, both financially and in Rosa's case, sexually, at the hands of a much older manager.