Harry Young never heard of the Tammys until years after the trio broke up in the late 1960s.

But once he discovered the girl group in his obsessive study of all things Lou Christie, he was hooked.

"From the first time I heard them, their harmonies had a special sound," he said.

Before Christie became a singing star, he was a friend of Tammys' singers Gretchen Wagner of Hermitage, her sister Cathy, and Linda Jones.

Riding Christie's coattails on their short shot at fame, the Tammys made in-roads on regional radio play lists, but failed to strike a national chord with singles such as "Take Back Your Ring," "Egyptian Shumba" and "Gypsy."

Calling their 45s obscure is kind, but Young has resurrected the music in greater sonic glory on the newly released compact disc "Egyptian Shumba."

English record label RPM released the CD in Britain Jan. 28, with Young as producer.

The CD liner notes, written by Young, are an exhaustive history of the group, its recordings, performances and radio play.

"He oughta get a life," quipped Ms. Wagner, the former Margaret Gretchen Owens, who performed under a Christie-created stage name, Shannon Owens.

Young, founder of the Christie fan club, is convinced that the Tammys can still find an audience, led by the two-chord party ditty, "Egyptian Shumba."

"Everybody likes it immediately," said Young, who studied ancient history and Egyptology in college. "As soon as anybody gets to hear 'Egyptian Shumba,' that song is going to become insanely popular."

Record collectors in England have already shown an interest in the group.

"There's an undercurrent of guys who specialize in girl groups," said Young, noting that an English magazine review of a Christie fan club newsletter featuring the Tammys spawned dozens of requests for copies.

"Their records are the kind that would produce a fanatical following, in a good way," said Young, research assistant for the University of Chicago library.

Ms. Wagner has far lower expectations of the CD's impact, and said she believes the only new audience it might reach are people caught up in a wave of nostalgia brought on by the Sept. 11 tragedy.

"Oldies dances are always sold out," she said. "Why? Because people like to remember the healthier time of life, when people could trust people and we weren't so cynical. They want things the way they used to be."

The Tammys, whose members originally were from Venango County, recorded in 1963 and 1964, during the height of the girl-group craze.

Their soprano-led harmonies had an "edge," Young said, and were not "syrupy sweet," as was the standard approach at the time.

With their sudden swoops and wild slides, the Tammys' sound is more akin to the modern-day sister group the Roches than to the Shirrelles, the Supremes, the Marvelettes, the Crystals or the Ronettes.

"I've never heard anybody I thought was the Tammys or sounded like the Tammys," Young said.

Ms. Wagner, who long ago abandoned the beehive hairdo all the Tammys sported, noted that the group was called a female version of the Innocents, the male group that had hits with "Honest I Do" and "Gee Whiz," and backed Kathy Young on "A Thousand Stars."

Like the Innocents, the Tammys did not record exclusively on their own. They sang backing vocals on a slew of Christie's mid-'60s releases, and made up Ritchie & the Runarounds with Christie and lead singer Kripps Johnson, who sang with the Del Vikings on songs such as the doo wop classic "Come Go With Me."

The 22 numbers on the CD include Tammys songs, tunes they backed Christie on, two Ritchie & the Runarounds sides and, for good measure, three Christie songs the Tammys did not sing, including the mega-hits "The Gypsy Cried" and "Two Faces Have I."

Ms. Wagner, who said earlier this week that she had not gotten a copy of the CD, said she is excited about the resurrection of Tammys music on today's technology.

"I only have scratched copies of the old 45s," she said.

Young, 47, said he's discovered elements of the trio's vocal performances and their recording production values that did not come through on 45s.

"I've been listening to this thing every day for two weeks," Young said of the CD. "The depth of these things, you don't get on the records. The vinyl couldn't express the big sound effectively."

Some of the songs are featured in stereo for the first time.

Although Tammys music has appeared on bootlegs over the years, the master tapes probably had never been touched since the original 45s were pressed.

EMI Records Ltd. owns the master tapes, and it took eight months of searching to find them, said Young, adding he believes they were stored in a warehouse in New Jersey.

"They sounded like they had never been touched," Young said of the masters' quality.

The only exceptions are the Ritchie & the Runarounds tunes, "Don'tcha Backtrack" and "Lost in the Crowd." The masters could not be found, so engineers used Young's 45, the only copy he has ever seen of the record.

Ms. Wagner, 57, is music and liturgy coordinator for Church of Notre Dame in Hermitage and a member of the Notre Dame Folk Group, which has released two CDs. She said she's looking forward to hearing "Blue Sixteen," one of two previously unreleased Tammys songs. She said she has never heard the finished recording.

Young, who has never met Ms. Wagner in person, said if she visits her 55-year-old sister in Kenosha, Wis., not far from his home in Chicago, he would like to sit down with them, listen to their records and quiz them on who was singing what part.

Ms. Jones, 54, lives in Texas, Ms. Wagner said.