Presenting: The Fabulous Ronettes

When three girls from Spanish Harlem redefined rock-and-roll femininity.

art by Three Lions Studio

The Ronettes: Ronnie Spector, lead vocals; Estelle Bennett and Nedra Talley, backing vocals

Backed by the Wrecking Crew, including: Tommy Tedesco, guitar; Barney Kessel, guitar; Bill Pitman, guitar; Carol Kaye, guitar (maybe bass?); Larry Knechtel, piano and bass; Jimmy Bond, bass; Ray Pohlman, bass;Don Randi, piano; Al De Lory, piano; and Hal Blaine, drums

Featuring Vini Poncia, guitar; and Harold Battiste, piano

Special guests: Leon Russell, piano; Sonny Bono, percussion; The Blossoms, backing vocals; Cher, backing vocals on “Be My Baby”

Arrangements by Jack Nitzsche

Produced by Phil Spector, engineered by Larry Levine

“Upon my suburban alter, propped up on the dresser against a jelly jar full of pale lipsticks and dark mascaras, Ronnie was the kohl-eyed goddess of Female Cool. The cover of Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica was downright spooky; no matter where you were in the room, Ronnie’s eyes seemed to be following, looking right at you...Struggling with snappish garters – pantyhose was still a future comfort – I’d look up at Ronnie and pray for an end to girlish fumblings.”

The above quote Gerry Hirshey, author of We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock. It's a picture of a different world; one we'll be stepping into this week. You can tell as much from the art alone. This isn't just the pre-album art age, it’s the pre-album age.

It’s the summer of 1963. JFK is president and Elvis Presley is king. Brenda Lee, Johnny Mathis, Bobby Vinton, Connie Francis, Pat Boone, Dion, and the Drifters are all slinging hit singles. Surfingcarsandgirls is at the height of its popularity. Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, the Ventures, a striped-shirt-wearing Beach Boys. And of course, there’s the girl groups. We’re not quite at the Supremes yet but we’ve got the Crystals, The Shirelles, The Angels, The Chiffons, Martha and the Vandellas, Darlene Love and the Blossoms. 1963 was the summer of the girl group, and the fabulous Ronettes were the queens.

In the very last week of that summer, Be My Baby changed everything. It was Beatlemania, pre-Beatlemania. Girls screamed for the Ronettes. Guys got in fistfights vying for their attention. Fans were especially zealous in Europe. At a gig for G.I.’s in Germany, things got so crazy the Ronettes had to flee in an armored truck! When they went to England for the first time, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and John Lennon practically threw themselves at Ronnie. And the Rolling Stones opened for the Ronettes! That’s how famous they were! Desperate to recreate the Ronettes’ success, labels flooded the market with girl groups of their own. However, GirlGroupmania would only last all of seven months. Four lads from Liverpool touched down in America for the first time, and the rest is rock-and-roll history.

In a pre-British Invasion music industry, groups didn’t release singles to promote an album. Groups released single after single and maybe threw them on album somewhere down the line. That much explains the scattered, piecemeal nature of Fabulous Ronettes.

The other component? Oh, the Phil Spector of it all.

Pictured: Phil and Ronnie Spector at United Western Recorders (photographed by Dennis Hopper, 1966)

Despite being 23 years old and married, Phil fixated on 18-year-old Ronnie. He became obsessed with her; first to the point of letting the Crystals and the Blossoms languish. Then, he caged his songbird. Ronnie wasn’t allowed to go on the Ronettes’ tour with the Beatles, then was barred from recording. When she married Phil in 1968, he effectively ended her career. Only when she finally escaped him – literally, she climbed out of a window and ran into the street barefoot – did she revive her career.

In spite of Phil’s best efforts, the Ronettes’ influence was immediate and far-reaching. They thrived in the late ’50s/early ’60s revival through the ’80s. Ronnie collaborated with Billy Joel, the E-Street Band, and Eddie Money on his greatest hit “Take Me Home Tonight.” The Ronettes even inspired punk! I’ll keep this short as it’s a story for another day: Phil Spector produced an album for the Ramones. It’s called End of the Century. It’s so bad it’s good. Phil held them at gunpoint until they recorded Baby I Love You.

To be fair...it’s a great cover.

Like many girls who were teens on or after the year 1987, I discovered the Ronettes through Dirty Dancing. I went to the 30th anniversary theater showing with my mom and aunt and fell in love with “Be My Baby.” Not unlike Gerri Hirshey, I would struggle with my skinny jeans in the morning – god that ages me – look at Ronnie’s hair and makeup on my phone screen, and wish I could look like that. But surely you can’t dress in clothes from the ’60s, right?

This week presented a unique conundrum. Albums back then just weren’t what they are now. Unless it was a jazz record, pop albums were just singles thrown together with some unreleased tracks. Engineer Larry Levine says as much in the Fabulous Ronettes liner notes: "There are some songs in this album that have never been released, don't ask me why." There’s no care for sequencing, no greater arc, no larger story to tell besides the little ones in the songs. My biggest critique is just that. Fabulous Ronettes isn’t so much an album experience as it is a collection of love songs. Love song after love song after love songs. The first line of the first song says it all: “I want him, I need him.”

Cynics, or otherwise people with fully-cooked frontal lobes, may tire of love song after love song after love song. But I urge you to allow yourself to fall in love with the Ronettes and their view of young love. It’s quite touching.

In the first 30 seconds of Walking In The Rain, we have the thesis statement of Fabulous Ronettes. The sound is thick with reverb, thanks to recording in Gold Star’s literal actual echo chamber.

As far as production and arrangement goes, Spector’s style was something akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Jack Nitzsche’s arrangements accounted for a full band, orchestra, percussion, bells, harpsichord, andbackup singers, and distinctly Spector drums. There’s even simulated rain noises! Overdubs on overdubs on overdubs make it all sound murky as hell. But Ronnie’s distinct, powerful voice always cut through. What made Ronnie so special was her brassy tone and wide vibrato. Not every singer has natural vibrato, even fewer exaggerate it to this degree and sustain the note. She has a raw, uncut quality that powers through all the STUFF going on behind her. I get why “Walking in the Rain” was her favorite song to sing live; she sounds fantastic on it. To be fair, Ronnie would sound marvelous singing the telephone book.

Our narrator pines for a unicorn in this day and age: a true romantic. A guy who appreciates the simple things and only has eyes for his girl. He’ll walk in the rain if he has to. But he doesn’t push for anything more than a kiss! Maybe this is shock from going from innuendo-laden Led Zeppelin to this, but this phase of pop music was chaste in comparison. Then I have to remind myself that songs like What’d I Say existed. Musicwasn’t really more chaste, it was just better hidden. Repressed, even. That’s part of why the mid-late ’60s kicked off the way they did. We also have the first appearance of Ronnie’s signature “whoa-oh-oh-oh”’s. While she may have gotten it from childhood crush Frankie Lymon, no one did it like Ronnie.

Do I Love You? is a great underrated ’60s love song. What makes a great love song? Say it with me, folks: uncertainty! The narrator asks herself, “Do I love you? Yes, I love you.” As opposed to the declaration of “Baby I Love You.” In the days before no-fault divorce (God willing that right isn’t taken away by the time you’re reading this,) love was a high-stakes game: “Do I live my life for you?” It’s a sobering reminder for a modern listener. Living your whole life for your husband really was the reality of young girls once.

This fantastic echo on the vocals isn’t the echo chamber. It’s the mics instead. Known Ronnie superfan Amy Winehouse had the same treatment for Back To Black; producer Salaam Remi recorded her with Neumann mics to capture the room tone. It’s like the Ronettes are in the room with you. Their voices bounce off the walls; it’s a three-way call-and-response between Ronnie, the girls, and the echo.

I feel like I’m gonna overuse this term in this review, but Nitzsche’s arrangement picks you up and whisks you away. The players gallop ahead, just barely following the metronome. Though everything is larger than life, Spector’s muddy style gives this material an ethereal quality. There’s definitely bass, but other than that I have no idea what else plays the central motif. It could be guitar. It could be piano. I have no idea! It’s completely indistinguishable! However, the percussion breaks through. Phil’s insistence on prominent percussion, whether snaps, hand claps, or horse-hoof wood block, gave his work necessary dimension.Spector devotee Brian Wilson took this and ran with it on Pet Sounds.

Sure, the Beatles were singing “love me do” and “I want to hold your hand.” But as we’ll see on cuts like “So Young,” girl groups were little queens of melodrama.

“I have a boyfriend, I love my boyfriend, but our parents say we’re too young to get married! No one understands! I wish I were older!!” We’re not quite at the levels of the Shangri-La’s “don’t run away with that boy or your mom will get so sad she’ll DIE,” but we’re close!

It’s funny, when I was younger I thought, “Oh, Ronnie sounded so much older than 17/18! This could be an adult woman singing!” Now that I’m 25, I can’t help but notice how youthful Ronnie sounds here. Her voice wasn’t outwardly tender, especially on those high notes. She’s got a lot more control than a younger singer typically would. Her wiley vibrato required it, as did that run on “so young” through the bridge. I hear youth in the squeak on “We wanna get married!” and her soft, almost self-conscious ad-libs. I’m struck by how much she sounds like boy singers of the time; especially Ricky of The Students, who originally recorded “I’m So Young.”

Is it just me or did Ronnie flub the words in the last verse? The original is: “Then mama’s baby will have seen the last of me.” Again, the melodrama, “I’m gonna die of a broken heart!” Instead, Ronnie sings, “This loving baby will last the last of me.” I’m shocked uber-perfectionist, 40-takes-of-everything Phil let that through.

We’re right back to the shameless maximalism on The Best Part of Breakin’ Up (Is When You’re Makin’ Up)Is that a harmonica buried in there?

Someone should make a party game for music nerds where you sit down, listen to a Phil Spector record, and list how many instruments you hear. The one with the longest and most correct list wins.

Like “So Young,” the message of “Breakin’ Up” is positively juvenile: “I’m never too sad when my boyfriend and I fight and ‘break up,’ because I know it’s not for real!” The lyrics are a little bratty: “Baby, I’ll be lonely til you’re back where you should be/Cause baby I belong to you and you belong to me.” The narrator’s pouting until her guycomes back! It’s so high school. Estelle and Nedra are aided by a few more voices; “oooh”s placed at the zenith bounce off the ceiling. Through the bridge, we have something very unusual for a Ronettes record: what sounds like male falsetto vocals. They cover the doo-wop “wah wah wah”s.

What I love most about this song, besides this interplay of voices, is how the tempo is played with. The bumping drums, foundational for any self-respecting girl group song, are practically made for some shoulder-shimmying. It’s very slight, but the drums headed into the bridge drag. It perks our ears up for Ronnie’s coquettish beckoning, “Come on baby, don’t say maybe…” Then the tempo snaps and launches forward at“Bestpartofbreakingupiswhenyouknoooow,” before the song spills into the coda. It’s exciting in its instability.

When I first heard I Wonder, I had to look up if it was a single meant to capitalize on “Be My Baby.” Becauseman, are they similar. It's a shame they're so close together in the sequencing, "I Wonder" is a triumph for the orchestra. It deserves to stand out on its own. The Ronettes’ cover of Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” is an oddball. Is it a faux-live track? Is it a live track? If it’s live, I can’t find who engineered it, and if it’s faux-live, then this is the most convincing faux-live track I’ve ever heard.

From the sounds of it, Bebe Bennett was something of a stage mom. She talked up her beautiful and talented daughters to whoever would listen, and it paid off. She worked at a donut shop across from the Apollo Theater. One day, family of the Apollo owners stopped into the shop. Bebe struck up a conversation and got her the girls, their cousin Nedra, and their other cousin Ira a spot on Apollo’s amateur night. It was a notoriously tough crowd, but surely they wouldn’t boo kids, right? Their song of choice was Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’s “Why Do Fools Fall In Love.” Ira was supposed to sing lead since he was the boy, but as soon as he got on stage, he froze up. Just as the crowd started jeering, 10-year-old Ronnie took over.

“They applauded me...And that’s when I first said, yes, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Cause if the Black people could like me at the Apollo, I knew I had something.”

quoted from: Gerri Hirshey, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock (2001)

This was the informal beginning of the Ronettes. This album’s “What’d I Say” hopes to transports us to that big moment, when Ronnie and Estelle Bennett and Nedra Talley became The Ronettes. For us modern fans, it’s a glimpse of what seeing them live would’ve been like. No big Spector strings here; just a drummer, bassist, guitars, and horn section. While “What’d I Say” doesn’t assimilate sonically, it captures the Ronettes’ youth while being a welcome break from “ooh”s, “you”s, and “baby”s. It’s an artifact of its time as well: these girls aren’t doing the Ray Charles moans. It “wouldn’t have been proper” or whatever.

Side two opens with the main event. The one you’ve all been waiting for, one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded.

I started my Fabulous Ronettes listening with “Be My Baby” when I was putting the finishing touches on the Trout Mask script. That’s a long time to write for a single pop album. It took so long because a switch went off in my brain. My frontal lobe developed, and now whenever I hear “Be My Baby,” tears are streaming down my face. How was it the perfect vehicle to introduce the Ronettes to the world? Let me count the ways. The Spanish flare in the boom, boom-boom, clap, castinets, cha-cha-cha section, and Latin-infused piano are an ode to Spanish Harlem. The strings are nothing short of cinematic. The drums aren’t quite so deep and booming, except on Hal Blaine’s positively killer rolls. They cut through the clutter of the piano and band. It’s like the cops coming to kick the door down on your teenage party, but they remember how fun it was to be young and join in. In the foreword of Ronnie’s memoir, Billy Joel described how parties would just light up when “Be My Baby” came on. I believe it. It’s everything Spector’s fabled wall of sound sought to do.

The girls gave the performance of their lives. It’s like they all knew this was The Song. Ronnie might as well be part of the horn section. Soul just pours from the words she sings. She pleads, “So won’t you say you love me? I’ll make you so proud of me.” There’s teenage cutesiness on, “We’ll make ’em turn their heads every place we go,” And Ronnie’s flirty flair on, “You know I will adore you,” but on every other line is so achingly sincere. There’s a confident coolness about, “Be my little baby, say you’ll be my darling” She demands, “be my baby now!” If you needed any more convincing, her signature whoa-oh-oh-oh might do it.

In But Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? An Oral History of the ’60s Girl Groups, Darlene Love said Phil let the lead singer do whatever she wanted for the last thirty seconds or so of the song. It was a keen strategy, to deliver the final musical punch. Ronnie’s ad-libs in the finale of “Be My Baby” are beautiful reckless abandon. She truly sang her heart out.

Estelle and Nedra’s ever-present backing vocals are especially magical. Their vocal blend was amazing, family groups always have a leg up in that respect because the sound of your voice is genetic. “Be My Baby”is all the high stakes of young love with the utter devotion of true love.

“Be My Baby” is one tough act to follow. It blows future “yous” and “baby”s out of the water...unfortunate for You Baby. It’s one of the clearest-sounding songs, arranged perfectly; with a good saxophone solo and prominent feature of Nedra and Estelle. It’s a rare example of freely-expressed sexuality on Fabulous Ronettes:“Only you could have made me wait this long wanting your kiss/But now that you’re really mine, I’ll make up for the time you made us miss...” This was clearly meant to be the making-out-in-the-car song.

Our capacity for “baby”s, love, and good old Ronnie whoa-oh-ohs isn’t spent just yet. “Baby I Love You” is simple on the surface; a song about the pure elation of being with someone you love. There’s not a sliver of irony. It bursts with Ronnie’s personality and sheer unbridled charisma. She can’t help but cry, “I love everything about you!” Once again, we’ve gone balls-to-the-wall on the instrumentation; this time with wood block, sleigh bells, and low brass. It feels like fireworks. Every time you think, “This is it, this must be the most brilliant part of the composition,” something else jumps out at you. Like the kiss of strings through the second chorus, or the treatment on Estelle and Nedra’s voices. How can a room so full sound so empty? It’s magical. It’s grandeur.

It might be sacrilege, but...I don’t know which version I prefer. The Ronettes’ is elation, the Ramones’ is a camp masterpiece.

How Does It Feel? is another Fabulous Ronettes oddball. It’s most undone track for sure; oddly chaotic for a Spector recording. At least that quality is appropriate for a messy, bratty breakup song. It can’t seem to get ahold of itself, though; the usually-disciplined Wrecking Crew are rushing. When I Saw You falls flat as well. The restrained production in the beginning allows Ronnie’s vibrato to shine. But between the two ballads, “So Young” is the showstopper. This is the drawback of the pre-“album age” album: you get stuff that went unreleased for a reason.

Newlywed songwriters Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry originally wrote this album’s closer, Chapel of Love, for Darlene Love to sing. For whatever reason, Phil didn’t like her performance and shelved it. He did this a lot – we’re still getting unreleased Ronettes material today.

“Chapel of Love” was then handed off to the Dixie Cups, who made it a number one hit in June of ’64. The Ronettes’ take is less demure than the Dixie Cups’. If the Dixies ride off into the sunset in a little white Cadillac, the Ronettes ride off on the backs of motorcycles. It’s cooler, a little sassier. There’s a sense of defiance about, “Today’s the day we’ll say ‘I do’/And we’ll never be lonely anymore.” But like “So Young,” the Ronettes’ “Chapel of Love” is tainted in my mind. Knowing how Phil obsessed pver Ronnie, halted her career by literally imprisoning her in their home, and how things went with Phil in the end, these songs become spooky.

So, why are the Ronettes important? Why are they revered by everyone from punks to pocket symphony composers?

Sheer talent, for one. Ronnie was once in a lifetime. Cluttered as Phil’s production may be, it heightens every whole-hearted emotion Ronnie and the girls wallop at us. That combination triggered a girl group craze for a reason. It spoke to people. It speaks to everyone.

Girl groups made space in pop music for Black women, as rock-and-roll did for Black men. Nedra said, “My grandmother was dark...She understood what being dark meant. She knew that there was a difference – if you’re dark, things are not going to be at your door so very easy.” Even in Washington Heights, the Ronettes were outsiders in their younger years for being mixed-race. Within the industry, they skirted a lot of the racism darker-skinned female contemporaries faced. That was no doubt a component to their success. But Ronnie said in her book that the Ronettes transcended race. They weren’t “Black music,” they weren’t “white music,” they weren’t “Spanish music.” They were for everybody, especially the outsiders. Girl groups in general did so much for women in music. Before the summer of ’63, they were outsiders of the industry. Labels were prejudiced towards male groups. There was this idea of, “Girl groups don’t last because girls will want to get married.” This was six years before Joan Baez took the stage at Woodstock while pregnant. Being a wife/mother and a working musician were mutually exclusive back then.

Sure, the writing might be “backwards” today. Nothing here is exactly transgressive. We can all agree nowadays that teenage girls care about more than just boys. But on Fabulous Ronettes, these young womenbust any preconceived notions of how girls should conduct themselves. They have the sass of seasoned soul women, the attitude of girls their age, and the freedom of rock-and-rollers; shaking their hips and flirting with guys in the audience. That expression of sexuality was revolutionary. Before these eyeliner-wearing, Aquanet-loving Spanish Harlem natives, girl groups were the crinolines and white gloves affair. They were seen as prim and proper. With their “bad girl” image, the Ronettes redefined rock-and-roll femininity.

Pictured (L-R)L Ronnie Spector, Estelle Bennett, and Nedra Talley, c. 1965

All of a sudden, you could be whatever you wanted to be. Tough, sassy, sweet, in love, crying on the floor, dancing in your room getting ready for school. You could feel it all in 36 minutes. It’s not perfect, it’s not even really an album package. It didn’t get to be a big success as a whole; though the singles were pre-British Invasion, the album had to compete with the Beatles, the Stones, and the Kinks. In spite of its circumstances, Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes is 36 minutes of sheer bright-eyed joy.

The world needs more of that right now.

Personal favorites: “Do I Love You,” “So Young,” “The Best Part of Breakin' Up,” “Be My Baby,” “Baby I Love You”

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Watch the full episode above!

Flam, Emily, and Emily Sieu Liebowitz. But Will You Love Me Tomorrow? An Oral History of ’60s Girl Groups. New York, Hachette Books, 2023.

Hirshey, Gerri. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock. New York, Grove Press, 2001.

Spector, Ronnie, with Vince Waldron. Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, or My Life as a Fabulous Ronette. New York, Harmony, 1990.