Ronettes – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Ronettes – Sleigh Ride

Thank you, Dave, for inviting me to Turntable Talk. I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Dave wanted us to post a Christmas song, and this one, which I’ve never written about, fit perfectly. I could hear Ronnie Spector sing all day.

I could listen to Ronnie Spector sing the telephone book…if there are such things anymore. She has a unique voice and you know it’s her when you hear or see her. I’ve become a full-blown fan of this lady through the years and when I saw her singing Be My Baby she won me over. She had the look, the voice, and the stage presence. I know why John Lennon and Keith Richards were crazy about her.

Leroy Anderson wrote Sleigh Ride as an instrumental in 1948 and Mitchell Parish added lyrics in 1950. There have been a whopping 883 versions of this holiday classic.

Phil Spector’s pool of talent released a classic Christmas album called A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector but it was released on November 22, 1963. If that date seems familiar, it’s because it very significant. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas while riding in a motorcade with his wife,

The album was considered a failure (#12) at first but it caught on later. It was later re-released by Apple Records and has since been acknowledged as a great album. it peaked at #6 on Billboard’s Christmas Charts after being re-released on the Beatles label. In the years since the album has re-charted. In 2003, the album was voted No. 142 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It was also included in Robert Dimery’s 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

The song peaked at #8 on the Billboard 100, #15 on the Canadian Hot 100, #20 in the UK, and #22 in New Zealand in 1963.

Sleigh Ride

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring tingle tingling too
Come on, it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you,
Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling yoo hoo,
Come on, it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy and cozy are we
We’re snuggled up together like two birds of a feather would be
Let’s take the road before us and sing a chorus or two
Come on, it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

…

Ronettes – Be My Baby

Some people have said they cannot comment on this post…some can some cannot…I’ve emailed WP and am trying live chat but of course, it’s not open. So it might let you leave a comment…and it might not

The Ronettes were Veronica (Ronnie) Bennett, her sister Estelle Bennett, and their cousin Nedra Talley. One of the great songs of the sixties.

I’m a huge fan of this song and The Ronettes. I like many of the female groups of the early sixties like The Marvelettes, Martha and the Vandellas, The Shirelles, and the Supremes but no one sounded like Ronnie Spector. But… I’m not the fan that Brian Wilson has been since he heard the song.

Count Brian Wilson as a huge fan of this song. Well, being a fan is an understatement…he was totally obsessed with this song. He was driving in the 60s when he heard it and had to pull the car over and analyze the chorus. He then bought the single and put it in his home jukebox and played it endlessly. In the seventies, as his fellow Beach Boys would be recording in his basement…he would be blasting Be My Baby at full volume with the curtains closed. One great thing came out of his obsession… it inspired him to write Don’t Worry Baby.

Mike Love remembered Wilson comparing Be My Baby to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Wilson told The New York Times in 2013 that he had listened to the song at least 1,000 times. Beach Boy Bruce Johnston gave a higher estimation: “Brian must have played ‘Be My Baby’ ten million times. He never seemed to get tired of it.” He also called it the best song ever recorded. Brian Wilson’s daughter Carnie has one distinct memory from her childhood, listening to, and more accurately being woken up with, Be My Baby.

Brian Wilson: “I felt like I wanted to try to do something as good as that song and I never did, I’ve stopped trying. It’s the greatest record ever produced. No one will ever top that one.”

To me, this song is brilliant and one of my favorites… although I wouldn’t go as far as Wilson did. It’s one of Phil Spector’s best-produced songs. The song peaked at #2 on the Billboard 100, #2 in Canada, #2 in New Zealand, and #4 in the UK.

This was the first Ronettes song produced by Phil Spector and released on his label, Philles Records. It also featured Spector’s “Wall Of Sound” production technique, where he layered lots of instruments and used echo effects.

Don’t expect to find B-side gold on many of Spector’s singles. Spector had Tommy Tedesco and Bill Pitman (session musicians) record a throwaway instrumental that he called “Tedesco And Pitman.” Spector made sure the B-sides of his singles were garbage so there was no doubt what song should be played. This also allowed him more studio time to craft the hit.

The future Ronnie Spector was the only Ronette to sing on this. Phil Spector rehearsed her for weeks and had her do 42 takes before he got the sound he wanted. Spector and Bennett got married in 1968, and they divorced in 1974. Ronnie Spector said the home they shared was pretty much a prison for her.

She woke up on her wedding night to workers erecting a barbed-wire fence around the estate. Bars were soon installed over windows, and intercoms in all the rooms. Ronnie was rarely allowed out alone, unless with a life-size dummy of Spector in the passenger seat of her car. But the worst was being unable to perform on stage.

I never heard about Ronnie Spector until the 80s when she appeared on the Eddie Money song Take Me Home Tonight. After that, I looked up all I could about her.

Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote this song. As was his custom, Phil Spector also took a songwriting credit on the track. Producers did that in the 50s and 60s and it was wrong.

One thing I respected about George Martin…he blew the whistle on the hugely successful producer Norrie Paramor in the early sixties to a young David Frost who roasted Paramor on his show “That Was the Week That Was”. Paramor would force artists to record his songs for B sides and also take writers’ credit for others. Frost kept Martin’s name out of it. No one ever found out who dished out the goods to Frost about Paramor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhzZIXvspI4&list=RDAhzZIXvspI4&start_radio=1

Be My Baby

The night we met I knew I needed you so
And if I had the chance I’d never let you go.
So won’t you say you love me,
I’ll make you so proud of me.
We’ll make ’em turn their heads every place we go.

So won’t you, please, be my be my baby
Be my little. baby my one and only baby
Say you’ll be my darlin’, be my be my baby
Be my baby now, my one and only baby
Wha-oh-oh-oh.

I’ll make you happy, baby, just wait and see.
For every kiss you give me I’ll give you three.
Oh, since the day I saw you
I have been waiting for you.
You know I will adore you ’til eternity.

So won’t you, please, be my be my baby
Be my little. baby my one and only baby
Say you’ll be my darlin’, be my be my baby
Be my baby now, my one and only baby
Wha-oh-oh-oh.

So come on and, please, be my be my baby
Be my little baby my one and only baby
Say you’ll be my darlin’, be my be my baby
Be my baby now, my one and only baby
Wha-oh-oh-oh.

Be my be my baby be my little baby.
My one and only baby oh oh,
Be my be my baby oh,
My one and only baby wha-oh-oh-oh-oh.
Be my be my baby oh,
My one and only baby
Be my be my baby oh,
Be my baby now

Ronettes – Baby, I Love You

This was the follow-up to The Ronettes hugely successful debut single “Be My Baby.” Like “Be My Baby,” this was written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, and produced by Phil Spector using his famous “Wall Of Sound” technique. Be My Baby is hard to beat but Ronnie is fantastic in this one also.

The song was released not long after the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, which put a damper on sales of upbeat singles. The Ronettes were never able to match the success of “Be My Baby.”

The song peaked at #24 in the Billboard 100 in 1964.

From Songfacts

Cher sang backup on The Ronettes version, and later recorded it on her own in a much slower, more dramatic style. Her version was produced by Phil Spector, and was released as the B-side of “A Woman’s Story,” which was Spector’s first production for Warner-Spector Records, his collaboration with Warner Brothers.

Twice, covers of this song peaked at #8 in the UK chart, bettering The Ronettes’ version. The first came in 1973 when the Welsh singer/guitarist Dave Edmunds recorded it as a homage to Phil Spector. Then in 1980, the American rock group the Ramones had their only UK Top 20 hit when their cover, which was produced by Spector, also reached #8. Edmunds’ version was the first single released on the Rockfield label, available through RCA.

Jeff Barry’s protégé Andy Kim took this song to #9 in the US with this 1969 version. Kim, who co-wrote the massive Archies hit “Sugar, Sugar” with Barry, grew up in Montreal and had never heard the song when he stumbled across it in Barry’s office and started playing it. “I see this sheet music and the chords,” Kim said in a Songfacts interview. “I pick up the guitar and I’m playing this song, and I’m singing this song that I had never heard of. Jeff walks in, and he says, ‘Hey man, I heard you through the door. I love what you’re playing, but that’s not how the song goes.'”

“We went in the studio and the idea was for us to make this record together, because it really sounded great in the office,” he continued. “To work with Jeff that way was the magic of it all. We went to A&R Studios – Studio A or 1, whatever they called it at the time. A huge room. Sat in the middle of this huge recording space with a microphone next to the guitar. Jeff went into the booth, and was kind of the metronome. He just clapped and hummed along the way – what he needed from me was to get one guitar down from beginning to end. I was able to do that five more times on separate tracks, and it would bounce back and forth. And if you do that, there are overtones and there is a sound without drums or anything. So that’s how the song was built – one instrument at a time. Drums were played by hand, percussion. Then Chuck Rainey came in to put bass on the song, and everything just glued together.”

Kim’s version was #1 for two weeks in his native Canada and earned him a Juno Award as his country’s Top Male Vocalist.

Baby, I Love You

Woa-oh, woa-oh oh oh
Have I ever told you
How good it feels to hold you?
It isn’t easy to explian
And though I’m really trying
I think I may start crying
My heart can’t wait another day
When you kiss me I’ve just got to say

(Baby, I love you) come on, baby
(Baby, I love you) ooh-ee baby
(Baby, I love only you)

Woa-oh, woa-oh oh oh

I can’t live without you
I love everything about you
I can’t help it if I feel this way
Oh, I’m so glad I found you
I want my arms around you
I love to hear you call my name
Oh, tell me that you feel the same

(Baby, I love you) come on, baby
(Baby, I love you) ooh-ee baby
(Baby, I love only you)

Woa-oh, woa-oh oh oh

Come on, baby (baby, I love you) come on, baby
(Baby, I love you) ooh-ee baby
(Baby, I love you) come on, baby
(Baby, I love you) ooh-ee baby
(Baby, I love you) oh, oh
(Baby, I love you) oh, oh
(Baby, I love you) oh, oh