Ronnie Spector, Ronettes Singer and Ultimate Girl-Group Icon, Dead at 78

“Her cheerful sound, playful nature, and magical presence will live on in everyone who knew, heard, or seen her,” Spector’s family said of the “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain” singer.

 

Ronnie Spector, the leader of the girl group the Ronettes and the voice behind immortal classics like “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain”, died Wednesday after a brief battle with cancer. She was 78 years old.

“Ronnie has lived his life with a sparkle in his eyes, a brave demeanor, a wicked sense of humor, and a smile on his face,” his family said in a statement. “She was filled with love and gratitude. Her cheerful sound, playful nature, and magical presence will live on in anyone who has known, heard, or seen her.

The Ronettes were the quintessential act of the girl group era of the early ’60s, and Spector’s silk and sandpaper voice propelled all of their songs. Last year, “Be My Baby”, the defining track of the genre, was honored at number 22 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

“All the musicians dropped everything they were holding, their horns and their guitars, and they were looking at this new girl in town,” Spector recalled in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone. “All the musicians were shouting, ‘Oh, my God. Her voice! ”And I say,“ Me? A little girl from Spanish Harlem? ’”

The huge success of “Be My Baby” in the summer of 1963 turned the Ronettes into superstars and caused massive ripples in the pop landscape. “I was driving [the first time I heard it], and had to park on the side of the road – it blew me away,” Brian Wilson said in 2013. “I felt like that I wanted to try and do something as good as this song, and I never did. I quit trying. This is the greatest record ever produced. No one will ever beat this one.

The Ronettes themselves struggled to overtake him, although they had a string of successes over the next year that brought them to England, where they toured with the Rolling Stones. The group has also recorded with “Baby, I Love You”, “Walking in the Rain”, “(The Best Part of) Breakin ‘Up” and “Do I Love You”.

“I just heard the news from Ronnie Spector, and I don’t know what to say,” Wilson said in a statement shortly after news of his death was announced. “I loved her voice so much, and she was a very special person and dear friend. It breaks my heart. Ronnie’s music and spirit will live on forever.

“She will have her own place in history because there was no one like her,” Darlene Love, who also worked with Spector at the start, told Rolling Stone. “When I first met her in 1964, she was that little thing – she reminded me of a little Barbie doll. But then she had that big voice. The way she sang and moved on stage, it was rock & roll.

Phil Spector, who began an affair with Ronnie shortly after signing the band in 1963, produced all of the band’s hits. They married in 1968 and separated in 1972. In her 1990 memoir, Be My Baby, she wrote that her relationship with Spector had been marked by years of horrific violence and abuse.

“As I have said many times during his lifetime, he was a brilliant producer, but a lousy husband,” she said shortly after his death last year. “Unfortunately Phil couldn’t live and function outside of the recording studio. Darkness set in, many lives were damaged. I always smile whenever I hear the music we have. composed together, and I always will. Music will be forever.

Veronica Yvette Bennett grew up in New York City and started singing with her sister Estelle and their cousin Nedra Talley at a young age. Calling themselves the Darling Sisters, they performed all over town while attending George Washington High School. After a few unsuccessful singles, Phil Spector signed them and immediately started writing songs, especially for his voice. “Watching him create in the recording studio, I knew I was working with the best,” she said. “He had total control, leading everyone. So much to love about these days.

In 1964, the group traveled to England to perform a series of shows with the Rolling Stones the following year. “They were a bunch of scruffy-looking guys,” she told Rolling Stone in 2016. “But I liked them, and I especially liked Keith because I like his rugged look. ‘he had.”

“They could sing through a wall of sounds,” Richards said during the group’s enthronement to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. “They needed nothing.”

The success of British invasion groups such as Stones and Beatles has lost mass fans to groups like Rontlettes. And when the rattles were hired to make the first part of the Beatles during their 1966 American tour, a PHIL SPECTOR JALOUX did not leave Ronnie. (They were forced to play shows without her.)

It was the beginning of an extremely dark period of his life when Phil Spector tried to exercise so much check on her as possible, rarely leaving even leave their home. “He never let me read the newspaper or watch TV,” she told New Yorker in 2012. “I did not even know Woodstock had arrived. And when Charles Manson killed these people on the 10th August 1969, right next to us, I did not know it either. All I knew is that Phil started to put barbed wire, then the guard dogs, then the weapons.

She finally released him in 1972 and started gathering his life and his career. “My ex kidnapped me, and it was devastating because I had no idea that I would never register,” she told Rolling Stone. “I had no idea that I would never play again, it was my life. I was in shock because here is a person who wrote your records and produced them … and then you will never sing again.

His return began in 1976 when she recorded a recovery from “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” by Billy Joel with the e street band. But she did not come back to the front of the scene until 1986 when Eddie Money made her a live excerpt from “Be My Baby” for his tube “Take Me Home Tonight”. The song has become a huge success and presented Spector music to a new generation.

“This song has given birth to his career, which was amazing,” Love said. “It simply shows that you can change your life again. You can come back as hard as you want.

In recent decades, Spector has made many tours and has come out of time a new disc from time to time. In 2016, she released the Taken disc from British invasion English heart. “If someone told me in the 1960s that I would be about 50 years later, to sing these songs again,” she told Rolling Stone in 2016, “I would have said,” You are crazy.