My first post of information from articles on the Ronettes is found here:
https://samsarictravelling.blogspot.com/2019/06/3051-wisdom-and-knowledge-series-post_85.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wisdom and Knowledge Series, post #37. Things of the world, post #2.1 (37.5.1.1):
More Ronettes stuff (my second post on information from articles on the Ronettes):
Veronica Yvette Bennett was born in Spanish Harlem in 1943 to an Irish father and half African-American, half Cherokee mother with an enormous extended family.
https://samsarictravelling.blogspot.com/2019/06/3051-wisdom-and-knowledge-series-post_85.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wisdom and Knowledge Series, post #37. Things of the world, post #2.1 (37.5.1.1):
More Ronettes stuff (my second post on information from articles on the Ronettes):
Veronica Yvette Bennett was born in Spanish Harlem in 1943 to an Irish father and half African-American, half Cherokee mother with an enormous extended family.
She remembers being eight and singing in the lobby of her grandmother’s building, whose high ceilings produced a gratifying echo. More gratifying, though, was the response from her cousins.
“They were going insane – ‘Ronnie, Ronnie, you’re the one, you’ve got it!’ And I did have it. But my parents couldn’t afford to send me to singing lessons.”
Instead, she’d go home from school and play records – Frankie Lymon, Frankie Valli, The Schoolboys – and learn them in their entirety. When her parents realised she was doing this every night rather than any homework her mother struck a deal.
“She said, ‘I’m going to put you at the Apollo. And then we’ll see how good you are.’ ”
The legendary Harlem music hall was owned by Frank Schiffman, whose son, Bobby, happened to have a crush on her mother who worked as a waitress in a café next door. Through him, she was able to get Ronnie, her sister Estelle and her cousin Nedra a slot.
Apollo audiences were notoriously unforgiving – egg hurling was de rigueur. Not that night, though. They loved Ronnie’s voice and, as she says: “That was my key – I knew I was good.”
Veronica Bennett was born in New York in 1943 to an Irish father and a mother who was part black and part Cherokee; Ronnie's great‑grandfather was Chinese. She was raised in Spanish Harlem, where, she says, her different looks ‑ light skin and long lush hair ‑ got her beat up regularly. Petite and not much of a fighter, she spent much of her time in the safety of her grandmother's apartment, in the company of her sister Estelle and her cousin Nedra ‑ both future Ronettes.
...
I grew up in a family of different races. And I loved my look, even though I got beat up a lot and my braids were cut off in school. I loved being different. And when I got with the Ronettes, we didn't do like the Supremes. Our hair would be up in these big beehives, with intentions for it to fall down during the show. I always made sure the pin wasn't tight. I loved getting messy.
Now, my eyes are a little Chinese. I wanted them all the way out. The three of us would sit in the mirror and see whose eyes would get out the longest with the eyeliner.
If, as you say, your grandmother kept you inside and so strictly supervised, how did you end up with such a tough street look ‑ all those slit skirts and that cigarette‑flicking motion you did onstage?
I got all my ideas from looking out of my grandmother's window on Amsterdam Avenue, seeing all the Spanish girls with cigarettes and big hair. I loved that tough look; that's what I wanted. [At our first gig] I remember walking out and the place going berserk because they had never seen a girl group look like this - they were used to little cocktail dresses. We walked out like, "Hey! We're here!"
Why do you think so many people consider "Be My Baby" to be the perfect pop record?
[Laughing] I think it was my voice. Of course it's the production and everything, too. But if you don't have that lead singer's voice ... I was very innocent, you know, and I think it's in the voice there.
I remember when Ellie [Greenwich], Jeff [Barry] and Phil were writing "Be My Baby." They were at Phil's penthouse, at 62nd Street and York Avenue. I was there, but Phil didn't want anybody to know. He needed my presence to get the feel of the song. I put my ear to the wall, and I'm hearing them discuss me: "She's so innocent, she's from Spanish Harlem, she has a grandmother who won't let her go out on the roof." So they were actually writing about this girl… "Ev'ry kiss you give me, I'll give you three" ‑ but on the cheek, you know. I didn't know about sex. It was so special and great 'cause I knew they were writing for me. Oh, and it made me feel like a queen. It made me want to sing it greater because I could hear them in there.
Source: http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/rolling%20stone/920S-000-043.html
Do you remember the first time?
I went to the amateur night at the Apollo when I was 13. I was scared to death. So we got my cousin Ira to sing. Ira walks out onstage, he opens his mouth and nothing comes out! I took the microphone and I started, "Why do birds siiing, so gay...", the audience went crazy. I was a hit! They loved it.
...
Who do you think you are?
I'm nobody. I'm not better, I'm just different. My hair is different, the way I perform onstage. I just look at the way all these performers are on stage. I'm just different. My great-grandfather was Chinese, my dad was Irish, my mother is part Cherokee and black. So I've got all this stuff in me, to please everybody.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/sep/20/comedy.comedy
One of Ronnie Spector's most rock and roll vocal choices was all about taking up space. She spent three days recording her vocals for "Be My Baby," and her shyness as well as her sense of sound quality influenced her preparation: "I'd do all my vocal rehearsals in the studio's ladies room," she says in her memoir, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness or My Life as a Fabulous Ronette (1990), "because I loved the sound I got in there. People talk about how great the echo chamber was in Gold Star, but they never heard the sound in the ladies room."
Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/03/12/590891692/its-time-to-recognize-the-ronettes-as-rock-and-roll-pioneers
One later listener of Phil Spector’s productions, and an awe-struck discoverer of Ronnie Bennet’s voice, was Michael Enright, who later became a Time magazine correspondent, offering this description of Ronnie Bennett’s voice:
“…Ronnie had a weird natural vibrato — almost a tremolo, really — that modulated her little-girl timbre into something that penetrated the Wall of Sound like a nail gun. It is an uncanny instrument. Sitting on a ragged couch in my railroad flat, I could hear her through all the arguments on the street, the car alarms, the sirens. She floated above the sound of New York while also being a part of it — …stomping her foot on the sidewalk and insisting on being heard.”
Source: https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/ronettes-be-my-baby/In 1963, American Bandstand, the popular Philadelphia-based TV dance show with Dick Clark, was still going strong, having been broadcast nationally since August 1957.
...
Then, in September 1963, ABC moved Bandstand to Saturdays-only for one hour.
...
September 1963
(Saturday shows begin)
Sep 7: Neil Sedaka- “The Dreamer”
Sep 7: The Jaynetts- “Sally Go…Roses”
Sep 14: Dion- “Donna the Prima Donna”
Sep 14: Major Lance- “Monkey Time”
Sep 21: Skt. Davis- “Can’t Stay Mad…”
Sep 21: Garnett Mimms- “Cry Baby”
Sep 28: B. Rydell- “Let’s Make Love…”
Sep 28: The Ronettes- “Be My Baby”
Source: https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/tag/the-ronettes-american-bandstand/
Ronnie Spector can be found on facebook:
American Bandstand was the Ronettes first national TV show. I was so nervous to meet Dick Clark I was hiding behind the other two Ronettes. I thought I was going to faint, my knees were shaking so hard, I remember it like yesterday. When we toured with Dick's Caravan of Stars, he did not let anyone but the performers travel on the two buses, but he let my mother go to keep the guys away from us. That was Dick, so nice, sleeping on the bus, and he would always make sure all the artists were happy. On an off day he would take us all out for dinner and dancing. He loved doing what he did. I'll miss my friend Dick, and New Years Eve won't be the same to me.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/ronniespector/posts/american-bandstand-was-the-ronettes-first-national-tv-show-i-was-so-nervous-to-m/10150960733542786/
No comments:
Post a Comment