the Ronettes

the Ronettes, American girl group whose single “Be My Baby” (1963) was one of the defining songs of the girl-group era. The Ronettes were formed in 1959 by sisters Ronnie Bennett (byname of Veronica Bennett, later Ronnie Spector; b. August 10, 1943, New York City, New York, U.S.—d. January 12, 2022, Danbury, Connecticut) and Estelle Bennett (b. July 22, 1941, New York City—d. February 11, 2009, Englewood, New Jersey) with their cousin Nedra Talley (b. January 27, 1946, New York City).

The group started as a song-and-dance act at the Peppermint Lounge in New York City, with Ronnie taking lead vocals and Estelle and Nedra singing backup. They were discovered by Don Kirshner, who signed them to his Colpix label. As Ronnie and the Relatives, they recorded a number of singles, but none of them reached the national charts. In 1963 the group, now called the Ronettes, teamed with producer Phil Spector, who reshaped their image (incorporating the beehive hairdos that soon became characteristic of the girl-group genre) and applied his dense “wall of sound” production style to the trio’s music. The first single produced by Spector, “Be My Baby,” was a “wall of sound” masterpiece, and it was the first of five Ronettes songs to reach the Top 40 in 1963–64. This marked the peak of the group’s success, however, and the Ronettes disbanded in 1966.

Ronnie became romantically involved with Spector and married him in 1968. The couple divorced in 1974, but she retained his name and forged a solo career as Ronnie Spector. Her biggest solo hit, “Take Me Home Tonight,” a duet with Eddie Money, reached number four on the Billboard chart in 1986. Her autobiography is descriptively titled Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness; or, My Life as a Fabulous Ronette (1990). The Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

In 2011 Spector released the charity single “Back to Black,” a cover of English singer Amy Winehouse’s song, as a tribute to Winehouse after her death from alcohol poisoning in July 2011. Proceeds from the single’s sales were donated to a substance abuse treatment center. The two singers were mutual fans of each other, and Winehouse modeled her visual style on Spector’s image from the 1960s. In 2016 Spector reflected to Billboard that Winehouse “made me feel like what I did mattered.”