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4 episodes with Bob B Soxx
6 episodes with Bob B Soxx
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2 episodes with Bob B Soxx
2 episodes with Bob B Soxx
2 episodes with Bob B Soxx
2 episodes with Bob B Soxx
2 episodes with Bob B Soxx
2 episodes with Bob B Soxx
GRAMMY® Winner, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductee!Happy Holiday's, Merry Christmas!!Featured in the Academy Award Winning Documentary "20 Feet from Stardom", Darlene Has done a LOT!! #1 Hit Make, Actress on Stage & in Motion Picture Blockbusters like the "Lethal Weapon" Movies Rolling Stone Magazine has proclaimed Darlene Love to be “one of the greatest singers of all time” and that certainly rings true, but perhaps Paul Shaffer says it even more concisely: “Darlene Love is Rock N' Roll!”From her first number #1 Hit,"He's A Rebel", through her string of label hits with legendary producer Phil Spector, including "Da Doo Ron Ron", "He's Sure The Boy I Love & "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" a classic she sangs every Christmas season on the "Late Show with David Letterman (it is David's favorite). Darlene on Lead Vocals #1 Hit ~ "He's a Rebel" ~ The Crystals #10 Hit ~ "He's Sure the Boy I Love" ~ The Crystals Darlene solo ~ "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" In December 2010, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" first on its list of The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Song, saying that "nobody can match Love's emotion and sheer vocal power."Several of the classic hit song's she sings backup on: Sam Cooke's ~ "Chain Gang", Bobby "Boris" Pickett ~ "The Monster Mash" "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" ~ The Righteous Brothers "Walking In The Rain" ~ The Ronettes The Beach Boys ~ "In My Room" "Poor Side of Town" ~ Johnny Rivers "Rock and Roll Lullaby" ~ B.J. Thomas "Let Us Pray" ~ Elvis Presley "Get It Right" ~ Luther Vandross And many other top 10 hits of the Rock n Roll Era. Her voice is on countless songs she sang backup on for artists like Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Cher, Luther Vandross and Aretha Franklin. One of Darlene's biggest fans is "The "Boss" Bruce Springsteen. She has proven herself a talented actress as well, on stage and screen, starring as Danny Glover's wife in all of the LETHAL WEAPON films and lighting-up Broadway in such musicals as GREASE and the Tony-award nominated LEADER OF THE PACK.Darlene Love was just a high school sophomore in Los Angeles when she was discovered out of a gospel choir, and asked to join a burgeoning girl group called The Blossoms, who began recording for Phil Specter. Soon thereafter, other artists like Sam Cooke were attracted to her powerful sound, and sought Darlene on their recordings. With The Blossoms and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene sang lead vocals on some of the greatest music hits of the 60's. The Blossoms landed a weekly spot on the landmark television series SHINDIG & Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special and through the 60's and 70's, Darlene continued to perform with and back-up such diverse artists as The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas, Tom Jones, The Righteous Brothers and Sonny & Cher.She has received great national press exposure, including a feature in PEOPLE magazine, a CNN television documentary on her life, and bookings on numerous national television programs, including NBC-TV's TODAY, Wendy Williams, CW and Oprah as her yearly stint on the David Letterman show which she has done 26 years strong.A feature film based on Darlene's autobiography “My Name Is Love” is in the works Along with more great new music concerts thru 2025,.© 2024 Building Abundant Success!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy: https://tinyurl.com/BASAud
Label: Philles/Coll. 3210Year: 1963Condition: M-Price: $12.00The A side was originally released on Philles 111. However, the B side of this limited-edition release on Collectables was never released, before or since, on vinyl or CD. (That's why I don't tag this 45 as a reissue.) I had a bit of a jaw-dropping moment when listening to it, for as a huge fan of Spector's Philles productions, it was like discovering a long lost, never released Beatles studio recording. For those who aren't already fans of Darlene Love, she was, in the view of many, the best singer in Phil Spector's stable of talented girl-group vocalists. Aside from the handful of classics she released under her own name, she also sang lead vocals on the Crystals' "He's a Rebel" as well as on "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," a hit for Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans. You'll notice that Dave Marsh places two of her 3 chart singles in his list of the 1001 greatest singles of all time ?? this one and "Wait Til My Bobby Gets Home." In addition to these, Love hit Billboard's Hot 100 with the amazing "A Fine Fine Boy." But somehow, "Strange Kind of Love" must have got lost on one of the studio tapes, only emerging much later. This Collectables release is the first (and only) appearance of the song on 45 rpm vinyl.Incidentally, the tune's writers (who actually recorded on their own under various names, including the Trade Winds) have credits to numerous classic 1960s hits, including "New York's A Lonely Town," "Do I Love You?" by the Ronettes, and "Soldier Baby" by Candy & the Kisses.
Aujourd'hui, nous allons parler du disque qui, plus que tout autre, a assuré la place de Phil Spector dans l'histoire de la musique populaire - un disque qui a changé la vie de plusieurs personnes qui l'ont écouté pour le meilleur, qui a changé la vie de sa chanteuse pour le pire, et qui possède l'intro de batterie la plus imitée de tous les temps. Nous allons nous pencher sur un chef d'oeuvre intemporel, sur une intro de batterie reconnaissable entre mille : "Be My Baby" des Ronettes The Ronettes, "Be My Baby" Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love ?" Ronnie and the Relatives, "I Want a Boy" Ronnie and the Relatives, "I'm Gonna Quit While I'm Ahead" Joey Dee and the Starliters, "The Peppermint Twist" Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah". Connie Francis, "Second-Hand Love" Veronica, "Why Don't They Let Us Fall In Love ?" The Crystals, "The Twist"The Crystals, " The Wah-Watusi "Jeff Barry, "It's Called Rock and Roll" Sam Cooke, "Teenage Sonata" Ray Peterson, "Tell Laura I Love Her" Ellie Gaye, "Silly, Isn't It ?" Jay and the Americans, "This is It" Darlene Love, "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others' Hearts ?" Ellie Greenwich "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy (demo)" The Ronettes, "Be My Baby"" The Ronettes" (The Wrecking Crew), Tedesco and Pitman". The Ronettes, "Baby I Love You" The Ronettes Featuring Veronica, "Walking in the Rain" The Ronettes, "I Can Hear Music" Ronnie Spector, "Try Some, Buy Some" Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes, "You Mean So Much To Me" Ronnie Spector et le E-Street Band, "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" Eddie Money, "Take Me Home Tonight"
GRAMMY® Winner, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductee! Happy Holiday's, Merry Christmas!! Featured in the Academy Award Winning Documentary "20 Feet from Stardom", Darlene Has done a LOT!! #1 Hit Make, Actress on Stage & in Motion Picture Blockbusters like the "Lethal Weapon" Movies Rolling Stone Magazine has proclaimed Darlene Love to be “one of the greatest singers of all time” and that certainly rings true, but perhaps Paul Shaffer says it even more concisely: “Darlene Love is Rock N' Roll!” From her first number #1 Hit,"He's A Rebel", through her string of label hits with legendary producer Phil Spector, including "Da Doo Ron Ron", "He's Sure The Boy I Love & "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" a classic she sangs every Christmas season on the "Late Show with David Letterman (it is David's favorite). Darlene on Lead Vocals #1 Hit ~ "He's a Rebel" ~ The Crystals #10 Hit ~ "He's Sure the Boy I Love" ~ The Crystals Darlene solo ~ "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" In December 2010, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" first on its list of The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Song, saying that "nobody can match Love's emotion and sheer vocal power." Several of the classic hit song's she sings backup on: Sam Cooke's ~ "Chain Gang", Bobby "Boris" Pickett ~ "The Monster Mash" "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" ~ The Righteous Brothers "Walking In The Rain" ~ The Ronettes The Beach Boys ~ "In My Room" "Poor Side of Town" ~ Johnny Rivers "Rock and Roll Lullaby" ~ B.J. Thomas "Let Us Pray" ~ Elvis Presley "Get It Right" ~ Luther Vandross And many other top 10 hits of the Rock n Roll Era. Her voice is on countless songs she sang backup on for artists like Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Cher, Luther Vandross and Aretha Franklin. One of Darlene's biggest fans is "The "Boss" Bruce Springsteen. She has proven herself a talented actress as well, on stage and screen, starring as Danny Glover's wife in all of the LETHAL WEAPON films and lighting-up Broadway in such musicals as GREASE and the Tony-award nominated LEADER OF THE PACK. Darlene Love was just a high school sophomore in Los Angeles when she was discovered out of a gospel choir, and asked to join a burgeoning girl group called The Blossoms, who began recording for Phil Specter. Soon thereafter, other artists like Sam Cooke were attracted to her powerful sound, and sought Darlene on their recordings. With The Blossoms and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene sang lead vocals on some of the greatest music hits of the 60's. The Blossoms landed a weekly spot on the landmark television series SHINDIG & Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special and through the 60's and 70's, Darlene continued to perform with and back-up such diverse artists as The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas, Tom Jones, The Righteous Brothers and Sonny & Cher. She has received great national press exposure, including a feature in PEOPLE magazine, a CNN television documentary on her life, and bookings on numerous national television programs, including NBC-TV's TODAY, Wendy Williams, CW and Oprah as her yearly stint on the David Letterman show which she has done 26 years strong. A feature film based on Darlene's autobiography “My Name Is Love” is in the works Along with more great new music concerts thru 2024,. © 2023 Building Abundant Success!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy: https://tinyurl.com/BASAud
PTF is back with a most unusual co-hostess, another PTF, Perrin Tamar Fornatale. They spin an hour of Christmas tunes for your listening pleasure.Riu Chiu -- The MonkeesThank God It's Christmas -- QueenWonderful Christmastime -- The ShinsHey Skinny Santa -- J.D. McPhersonBilly Eilish – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas*Run Rudolph RunChristmastime is Here -- Ol' 97s I Want an Alien For Christmas -- Fountains of WayneChristmas on the Moon -- ??*The Bells -- Phil OchsSilver Bells – Stevie WonderBells of St. Mary's – Bob B. Soxx and the Blue JeansPlease Come Home for Christmas -- Sharon Jones*Last Christmas – SlavesA Merry Jingle – The GreediesSilent Night – The DickiesFairytale of New York -- The Pogues
Singles Going Around- Christmas 2023The Crystals- "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town"B.B. King- "Christmas Celebration"Harry Fontenot- "Jingle Bells"Thelma Cooper- "I Need A Man For Christmas"Jimi Hendrix- "Little Drummer Boy/Silent Night/Auld Lang Syne"Brenda Lee- "I'm Gonna Lasso Santa Claus"Chuck Berry- "Merry Christmas Baby"Kay Starr- "Everybody's Waiting For The Man With The Bag"The Crystals- "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer"Riff Ruffin- "Christmas Baby"John Fahey- "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing/ O Come All Ye Faithful"The Beach Boys- "Christmas Day"Louis Armstrong & The Commanders- "Cool Yule"The Elves- "White/Hot Christmas"Ella Fitzgerald- "Sleigh Ride"Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans- "Here Comes Santa Claus"Chuck Berry- "Spending Christmas"Jesse Belvin- "I Want You With You With Me"Belton Richard- "Blue Christmas"Oscar McLollie- "Dig That Santa Claus"Hadda Brooks- "White Christmas"The Beach Boys- "We Three Kings Of Orient Are"Jimi Hendrix- "Little Drummer Boy/Silent Night/Auld Lang Syne" (Extended Version)*All selections from the original lp's.
Rolling Stone Magazine caled Darlene Love “one of the greatest singers of all time” but perhaps Paul Shaffer says it even more concisely: “Darlene Love is Rock N' Roll!” – which was made official when she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bette Midler, a great fan of her work, in 2011. She was one of Phil Spector's hand-picked early '60's girl group singers and sang some lead vocals for the Crystals, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans. After turbulent times with Spector, Darlene also had hits under her own name. The oldest of five children born in LA, Darlene's father was a minister and ran a church in Texas. Darlene began singing at his church to the delight of the congregation. While attending high school in San Antonio, Darlene began joining glee clubs and a group called the Wailers that sang at school assemblies. In 1956 the family moved back to Los Angeles. Shortly after her sixteenth birthday Darlene began singing in the church choir. It was during a choir practice that her voice caught the attention of the choir director. One day a girl that Darlene knew from church, asked her to sing at her wedding. What she didn't know was that the wedding was also an audition: Delores' bridal party included her friends Gloria Jones, Fanita Barrett, and Annette and Nanette Williams, who had a singing group called the Blossoms. They were looking to replace Annette who was pregnant. Darlene was asked to sing with the Blossoms. Her parents at first refused to let her, but after meeting the Blossoms they relented. She started singing with The Blossoms in 1958. They recorded as a quartet and then a trio. They also did backup singing supporting Bobby "Boris" Pickett ("Monster Mash"), James Darren ("Goodbye Cruel World), Bobby Day ("Rockin' Robin") and many others. Love was brought to Phil Spector's attention when he was looking for a lead singer for "He's a Rebel." which was to be released under the Crystal's name. When Darlene was asked if she knew about this she said "So What? The man just paid me triple scale." She figured that it was a cute song, but it was probably going nowhere. Love went on to record six Philles singles under her own name, including "Wait Til My Bobby Gets Home","(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Going To Marry", " and "A Fine Fine Bo”). She also appeared on Spector's Christmas Album. Love continued to sing with the Blossoms through the 60s. They were regulars on Shindig and toured with Elvis Presley in the early 70s. Love sang back-up for Dionne Warwick for ten years beginning in 1971 and later backing Aretha Franklin. In the ‘80s Darlene branched out into acting appearing in the Lethal Weapon films and appearing in the Tony nominated 1985 the Broadway musical Leader of the Pack based on the songs of Ellie Greenwich. She also recorded two solo albums. In 1997 a jury awarded her in excess of $263,000 for back royalties from Phil Spector. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. Today Darlene Love is back on the charts with a new version of her Christmas song thanks to her friend Cher. This week she joins us to share the story of her incredible journey. For more information about Darlene Love, head to her website https://darleneloveworld.com/ and pick yourself up a copy of her book 'My Name is Love' where Darlene shares many stories including the wild parties Tom Jones used to throw and her love affair with Bill Medley of The Righteous Brothers. It's the dishy and dramatic story of a woman who had it all, lost it all, but never, ever refused to give up. If you'd like to request a guest or if you have any comments or feedback for me, please get in touch through my website https://www.abreathoffreshair.com.au I know you're going to LOVE the story of Darlene Love this week.
Ellie Greenwich
Ellie Greenwich
GRAMMY® Winner, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductee! Happy Holiday's, Merry Christmas!! Featured in the Academy Award Winning Documentary "20 Feet from Stardom", Darlene Has done a LOT!! #1 Hit Make, Actress on Stage & in Motion Picture Blockbusters like the "Lethal Weapon" Movies Rolling Stone Magazine has proclaimed Darlene Love to be “one of the greatest singers of all time” and that certainly rings true, but perhaps Paul Shaffer says it even more concisely: “Darlene Love is Rock N' Roll!” From her first number #1 Hit,"He's A Rebel", through her string of label hits with legendary producer Phil Spector, including "Da Doo Ron Ron", "He's Sure The Boy I Love & "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" a classic she sangs every Christmas season on the "Late Show with David Letterman (it is David's favorite). Darlene on Lead Vocals #1 Hit ~ "He's a Rebel" ~ The Crystals #10 Hit ~ "He's Sure the Boy I Love" ~ The Crystals Darlene solo ~ "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" In December 2010, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" first on its list of The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Song, saying that "nobody can match Love's emotion and sheer vocal power." Several of the classic hit song's she sings backup on: Sam Cooke's ~ "Chain Gang", Bobby "Boris" Pickett ~ "The Monster Mash" "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" ~ The Righteous Brothers "Walking In The Rain" ~ The Ronettes The Beach Boys ~ "In My Room" "Poor Side of Town" ~ Johnny Rivers "Rock and Roll Lullaby" ~ B.J. Thomas "Let Us Pray" ~ Elvis Presley "Get It Right" ~ Luther Vandross And many other top 10 hits of the Rock n Roll Era. Her voice is on countless songs she sang backup on for artists like Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Cher, Luther Vandross and Aretha Franklin. One of Darlene's biggest fans is "The "Boss" Bruce Springsteen. She has proven herself a talented actress as well, on stage and screen, starring as Danny Glover's wife in all of the LETHAL WEAPON films and lighting-up Broadway in such musicals as GREASE and the Tony-award nominated LEADER OF THE PACK. Darlene also starred for three years on Broadway as ‘Motormouth Maybelle' in the Tony Award winning musical HAIRSPRAY. Darlene Love was just a high school sophomore in Los Angeles when she was discovered out of a gospel choir, and asked to join a burgeoning girl group called The Blossoms, who began recording for Phil Specter. Soon thereafter, other artists like Sam Cooke were attracted to her powerful sound, and sought Darlene on their recordings. With The Blossoms and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene sang lead vocals on some of the greatest music hits of the 60's. The Blossoms landed a weekly spot on the landmark television series SHINDIG & Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special and through the 60's and 70's, Darlene continued to perform with and back-up such diverse artists as The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas, Tom Jones, The Righteous Brothers and Sonny & Cher. She has received great national press exposure, including a feature in PEOPLE magazine, a CNN television documentary on her life, and bookings on numerous national television programs, including NBC-TV's TODAY, Wendy Williams, CW and Oprah as her yearly stint on the David Letterman show which she has done 26 years strong. Darlene's first studio Christmas album, “It's Christmas, Of Course” was released December 2007 to national critical praise. In 2010 Darlene began a tour of Australia starring as ‘Miss Sherman' in “Fame: The Musical”. Darlene has also released a CD and DVD of her live concert ”The Concert of Love” produced and released by Reel Good Productions. Her albums include AGE OF MIRACLES, recorded live in New York City and her first gospel album, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE released by Harmony records.A feature film based on Darlene's autobiography “My Name Is Love” is in the works Along with more great new music concerts thru 2023. © 2022 BuildingAbundantSuccess!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy: https://tinyurl.com/BASAud
Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductee!Happy Holiday's, Merry Christmas!!Featured in the Academy Award Winning Documentary "20 Feet from Stardom", Darlene Has done a LOT #1 Hit Make, Actress on Stage & in Motion Picture Blockbusters like the "Lethal Weapon" Movies Rolling Stone Magazine has proclaimed Darlene Love to be “one of the greatest singers of all time” and that certainly rings true, but perhaps Paul Shaffer says it even more concisely: “Darlene Love is Rock N' Roll!”From her first number #1 Hit, "He's A Rebel", through her string of label hits with legendary producer Phil Spector, including "He's Sure The Boy I Love & "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" a classic she sang every Christmas season on the "Late Show with David Letterman (it is David's favorite). Darlene on Lead Vocals #1 Hit ~ "He's a Rebel" ~ The Crystals #10 Hit ~ "He's Sure the Boy I Love" ~ The Crystals Darlene solo ~ "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" In December 2010, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" first on its list of The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Song, saying that "nobody can match Love's emotion and sheer vocal power."Several of the classic hit song's she sings backup on: Sam Cooke's ~ "Chain Gang", Bobby "Boris" Pickett ~ "The Monster Mash" "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" ~ The Righteous Brothers "Walking In The Rain" ~ The Ronettes The Beach Boys ~ "In My Room" "Poor Side of Town" ~ Johnny Rivers "Rock and Roll Lullaby" ~ B.J. Thomas "Let Us Pray" ~ Elvis Presley "Get It Right" ~ Luther Vandross And many other top 10 hits of the Rock n Roll Era. Her voice is on countless songs she sang backup on for artists like Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Cher, Luther Vandross and Aretha Franklin. One of Darlene's biggest fans is "The "Boss" Bruce Springsteen. She has proven herself a talented actress as well, on stage and screen, starring as Danny Glover's wife in all of the LETHAL WEAPON films and lighting-up Broadway in such musicals as GREASE and the Tony-award nominated LEADER OF THE PACK.Darlene also starred for three years on Broadway as ‘Motormouth Maybelle' in the Tony Award winning musical HAIRSPRAY. Darlene Love was just a high school sophomore in Los Angeles when she was discovered out of a gospel choir, and asked to join a burgeoning girl group called The Blossoms, who began recording for Phil Specter. Soon thereafter, other artists like Sam Cooke were attracted to her powerful sound, and sought Darlene on their recordings. With The Blossoms and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene sang lead vocals on some of the greatest music hits of the 60's. The Blossoms landed a weekly spot on the landmark television series SHINDIG & Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special and through the 60's and 70's, Darlene continued to perform with and back-up such diverse artists as The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas, Tom Jones, The Righteous Brothers and Sonny & Cher.She has received great national press exposure, including a feature in PEOPLE magazine, a CNN television documentary on her life, and bookings on numerous national television programs, including NBC-TV's TODAY, Wendy Williams, CW and Oprah as her yearly stint on the David Letterman show which she has done 26 years strong. Darlene's first studio Christmas album, “It's Christmas, Of Course” was released December 2007 to national critical praise. In 2010 Darlene began a tour of Australia starring as ‘Miss Sherman' in “Fame: The Musical”. Darlene has also released a CD and DVD of her live concert ”The Concert of Love” produced and released by Reel Good Productions. Her albums include AGE OF MIRACLES, recorded live in New York City and her first gospel album, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE released by Harmony records.A feature film based on Darlene's autobiography “My Name Is Love” is in the works Along with more great new music for released in 2021.© 2021 All Rights Reserved© 2021 Building Abundant Success!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Radio @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23ba
Hello Friends, and welcome to the second festive spectacular here on Mixology, with our look at the Christmas album to end all Christmas albums - A Christmas Gift To You from Philles Records, produced by Phil Spector and performed by The Wrecking Crew, along with the many wonderful artists on the Philles label at the time, including The Ronettes, The Crystals, Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, and Darlene Love. Featuring 12 seasonal classics now heard throughout retail without fail each year, and a spoken word coda from the man himself, one question remains: should you go for the in print mono mix of the album, or the stereo remix issued in the 70s and 80s... before it was never to be seen again? So chuck on that Santa hat and come for a Sleigh Ride through a Marshmallow World, as we cover the most successful flop of the holiday period. Happy Listening, Frederick Support the show and get hours of extra content at: https://www.patreon.com/backtomono Email the show at: backtomonoradio@gmail.com Listen to companion podcast Back to Mono: https://www.mixcloud.com/backtomonoradio/playlists/back-to-mono-complete/ Find me on Instagram @hypnoticfred Join the Facebook Community here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/backtomono
The Rockin' Eddy Oldies Radio Show featuring B.B. King - "Hully Gully Twist", Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans - "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others Hearts", Barry Mann - "Little Miss USA", Tony Orlando - "Happy Times", Bobby Doyle - "Hot Seat", (Twin Spin) The Majors - "She's A Troublemaker" (A-side) / "A Little Bit Now" (B-side), Buck Owens - "Act Naturally", B. Bumble & The Stingers - "Nut Rocker", Billy Bland - "Sweet Thing", The Crystals - "He's Sure The Boy I Love", Johnny Rivers - "I'll Get So Doggone Lonesome", Don Covay - "Pony Time", The Earls - "Eyes", Faron Young - "Hello Walls", The Four Pennies - "When The Boy's Happy", The Capris - "Indian Girl", The Cyclones - "Bullwhip Rock", The Blossoms - "Hard To Get", Ron Holden - "True Love Can Be", Linda Scott - "Yessiree", Clyde McPhatter - "Deep In The Heart Of Harlem".
Label: Colpix 712Year: 1963Condition: M-Price: $30.00This fast-paced Girl Group rocker features Carolyn Willis, a singer with both Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans and the Honey Cone. Both songs were written by David Gates, and whoever produced the tracks was clearly a fan of Phil Spector's patented (well, not really) Wall of Sound — these are terrific Phil Spector soundalikes (have a listen to the mp3 snippet in our "jukebox" to hear what I mean!). This was a one-off single with no followups or albums. Note: This beautiful copy comes in a vintage Colpix Records factory sleeve. It has Mint labels. Although the vinyl (styrene) has some light surface scuffing, the grooves themselves have been well cared for, storing pristine Mint audio! (This scan is a representative image from our archives.)
In an episode first aired January 18, 2021: DJ Andrew Sandoval explores the songs & productions of Phil Spector from 1962-1970 with music by The Ronettes; Sonny & Cher; Marianne Faithfull; Peter & Gordon; Ike & Tina Turner; The MFQ; The Symbols; The Lovin' Spoonful; The Crystals; Manfred Mann; The Righteous Brothers; Carole King; John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band; The Beatles; George Harrison; Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans.
Hi, here's 30 minutes of all rock and no talk. Ain't no guns down there, Phil, but say hi to Spade Cooley for me. The Ronettes--“Baby, I Love You” Curtis Lee--“Pretty Little Angel Eyes” Bob B. Soxx and The Blue Jeans--“Not Too Young to Get Married” The Alley Cats--“Puddin' ‘N Tain” The Crystals--“Da Doo Ron Ron” Ike and Tina Turner--“River Deep, Mountain High” Teddy Bears--“To Know Him Is to Love Him” Sonny Charles and the Checkmates--“Black Pearl” Darlene Love--“Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)” Ramones--“Baby, I Love You”
Episode 110 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Be My Baby”, and at the career of the Ronettes and Ronnie Spector. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Little Saint Nick” by the Beach Boys. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Erratum I say Ray Peterson’s version of “Tell Laura I Love Her” was an American number one. It wasn’t — it only made number seven. Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. A lot of resources were used for this episode. Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara Miniskirts and Madness, or My Life as a Fabulous Ronette by Ronnie Spector and Vince Waldron is Ronnie’s autobiography and was the main source. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson is a good overview of the Brill Building scene, and provided me with the information on Barry and Greenwich. I’ve referred to two biographies of Spector in this episode, Phil Spector: Out of His Head by Richard Williams and He’s a Rebel by Mark Ribkowsky. And information on the Wrecking Crew largely comes from The Wrecking Crew by Kent Hartman. There are many compilations available with some of the hits Spector produced, but I recommend getting Back to Mono, a four-CD overview of his career containing all the major singles put out by Philles. If you want something just covering Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes, The Very Best of Ronnie Spector covers all the Ronettes hits and the best of her solo career. And the AFM contract listing the musicians on “Be My Baby” can be found here. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to take a look at the record that, more than anything, ensured Phil Spector’s place in popular music history — a record that changed the lives of several people who heard it for the better, and changed the life of its singer for the worse, and one which has the most imitated drum intro in the world. We’re going to look at “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, “Be My Baby”] Before I start this one, two things need saying. The first is that this episode, by necessity, deals with spousal abuse. As always, I will try to discuss the issue with sensitivity, and touch on it as briefly as possible, but if you worry that it might upset you, please either skip this episode, or read the transcript to see if you’ll be OK listening to it. I imagine that very few people will be upset by anything I say here, but it’s always a possibility. And secondly, I’d like to apologise for this episode being so late. I had a major disruption in my personal life over Christmas — one of those really bad life events that only happens once or twice in most people’s lifetimes — and that made it impossible for me to get any work done at all for the last couple of weeks. I’m now able to work again, and this should not be anything that affects the podcast for the rest of the year. Anyway, enough about that, let’s get on with the story. The story of the Ronettes begins when Ronnie Bennett, a mixed-race girl from Harlem, became obsessed with the sound of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”] Ronnie became the Teenagers’ biggest fan, and even managed to arrange a meeting between herself and Lymon when they were both thirteen, but had her illusions torn away when he turned up drunk and made a pass at her. But that didn’t stop her from trying her best to imitate Lymon’s vocals, and forming a vocal group with several friends and relatives. That group had a male lead singer, but when they made their first appearance on one of the Harlem Apollo’s talent shows, the lead singer got stage fright and couldn’t start singing when he got on stage. Ronnie stepped forward and took over the lead vocal, and the group went down well enough even with the Apollo’s notoriously hostile audience that a smaller group of them decided to start performing regularly together. The group took the name Ronnie and the Relatives, and consisted of Ronnie, her sister Estelle, and their cousin Nedra Talley. They originally only performed at private parties, bar mitzvahs and the like, but they soon reached the attention of Stu Phillips at Colpix Records, a label owned by the film studio Columbia Pictures. The first single by Ronnie and the Relatives was not a success — “I Want a Boy” came out in August 1961 and didn’t chart: [Excerpt: Ronnie and the Relatives, “I Want a Boy”] And nor did their second, “I’m Gonna Quit While I’m Ahead”: [Excerpt: Ronnie and the Relatives, “I’m Gonna Quit While I’m Ahead”] Those records did apparently sell to at least one person, though, as when Ronnie met President Clinton in 1997, he asked her to sign a record, and specifically got her to sign an album of those early recordings for Colpix. While the girls were not having any commercial success, they did manage to accidentally get themselves a regular gig at the most important nightclub in New York. They went to the Peppermint Lounge, just as the Twist craze was at its height, and as they were underage they dressed up especially well in order to make themselves look more grown up so they could get in. Their ruse worked better than they expected. As they were all dressed the same, the club’s manager assumed they were the dancers he’d booked, who hadn’t shown up. He came out and told them to get on stage and start dancing, and so of course they did what he said, and started dancing to the Twist sounds of Joey Dee and the Starliters: [Excerpt: Joey Dee and the Starliters, “The Peppermint Twist”] The girls’ dancing went down well, and then the band started playing “What’d I Say?”, a favourite song of Ronnie’s and one the group did in their own act, and Ronnie danced over to David Brigati, who was singing lead on the song, and started dancing close to him. He handed her the mic as a joke, and she took over the song. They got a regular spot at the Peppermint Lounge, dancing behind the Starliters for their whole show and joining them on vocals for a few numbers every night. Inspired by the Bobbettes and the Marvelettes, Ronnie and Estelle’s mother suggested changing the group’s name. She suggested “the Rondettes”, and they dropped the “d”, becoming the Ronettes. The singles they released on ColPix under the new name did no better than the others, but they were such an important part of the Peppermint Lounge that when the Lounge’s owners opened a second venue in Florida, the girls went down there with the Starliters and were part of the show. That trip to Florida gave them two very different experiences. The first was that they got to see segregation firsthand for the first time, and they didn’t like it — especially when they, as light-skinned mixed-race women, were read as tanned white women and served in restaurants which then refused to serve their darker-skinned mothers. But the second was far more positive. They met Murray the K, who since Alan Freed had been driven out of his job had become the most popular DJ in New York. Murray was down in Florida for a holiday, and was impressed enough by the girls’ dancing that he told them if they were ever in New York and wanted a spot on one of his regular shows at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre they should let him know. They replied that they lived in New York and went to those shows all the time — of course they wanted to perform on his shows. They became regular performers at the Brooklyn Fox, where they danced between the other, bigger, acts, sang backing vocals, did a song or two themselves, and took part in comedy sketches with Murray. It was at these shows, as well, that they developed the look they would become famous with — huge hair piled up on top of their heads, tons of mascara, and tight skirts slit to show their legs. It was a style inspired by street fashion rather than by what the other girl groups were wearing, and it made them incredibly popular with the Fox audience. But the Ronettes, even under their new name, and even with the backing of New York’s most prominent DJ, were still not selling any records. They knew they were good, and the reaction to their stage performances proved as much, so they decided that the problem must be with Colpix. And so in 1963 they made a New Year’s resolution — they were going to get Phil Spector to produce them. By this time, Spector was becoming very well known in the music industry as a hit maker. We already saw in the recent episode on the Crystals how he was making hits for that group and the Blossoms, but he was also making hits with studio groups like Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, who he took into the top ten with a remake of the old Disney song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”: [Excerpt: Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”] and as well as the records he was putting out on Philles, he was also working as a freelance producer for people like Connie Francis, producing her top ten hit “Second-Hand Love”: [Excerpt: Connie Francis, “Second-Hand Love”] So the Ronettes were convinced that he could make them into the stars they knew they had the potential to be. The group had no idea how to get in touch with Spector, so they tried the direct route — Estelle called directory enquiries, got the number for Philles Records, and called and asked to be put through to Spector. She was as astonished as anyone when he agreed to talk to her — and it turned out that he’d seen the group regularly at the Brooklyn Fox and was interested in working with them. At their audition for Spector, the group first performed a close-harmony version of “When the Red Red Robin Goes Bob-Bob-Bobbin’ Along”, which they’d been taught by their singing teacher. Spector told them that he wanted to hear what they did when they were singing for themselves, not for a teacher, and so Ronnie launched into “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?” It only took her getting to the second line of the song before Spector yelled at her to stop — “THAT is the voice I’ve been looking for!” The Ronettes’ first recordings for Spector weren’t actually issued as by the Ronettes at all. To start with, he had them record a version of a song by the writing team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, “Why Don’t They Let Us Fall In Love?”, but didn’t release it at the time. It was later released as by “Veronica”, the name under which he released solo records by Ronnie: [Excerpt: Veronica, “Why Don’t They Let Us Fall In Love?”] But at the time, when Ronnie asked him when the record was coming out, Spector answered “Never”. He explained to her that it was a good record, but it wasn’t a number one, and he was still working on their first number one record. Their next few recordings were covers of then-current dance hits, like “The Twist”: [Excerpt, “The Crystals”, “The Twist”] And “The Wah-Watusi”, one of the few times that one of the other Ronettes took the lead rather than Ronnie, as Nedra sang lead: [Excerpt, “The Crystals”, “The Wah-Watusi”] But these, and two other tracks, were released as album tracks on a Crystals album, credited to the Crystals rather than the Ronettes. The song that eventually became the group’s first hit, “Be My Baby”, was mostly written by one of the many husband-and-wife songwriting teams that had developed at the Brill Building, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Barry had started out as a performer who occasionally wrote, putting out records like “It’s Called Rock and Roll”: [Excerpt: Jeff Barry, “It’s Called Rock and Roll”] But while his performing career had gone nowhere, he’d started to have some success as a songwriter, writing “Teenage Sonata” for Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “Teenage Sonata”] And “Tell Laura I Love Her”, which was recorded by several people, but the biggest hit version was the American number one by Ray Peterson: [Excerpt: Ray Peterson, “Tell Laura I Love Her”] Ellie Greenwich had also started as a performer, recording “Silly Isn’t It?” under the name Ellie Gaye: [Excerpt: Ellie Gaye, “Silly, Isn’t It?”] She’d become one of the most important demo singers in New York, and had also started writing songs. She’d first collaborated with Doc Pomus, cowriting songs like “This is It”, which had been a flop single for Jay and the Americans: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, “This is It”] She’d then been taken on by Trio Music, Leiber and Stoller’s company, where she had largely collaborated with another writer named Tony Powers. Trio had first refusal on anything the two of them wrote, and if Leiber and Stoller didn’t like it, they could take the song elsewhere. Greenwich and Powers had their biggest successes with songs that Leiber and Stoller rejected, which they sold to Aaron Schroeder. And they’d started up a collaboration with Phil Spector — although Spector and Greenwich’s first meeting had not exactly gone smoothly. He’d gone into her office to hear her play a song that she thought would be suitable for the Paris Sisters, but had kept wandering out of the office, and had kept looking at himself in a mirror and primping himself rather than listen to her song. Eventually she said to him “Listen to me, you little prick. Did you come to look at yourself or to hear my songs?”, and she didn’t make that sale. But later on, Spector became interested in a song she’d sold to Schroeder, and made an appointment to meet her and talk about her writing some stuff for him — that second meeting, which Spector didn’t realise was with someone he’d already made a bad impression on, Spector turned up four hours late. But despite that, Greenwich and Powers wrote several songs for Spector, who was also given songwriting credit, and which became big hits in versions he produced — “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry”, a single by Darlene Love: [Excerpt: Darlene Love, “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry”] And “Why Do Lovers Break Each Others’ Hearts?”, released as by Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, but with Love once again on lead vocals: [Excerpt: Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, “Why Do Lovers Break Each Others’ Hearts?”] I say that Spector was also given songwriting credit on those records, because there is some debate about how much he contributed to the songs he’s credited on. Some of his co-writers have said that he would often only change a word or a phrase, and get himself cut in on an already-completed song, while others have said that he contributed a reasonable amount to the songwriting, though he was never the primary writer — for example Barry Mann has said that Spector came up with the middle section for “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'”. I tend towards the belief that Spector’s contribution to the writing on those songs he’s co-credited on was minimal — in his whole career, the number of songs he wrote on his own seems to be in the single figures, while those other writers wrote dozens of hit records without any contribution from Spector — and so when I talk about records he produced I’ll tend to use phrasing like “a Goffin and King song co-credited to Phil Spector” rather than “a song by Goffin, King, and Spector”, but I don’t want that to give the impression that I’m certain Spector made no contribution. But while Greenwich and Powers were a mildly successful team, their partnership ended when Greenwich met Jeff Barry at a family Thanksgiving dinner — Greenwich’s uncle was Barry’s cousin. As Greenwich later put it, when they started talking together about music and realised how much they had in common, “I went ‘ooh’, he went ‘mmmhh’, and his wife went ‘I don’t think I like this'”. Soon their previous partnerships, both romantic and musical, were over, and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich became the third of the great Brill Building husband-and-wife songwriting teams. Where Goffin and King had a sophisticated edge to their writing, with a hint of sexual subversion and the mingling of pain and pleasure, and Mann and Weill tried to incorporate social comment into their songs, Barry and Greenwich were happy to be silly — they were writing songs like “Hanky Panky”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, and “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy”: [Excerpt: Ellie Greenwich “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy (demo)”] This worked extremely well for them, to the extent that after they broke up a few years later, Barry would continue this formula with songs such as “Sugar Sugar”, “Jingle Jangle” and “Bang Shang A Lang”. Barry and Greenwich’s style was to jam in as many hooks as possible, maybe put in a joke or two, keep the lyrics simple, and get out in two minutes. Very few of their songs were masterpieces of songwriting, but they *were* absolutely perfect templates for masterpieces of production. It sounds like I’m damning them with faint praise, but I’m really not. There is a huge skill involved in what they were doing — if you’re writing some heartwrenching masterpiece about the human condition, people will forgive the odd lapse in craft, but if you’re writing “My baby does the hanky panky”, there’s no margin for error, and you’re not going to get forgiven if you mess it up. Barry and Greenwich were good enough at this that they became the go-to writers for Spector for the next couple of years. He would record songs by most of the Brill Building teams, but when you think of the classic records Spector produced, they’re far more likely than not to be Barry and Greenwich songs — of the twenty-seven Philles singles released after Barry and Greenwich started writing together, fourteen are credited to Barry/Greenwich/Spector, and other than the joke release “Let’s Dance the Screw”, which we talked about back in the episode on the Crystals, there’s a run of eleven singles released on the label between late 1962 and early 1964 which are credited either as Greenwich/Powers/Spector or Barry/Greenwich/Spector. And so it was naturally to Barry and Greenwich that Spector turned to write the first big hit for the Ronettes — and he let Ronnie hear the writing session. By this time, Spector had become romantically involved with Ronnie, and he invited her into his apartment to sit in the next room and listen to them working on the song — usually they got together in hotels rather than at Spector’s home. While she was there, she found several pairs of women’s shoes — Spector hadn’t told her he was married, and claimed to her when she asked that they belonged to his sister. This should probably have been a sign of things to come. Assuming that Spector did contribute to the writing, I think it’s easy to tell what he brought to “Be My Baby”. If you listen to that Connie Francis record I excerpted earlier, on which Spector is also a credited co-writer, the melody line for the line “that you don’t feel the same” leading into the chorus: [Excerpt: Connie Francis, “Second-Hand Love”] is identical to the melody line leading into the chorus of “Be My Baby”: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, “Be My Baby”] So that transition between the verse and the chorus is likely his work. After rehearsing Ronnie for several weeks in New York, Spector flew her out to LA to make the record in Gold Star Studios, where she spent three days recording the lead vocals. The backing vocals weren’t provided by the other Ronettes, but rather by the Blossoms, with a few extra singers — notably Spector’s assistant Sonny Bono, and his new girlfriend Cher — but what really made the track was not the vocals — although the song was perfect for Ronnie — but Hal Blaine’s drum intro: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, “Be My Baby”] That intro was utterly simple — Blaine was always a minimalist player, someone who would play for the song rather than play fussy fills — but that simple part, combined with the powerful sound that the engineer Larry Levine got, was enough to make it one of the most memorable intros in rock music history. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys talks to this day about how he had to pull over to the side of the road when he first heard it on his car radio, and he would listen to the record incessantly for hours at a time. Incidentally, since I’m talking about the musicians, a lot of sources credit Carol Kaye for playing the bass on this track, so I’m going to say something once, here, which should be taken as read whenever I’m talking about records made in LA in the sixties — Carol Kaye is not only an unreliable source about what records she played on, she is an utterly dishonest one. For those who don’t know, Ms. Kaye was one of the great bass players of the sixties, and also one of the better session guitarists. She played on hundreds of records in the sixties, including many, many, classics from the Beach Boys, Spector, Frank Zappa, and others, and she was the only woman getting regular session work in LA on a rock instrument — there may have been session orchestral musicians who were women, but when it comes to guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, sax, and so on, she was the only one. For that, she deserves a huge amount of credit. Unfortunately, she has never been happy only being credited for the records she actually played on, and insists she played on many, many, more. Some of this can be reasonably put down to lapses in memory more than fifty years later — if you’re playing two or three sessions a day, and you play on a bunch of Beach Boys records, then it’s easy enough to misremember having played on “Surfin’ USA” when maybe you played on a similar-sounding record, and there are things like her claiming to have played on “Good Vibrations”, where there were multiple sessions for that track, and it happened that the takes eventually used weren’t the ones where she was playing bass, but she had no way of knowing that. That’s completely forgivable. But Ms. Kaye also claims, with no evidence whatsoever on her side and a great deal of evidence against her, to have been responsible for playing almost the entire recorded works of James Jamerson, Motown’s main bass player, claiming tapes were secretly shipped from Detroit to LA — something that has been denied by every single person working at Motown, and which can be easily disproved just by listening to the tapes. She claims to have played the bass on “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees — a track recorded in New York, by New York musicians. And whenever anyone points out the falsehoods, rather than saying “I may have made a mistake” she hurls abuse at them, and in some cases libels them on her website. So, Carol Kaye did not play on this record, and we know that because we have the AFM session sheets, which show that the bass players on the track were Ray Pohlman and Jimmy Bond. I’ll link a PDF of that sheet in the show notes. So in future, when I mention someone other than Carol Kaye playing on a song, and Wikipedia or somewhere says she played on it, bear this in mind. Two people who did play on the record were Bill Pitman and Tommy Tedesco, and this is why the B-side, an instrumental, is named “Tedesco and Pitman”. Spector was enough of a control freak that he didn’t want DJs ever to play the wrong side of his singles, so he stuck instrumental jam sessions by the studio musicians — with the songwriting credited to him rather than to them — on the B-sides. I don’t know about you, but I actually quite like “Tedesco and Pitman”, but then I’ve always had a soft spot for the vibraphone: [Excerpt: “The Ronettes” (The Wrecking Crew), Tedesco and Pitman”] “Be My Baby” was a massive hit — it went to number one on the Cashbox chart, though only number two on the Billboard chart, and sold millions of copies. The group were invited on to Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour, but Spector wanted Ronnie to be in California to record the follow-up, so the girls’ cousin Elaine filled in for her for the first couple of weeks of the tour, while Ronnie recorded another Barry, Greenwich and Spector song, “Baby I Love You”: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, “Baby I Love You”] Ronnie didn’t realise it at the time, but Spector was trying to isolate her from the other group members, and from her family. But at first this seemed to her like a sensible way of solving the problem, and she rejoined the tour after the record was made. Soon after this, the group travelled to the UK for a brief tour in early 1964, during which they became friendly with the Beatles — Ronnie had a brief chaste flirtation with John Lennon, and Estelle something a little more with George Harrison. They also got to know their support act on the tour, the Rolling Stones — at least once Ronnie had had a row with Andrew Loog Oldham, as Spector had sent a telegram forbidding the Rolling Stones from spending time with the Ronettes. Once Ronnie pointed out that they were there and Spector wasn’t, the two groups became very friendly — and more than friendly, if Keith Richards’ autobiography is to be believed. On their return to the US, they continued having hits through 1964 — nothing was as big as “Be My Baby”, but they had three more top forty hits that year, with two mediocre records, “The Best Part of Breaking Up” and “Do I Love You?”, co-written by the team of Pete Andreoli and Vini Poncia, and then a return to form with the magnificent “Walking in the Rain”, written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill: [Excerpt: The Ronettes Featuring Veronica, “Walking in the Rain”] But Spector was becoming more and more erratic in his personal life, and more and more controlling. I won’t go into too many details here, because we’re going to see a lot more of Phil Spector over the next year or so, but he recorded many great records with the Ronettes which he refused to release, claiming they weren’t quite right — Ronnie has later realised that he was probably trying to sabotage their career so he could have her all to himself, though at the time she didn’t know that. Neither of the two singles they did release in 1965 made the top fifty, and the one single they released in 1966, a return to songs by Barry and Greenwich, only made number one hundred, for one week: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, “I Can Hear Music”] Also in 1966, the Ronettes were invited by the Beatles to be their support act on their last ever tour, but once again Spector insisted that Ronnie couldn’t go, because she needed to be in the studio, so Elaine substituted for her again, much to the Beatles’ disappointment. Nothing from the studio sessions during that tour was released. The group broke up in 1967, and the next year Ronnie married Phil Spector, who became ever more controlling and abusive. I won’t go into details of the way he treated her, which you can read all about in her autobiography, but suffice to say that I was completely unsurprised when he murdered a woman in 2003. You’ll probably get some idea of his behaviours when I talk about him in future episodes, but what Ronnie suffered in the years they were together was something no-one should have to go through. By the time she managed to leave him, in June 1972, she had only released one track in years, a song that George Harrison had written for her called “Try Some, Buy Some”, which Spector had recorded with her at Harrison’s insistence, during a period when Spector was working with several of the ex-Beatles and trying to rebuild his own career on the back of them: [Excerpt: Ronnie Spector, “Try Some, Buy Some”] Neither Ronnie nor Spector were particularly keen on the track, and it was a commercial flop — although John Lennon later said that the track had inspired his “Happy Xmas (War is Over)”. Ronnie eventually escaped from Spector’s abuse — leaving the house barefoot, as Spector had stolen her shoes so she couldn’t leave — and started to build a new life for herself, though she would struggle with alcoholism for many years. She got nothing in their divorce settlement, as Spector threatened to hire a hit man to kill her if she tried to get anything from him, and she made a living by touring the nostalgia circuit with various new lineups of Ronettes — the others having given up on their music careers — and while she never had another hit, she did have a recording career. Her solo career got its proper start because of a chance meeting in New York. Her old friend John Lennon saw her on the street and called her over for a chat, and introduced her to the friend he was with, Jimmy Iovine, who was producing an album for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes. Bruce Springsteen had written a song for that band, and Iovine thought it might work well as a duet with Ronnie, and he invited her to the studio that day, and she cut the song with them: [Excerpt: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes, “You Mean So Much To Me”] That song became one of the most popular songs on the album, and so when the Asbury Dukes toured supporting Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, they brought Ronnie along with them to sing on that song and do a couple of her own hits. That led to the E-Street Band themselves backing Ronnie on a single — a version of Billy Joel’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood”, a song that Joel had written with her in mind: [Excerpt: Ronnie Spector and the E-Street Band, “Say Goodbye to Hollywood”] However, that was a flop, and so were all her later attempts to have comebacks, though she worked with some great musicians over the years. But she was able to continue having a career as a performer, even if she never returned to stardom, and she never made much money from her hits. She did, though, sing on one more top-ten hit, singing backing vocals on Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight”: [Excerpt: Eddie Money, “Take Me Home Tonight”] Phil Spector continued to earn money from his ex-wife for a long time after their divorce. By 1998, when the Ronettes finally sued Spector for unpaid royalties, they had earned, between them, a total of $14,482.30 in royalties from all their hit records — the amount that came from a single 1964 royalty payment. In court, Spector argued that he didn’t owe them any more, and indeed that *they* still owed *him* money, because the cost of recording their singles meant that they had never actually earned more money than they cost. Eventually, after a series of appeals, the group members each got about half a million dollars in 2002 — obviously a great deal of money, but a small fraction of what they actually earned. Spector, who was on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, prevented the Ronettes from being inducted out of spite towards his ex until he was imprisoned, at which point they were finally recognised, in 2007. Ronnie continues to perform, and seems to have a happy life. Estelle, sadly, did not — she suffered from anorexia and schizophrenia, spent a period of time homeless, and died in 2009. Nedra became a born-again Christian shortly after the group split up, and recorded a couple of unsuccessful albums of Christian music in the seventies, before going off to work in real estate. In September last year, it was announced that a film is going to be made of Ronnie Spector’s life story. It’s nice to know that there’ll be something out there telling her story with her as the protagonist, rather than as a background character in the story of her abusive husband.
Episode 110 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Be My Baby", and at the career of the Ronettes and Ronnie Spector. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Little Saint Nick" by the Beach Boys. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Erratum I say Ray Peterson's version of "Tell Laura I Love Her" was an American number one. It wasn't -- it only made number seven. Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. A lot of resources were used for this episode. Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara Miniskirts and Madness, or My Life as a Fabulous Ronette by Ronnie Spector and Vince Waldron is Ronnie's autobiography and was the main source. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson is a good overview of the Brill Building scene, and provided me with the information on Barry and Greenwich. I've referred to two biographies of Spector in this episode, Phil Spector: Out of His Head by Richard Williams and He's a Rebel by Mark Ribkowsky. And information on the Wrecking Crew largely comes from The Wrecking Crew by Kent Hartman. There are many compilations available with some of the hits Spector produced, but I recommend getting Back to Mono, a four-CD overview of his career containing all the major singles put out by Philles. If you want something just covering Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes, The Very Best of Ronnie Spector covers all the Ronettes hits and the best of her solo career. And the AFM contract listing the musicians on "Be My Baby" can be found here. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to take a look at the record that, more than anything, ensured Phil Spector's place in popular music history -- a record that changed the lives of several people who heard it for the better, and changed the life of its singer for the worse, and one which has the most imitated drum intro in the world. We're going to look at "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, "Be My Baby"] Before I start this one, two things need saying. The first is that this episode, by necessity, deals with spousal abuse. As always, I will try to discuss the issue with sensitivity, and touch on it as briefly as possible, but if you worry that it might upset you, please either skip this episode, or read the transcript to see if you'll be OK listening to it. I imagine that very few people will be upset by anything I say here, but it's always a possibility. And secondly, I'd like to apologise for this episode being so late. I had a major disruption in my personal life over Christmas -- one of those really bad life events that only happens once or twice in most people's lifetimes -- and that made it impossible for me to get any work done at all for the last couple of weeks. I'm now able to work again, and this should not be anything that affects the podcast for the rest of the year. Anyway, enough about that, let's get on with the story. The story of the Ronettes begins when Ronnie Bennett, a mixed-race girl from Harlem, became obsessed with the sound of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?"] Ronnie became the Teenagers' biggest fan, and even managed to arrange a meeting between herself and Lymon when they were both thirteen, but had her illusions torn away when he turned up drunk and made a pass at her. But that didn't stop her from trying her best to imitate Lymon's vocals, and forming a vocal group with several friends and relatives. That group had a male lead singer, but when they made their first appearance on one of the Harlem Apollo's talent shows, the lead singer got stage fright and couldn't start singing when he got on stage. Ronnie stepped forward and took over the lead vocal, and the group went down well enough even with the Apollo's notoriously hostile audience that a smaller group of them decided to start performing regularly together. The group took the name Ronnie and the Relatives, and consisted of Ronnie, her sister Estelle, and their cousin Nedra Talley. They originally only performed at private parties, bar mitzvahs and the like, but they soon reached the attention of Stu Phillips at Colpix Records, a label owned by the film studio Columbia Pictures. The first single by Ronnie and the Relatives was not a success -- "I Want a Boy" came out in August 1961 and didn't chart: [Excerpt: Ronnie and the Relatives, "I Want a Boy"] And nor did their second, "I'm Gonna Quit While I'm Ahead": [Excerpt: Ronnie and the Relatives, "I'm Gonna Quit While I'm Ahead"] Those records did apparently sell to at least one person, though, as when Ronnie met President Clinton in 1997, he asked her to sign a record, and specifically got her to sign an album of those early recordings for Colpix. While the girls were not having any commercial success, they did manage to accidentally get themselves a regular gig at the most important nightclub in New York. They went to the Peppermint Lounge, just as the Twist craze was at its height, and as they were underage they dressed up especially well in order to make themselves look more grown up so they could get in. Their ruse worked better than they expected. As they were all dressed the same, the club's manager assumed they were the dancers he'd booked, who hadn't shown up. He came out and told them to get on stage and start dancing, and so of course they did what he said, and started dancing to the Twist sounds of Joey Dee and the Starliters: [Excerpt: Joey Dee and the Starliters, "The Peppermint Twist"] The girls' dancing went down well, and then the band started playing "What'd I Say?", a favourite song of Ronnie's and one the group did in their own act, and Ronnie danced over to David Brigati, who was singing lead on the song, and started dancing close to him. He handed her the mic as a joke, and she took over the song. They got a regular spot at the Peppermint Lounge, dancing behind the Starliters for their whole show and joining them on vocals for a few numbers every night. Inspired by the Bobbettes and the Marvelettes, Ronnie and Estelle's mother suggested changing the group's name. She suggested "the Rondettes", and they dropped the "d", becoming the Ronettes. The singles they released on ColPix under the new name did no better than the others, but they were such an important part of the Peppermint Lounge that when the Lounge's owners opened a second venue in Florida, the girls went down there with the Starliters and were part of the show. That trip to Florida gave them two very different experiences. The first was that they got to see segregation firsthand for the first time, and they didn't like it -- especially when they, as light-skinned mixed-race women, were read as tanned white women and served in restaurants which then refused to serve their darker-skinned mothers. But the second was far more positive. They met Murray the K, who since Alan Freed had been driven out of his job had become the most popular DJ in New York. Murray was down in Florida for a holiday, and was impressed enough by the girls' dancing that he told them if they were ever in New York and wanted a spot on one of his regular shows at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre they should let him know. They replied that they lived in New York and went to those shows all the time -- of course they wanted to perform on his shows. They became regular performers at the Brooklyn Fox, where they danced between the other, bigger, acts, sang backing vocals, did a song or two themselves, and took part in comedy sketches with Murray. It was at these shows, as well, that they developed the look they would become famous with -- huge hair piled up on top of their heads, tons of mascara, and tight skirts slit to show their legs. It was a style inspired by street fashion rather than by what the other girl groups were wearing, and it made them incredibly popular with the Fox audience. But the Ronettes, even under their new name, and even with the backing of New York's most prominent DJ, were still not selling any records. They knew they were good, and the reaction to their stage performances proved as much, so they decided that the problem must be with Colpix. And so in 1963 they made a New Year's resolution -- they were going to get Phil Spector to produce them. By this time, Spector was becoming very well known in the music industry as a hit maker. We already saw in the recent episode on the Crystals how he was making hits for that group and the Blossoms, but he was also making hits with studio groups like Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, who he took into the top ten with a remake of the old Disney song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah": [Excerpt: Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah"] and as well as the records he was putting out on Philles, he was also working as a freelance producer for people like Connie Francis, producing her top ten hit "Second-Hand Love": [Excerpt: Connie Francis, "Second-Hand Love"] So the Ronettes were convinced that he could make them into the stars they knew they had the potential to be. The group had no idea how to get in touch with Spector, so they tried the direct route -- Estelle called directory enquiries, got the number for Philles Records, and called and asked to be put through to Spector. She was as astonished as anyone when he agreed to talk to her -- and it turned out that he'd seen the group regularly at the Brooklyn Fox and was interested in working with them. At their audition for Spector, the group first performed a close-harmony version of "When the Red Red Robin Goes Bob-Bob-Bobbin' Along", which they'd been taught by their singing teacher. Spector told them that he wanted to hear what they did when they were singing for themselves, not for a teacher, and so Ronnie launched into "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" It only took her getting to the second line of the song before Spector yelled at her to stop -- "THAT is the voice I've been looking for!" The Ronettes' first recordings for Spector weren't actually issued as by the Ronettes at all. To start with, he had them record a version of a song by the writing team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, "Why Don't They Let Us Fall In Love?", but didn't release it at the time. It was later released as by "Veronica", the name under which he released solo records by Ronnie: [Excerpt: Veronica, "Why Don't They Let Us Fall In Love?"] But at the time, when Ronnie asked him when the record was coming out, Spector answered "Never". He explained to her that it was a good record, but it wasn't a number one, and he was still working on their first number one record. Their next few recordings were covers of then-current dance hits, like "The Twist": [Excerpt, "The Crystals", "The Twist"] And "The Wah-Watusi", one of the few times that one of the other Ronettes took the lead rather than Ronnie, as Nedra sang lead: [Excerpt, "The Crystals", "The Wah-Watusi"] But these, and two other tracks, were released as album tracks on a Crystals album, credited to the Crystals rather than the Ronettes. The song that eventually became the group's first hit, "Be My Baby", was mostly written by one of the many husband-and-wife songwriting teams that had developed at the Brill Building, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Barry had started out as a performer who occasionally wrote, putting out records like "It's Called Rock and Roll": [Excerpt: Jeff Barry, "It's Called Rock and Roll"] But while his performing career had gone nowhere, he'd started to have some success as a songwriter, writing "Teenage Sonata" for Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Teenage Sonata"] And "Tell Laura I Love Her", which was recorded by several people, but the biggest hit version was the American number one by Ray Peterson: [Excerpt: Ray Peterson, "Tell Laura I Love Her"] Ellie Greenwich had also started as a performer, recording "Silly Isn't It?" under the name Ellie Gaye: [Excerpt: Ellie Gaye, "Silly, Isn't It?"] She'd become one of the most important demo singers in New York, and had also started writing songs. She'd first collaborated with Doc Pomus, cowriting songs like "This is It", which had been a flop single for Jay and the Americans: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "This is It"] She'd then been taken on by Trio Music, Leiber and Stoller's company, where she had largely collaborated with another writer named Tony Powers. Trio had first refusal on anything the two of them wrote, and if Leiber and Stoller didn't like it, they could take the song elsewhere. Greenwich and Powers had their biggest successes with songs that Leiber and Stoller rejected, which they sold to Aaron Schroeder. And they'd started up a collaboration with Phil Spector -- although Spector and Greenwich's first meeting had not exactly gone smoothly. He'd gone into her office to hear her play a song that she thought would be suitable for the Paris Sisters, but had kept wandering out of the office, and had kept looking at himself in a mirror and primping himself rather than listen to her song. Eventually she said to him "Listen to me, you little prick. Did you come to look at yourself or to hear my songs?", and she didn't make that sale. But later on, Spector became interested in a song she'd sold to Schroeder, and made an appointment to meet her and talk about her writing some stuff for him -- that second meeting, which Spector didn't realise was with someone he'd already made a bad impression on, Spector turned up four hours late. But despite that, Greenwich and Powers wrote several songs for Spector, who was also given songwriting credit, and which became big hits in versions he produced -- "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry", a single by Darlene Love: [Excerpt: Darlene Love, "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry"] And "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others' Hearts?", released as by Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, but with Love once again on lead vocals: [Excerpt: Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others' Hearts?"] I say that Spector was also given songwriting credit on those records, because there is some debate about how much he contributed to the songs he's credited on. Some of his co-writers have said that he would often only change a word or a phrase, and get himself cut in on an already-completed song, while others have said that he contributed a reasonable amount to the songwriting, though he was never the primary writer -- for example Barry Mann has said that Spector came up with the middle section for "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". I tend towards the belief that Spector's contribution to the writing on those songs he's co-credited on was minimal -- in his whole career, the number of songs he wrote on his own seems to be in the single figures, while those other writers wrote dozens of hit records without any contribution from Spector -- and so when I talk about records he produced I'll tend to use phrasing like "a Goffin and King song co-credited to Phil Spector" rather than "a song by Goffin, King, and Spector", but I don't want that to give the impression that I'm certain Spector made no contribution. But while Greenwich and Powers were a mildly successful team, their partnership ended when Greenwich met Jeff Barry at a family Thanksgiving dinner -- Greenwich's uncle was Barry's cousin. As Greenwich later put it, when they started talking together about music and realised how much they had in common, "I went 'ooh', he went 'mmmhh', and his wife went 'I don't think I like this'". Soon their previous partnerships, both romantic and musical, were over, and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich became the third of the great Brill Building husband-and-wife songwriting teams. Where Goffin and King had a sophisticated edge to their writing, with a hint of sexual subversion and the mingling of pain and pleasure, and Mann and Weill tried to incorporate social comment into their songs, Barry and Greenwich were happy to be silly -- they were writing songs like "Hanky Panky", "Da Doo Ron Ron", and "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy": [Excerpt: Ellie Greenwich "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy (demo)"] This worked extremely well for them, to the extent that after they broke up a few years later, Barry would continue this formula with songs such as "Sugar Sugar", "Jingle Jangle" and "Bang Shang A Lang". Barry and Greenwich's style was to jam in as many hooks as possible, maybe put in a joke or two, keep the lyrics simple, and get out in two minutes. Very few of their songs were masterpieces of songwriting, but they *were* absolutely perfect templates for masterpieces of production. It sounds like I'm damning them with faint praise, but I'm really not. There is a huge skill involved in what they were doing -- if you're writing some heartwrenching masterpiece about the human condition, people will forgive the odd lapse in craft, but if you're writing "My baby does the hanky panky", there's no margin for error, and you're not going to get forgiven if you mess it up. Barry and Greenwich were good enough at this that they became the go-to writers for Spector for the next couple of years. He would record songs by most of the Brill Building teams, but when you think of the classic records Spector produced, they're far more likely than not to be Barry and Greenwich songs -- of the twenty-seven Philles singles released after Barry and Greenwich started writing together, fourteen are credited to Barry/Greenwich/Spector, and other than the joke release "Let's Dance the Screw", which we talked about back in the episode on the Crystals, there's a run of eleven singles released on the label between late 1962 and early 1964 which are credited either as Greenwich/Powers/Spector or Barry/Greenwich/Spector. And so it was naturally to Barry and Greenwich that Spector turned to write the first big hit for the Ronettes -- and he let Ronnie hear the writing session. By this time, Spector had become romantically involved with Ronnie, and he invited her into his apartment to sit in the next room and listen to them working on the song -- usually they got together in hotels rather than at Spector's home. While she was there, she found several pairs of women's shoes -- Spector hadn't told her he was married, and claimed to her when she asked that they belonged to his sister. This should probably have been a sign of things to come. Assuming that Spector did contribute to the writing, I think it's easy to tell what he brought to “Be My Baby”. If you listen to that Connie Francis record I excerpted earlier, on which Spector is also a credited co-writer, the melody line for the line “that you don't feel the same” leading into the chorus: [Excerpt: Connie Francis, “Second-Hand Love”] is identical to the melody line leading into the chorus of “Be My Baby”: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, “Be My Baby”] So that transition between the verse and the chorus is likely his work. After rehearsing Ronnie for several weeks in New York, Spector flew her out to LA to make the record in Gold Star Studios, where she spent three days recording the lead vocals. The backing vocals weren't provided by the other Ronettes, but rather by the Blossoms, with a few extra singers -- notably Spector's assistant Sonny Bono, and his new girlfriend Cher -- but what really made the track was not the vocals -- although the song was perfect for Ronnie -- but Hal Blaine's drum intro: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, "Be My Baby"] That intro was utterly simple -- Blaine was always a minimalist player, someone who would play for the song rather than play fussy fills -- but that simple part, combined with the powerful sound that the engineer Larry Levine got, was enough to make it one of the most memorable intros in rock music history. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys talks to this day about how he had to pull over to the side of the road when he first heard it on his car radio, and he would listen to the record incessantly for hours at a time. Incidentally, since I'm talking about the musicians, a lot of sources credit Carol Kaye for playing the bass on this track, so I'm going to say something once, here, which should be taken as read whenever I'm talking about records made in LA in the sixties -- Carol Kaye is not only an unreliable source about what records she played on, she is an utterly dishonest one. For those who don't know, Ms. Kaye was one of the great bass players of the sixties, and also one of the better session guitarists. She played on hundreds of records in the sixties, including many, many, classics from the Beach Boys, Spector, Frank Zappa, and others, and she was the only woman getting regular session work in LA on a rock instrument -- there may have been session orchestral musicians who were women, but when it comes to guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, sax, and so on, she was the only one. For that, she deserves a huge amount of credit. Unfortunately, she has never been happy only being credited for the records she actually played on, and insists she played on many, many, more. Some of this can be reasonably put down to lapses in memory more than fifty years later -- if you're playing two or three sessions a day, and you play on a bunch of Beach Boys records, then it's easy enough to misremember having played on "Surfin' USA" when maybe you played on a similar-sounding record, and there are things like her claiming to have played on "Good Vibrations", where there were multiple sessions for that track, and it happened that the takes eventually used weren't the ones where she was playing bass, but she had no way of knowing that. That's completely forgivable. But Ms. Kaye also claims, with no evidence whatsoever on her side and a great deal of evidence against her, to have been responsible for playing almost the entire recorded works of James Jamerson, Motown's main bass player, claiming tapes were secretly shipped from Detroit to LA -- something that has been denied by every single person working at Motown, and which can be easily disproved just by listening to the tapes. She claims to have played the bass on "I'm a Believer" by the Monkees -- a track recorded in New York, by New York musicians. And whenever anyone points out the falsehoods, rather than saying "I may have made a mistake" she hurls abuse at them, and in some cases libels them on her website. So, Carol Kaye did not play on this record, and we know that because we have the AFM session sheets, which show that the bass players on the track were Ray Pohlman and Jimmy Bond. I'll link a PDF of that sheet in the show notes. So in future, when I mention someone other than Carol Kaye playing on a song, and Wikipedia or somewhere says she played on it, bear this in mind. Two people who did play on the record were Bill Pitman and Tommy Tedesco, and this is why the B-side, an instrumental, is named "Tedesco and Pitman". Spector was enough of a control freak that he didn't want DJs ever to play the wrong side of his singles, so he stuck instrumental jam sessions by the studio musicians -- with the songwriting credited to him rather than to them -- on the B-sides. I don't know about you, but I actually quite like "Tedesco and Pitman", but then I've always had a soft spot for the vibraphone: [Excerpt: "The Ronettes" (The Wrecking Crew), Tedesco and Pitman"] "Be My Baby" was a massive hit -- it went to number one on the Cashbox chart, though only number two on the Billboard chart, and sold millions of copies. The group were invited on to Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars tour, but Spector wanted Ronnie to be in California to record the follow-up, so the girls' cousin Elaine filled in for her for the first couple of weeks of the tour, while Ronnie recorded another Barry, Greenwich and Spector song, "Baby I Love You": [Excerpt: The Ronettes, "Baby I Love You"] Ronnie didn't realise it at the time, but Spector was trying to isolate her from the other group members, and from her family. But at first this seemed to her like a sensible way of solving the problem, and she rejoined the tour after the record was made. Soon after this, the group travelled to the UK for a brief tour in early 1964, during which they became friendly with the Beatles -- Ronnie had a brief chaste flirtation with John Lennon, and Estelle something a little more with George Harrison. They also got to know their support act on the tour, the Rolling Stones -- at least once Ronnie had had a row with Andrew Loog Oldham, as Spector had sent a telegram forbidding the Rolling Stones from spending time with the Ronettes. Once Ronnie pointed out that they were there and Spector wasn't, the two groups became very friendly -- and more than friendly, if Keith Richards' autobiography is to be believed. On their return to the US, they continued having hits through 1964 -- nothing was as big as "Be My Baby", but they had three more top forty hits that year, with two mediocre records, "The Best Part of Breaking Up" and "Do I Love You?", co-written by the team of Pete Andreoli and Vini Poncia, and then a return to form with the magnificent "Walking in the Rain", written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill: [Excerpt: The Ronettes Featuring Veronica, "Walking in the Rain"] But Spector was becoming more and more erratic in his personal life, and more and more controlling. I won't go into too many details here, because we're going to see a lot more of Phil Spector over the next year or so, but he recorded many great records with the Ronettes which he refused to release, claiming they weren't quite right -- Ronnie has later realised that he was probably trying to sabotage their career so he could have her all to himself, though at the time she didn't know that. Neither of the two singles they did release in 1965 made the top fifty, and the one single they released in 1966, a return to songs by Barry and Greenwich, only made number one hundred, for one week: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, "I Can Hear Music"] Also in 1966, the Ronettes were invited by the Beatles to be their support act on their last ever tour, but once again Spector insisted that Ronnie couldn't go, because she needed to be in the studio, so Elaine substituted for her again, much to the Beatles' disappointment. Nothing from the studio sessions during that tour was released. The group broke up in 1967, and the next year Ronnie married Phil Spector, who became ever more controlling and abusive. I won't go into details of the way he treated her, which you can read all about in her autobiography, but suffice to say that I was completely unsurprised when he murdered a woman in 2003. You'll probably get some idea of his behaviours when I talk about him in future episodes, but what Ronnie suffered in the years they were together was something no-one should have to go through. By the time she managed to leave him, in June 1972, she had only released one track in years, a song that George Harrison had written for her called "Try Some, Buy Some", which Spector had recorded with her at Harrison's insistence, during a period when Spector was working with several of the ex-Beatles and trying to rebuild his own career on the back of them: [Excerpt: Ronnie Spector, "Try Some, Buy Some"] Neither Ronnie nor Spector were particularly keen on the track, and it was a commercial flop -- although John Lennon later said that the track had inspired his "Happy Xmas (War is Over)". Ronnie eventually escaped from Spector's abuse -- leaving the house barefoot, as Spector had stolen her shoes so she couldn't leave -- and started to build a new life for herself, though she would struggle with alcoholism for many years. She got nothing in their divorce settlement, as Spector threatened to hire a hit man to kill her if she tried to get anything from him, and she made a living by touring the nostalgia circuit with various new lineups of Ronettes -- the others having given up on their music careers -- and while she never had another hit, she did have a recording career. Her solo career got its proper start because of a chance meeting in New York. Her old friend John Lennon saw her on the street and called her over for a chat, and introduced her to the friend he was with, Jimmy Iovine, who was producing an album for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes. Bruce Springsteen had written a song for that band, and Iovine thought it might work well as a duet with Ronnie, and he invited her to the studio that day, and she cut the song with them: [Excerpt: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes, "You Mean So Much To Me"] That song became one of the most popular songs on the album, and so when the Asbury Dukes toured supporting Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, they brought Ronnie along with them to sing on that song and do a couple of her own hits. That led to the E-Street Band themselves backing Ronnie on a single -- a version of Billy Joel's "Say Goodbye to Hollywood", a song that Joel had written with her in mind: [Excerpt: Ronnie Spector and the E-Street Band, "Say Goodbye to Hollywood"] However, that was a flop, and so were all her later attempts to have comebacks, though she worked with some great musicians over the years. But she was able to continue having a career as a performer, even if she never returned to stardom, and she never made much money from her hits. She did, though, sing on one more top-ten hit, singing backing vocals on Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight": [Excerpt: Eddie Money, "Take Me Home Tonight"] Phil Spector continued to earn money from his ex-wife for a long time after their divorce. By 1998, when the Ronettes finally sued Spector for unpaid royalties, they had earned, between them, a total of $14,482.30 in royalties from all their hit records -- the amount that came from a single 1964 royalty payment. In court, Spector argued that he didn't owe them any more, and indeed that *they* still owed *him* money, because the cost of recording their singles meant that they had never actually earned more money than they cost. Eventually, after a series of appeals, the group members each got about half a million dollars in 2002 -- obviously a great deal of money, but a small fraction of what they actually earned. Spector, who was on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, prevented the Ronettes from being inducted out of spite towards his ex until he was imprisoned, at which point they were finally recognised, in 2007. Ronnie continues to perform, and seems to have a happy life. Estelle, sadly, did not -- she suffered from anorexia and schizophrenia, spent a period of time homeless, and died in 2009. Nedra became a born-again Christian shortly after the group split up, and recorded a couple of unsuccessful albums of Christian music in the seventies, before going off to work in real estate. In September last year, it was announced that a film is going to be made of Ronnie Spector's life story. It's nice to know that there'll be something out there telling her story with her as the protagonist, rather than as a background character in the story of her abusive husband.
A 3 hour show filled with as many Christmas songs as possible, along with some bootlegs and classic movie samples to bring some festive cheer. Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir - Carol Of The Bells Elton Jonn - Step Into Christmas Lou Rawls - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (AwayTEAM Remix) Michael Buble - It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas Mud - Lonely This Christmas David Essex - A Winter's Tale The Crystals - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone The Ronnettes - Frosty The Snowman Traditional Choir - God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen Cliff Richard - Mistletoe and Wine frank sinatra - Let It Snow Jona Lewie - Stop the Cavalry Ertha Kitt - Santa Baby cliff Richard - Saviour's Day Whitney Houston - Do You Hear What I Hear Leona Lewis - One More Sleep Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody Chris Rea - Driving Home For Christmas John & Yoko - Happy Xmas (War Is Over) Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans - Here Comes Santa Claus Dave Koz - 'Twas The Night Before Christmas The Crystals - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power of Love Peter Auty - Walking In The Air Coldplay - Christmas Lights Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas Is You The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York The Ronnettes - Sleigh Ride The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping The Ronnettes - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus Wham! - Last Christmas Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday Andy Williams - It's The Most Wonderful Time Traditional Choir (feat. Bill Murray) - Deck The Halls Coca Cola - Holidays Are Coming Corporal Blossom - White Christmas Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas (Epicentre Combined Mix) The Pro Arte Orchestra - The Box of Delights Theme Bastille - Can't Fight This Feeling Darlene Love - Winter Wonderland Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmastime Greg Lake - I Believe In Father Christmas Traditional Choir - Once In Royal David's City The Beach Boys - Little Saint Nick Johnny Mercer & The Pied Pipers - Santa Claus Is Comin To Town (Q-Burns Abstract Message Remix) East 17 - Stay Another Day Peggy Lee - Winter Wonderland Lily Allen - Somewhere Only We Know Aurora - Half The World Away Michael Buble - Ill Be Home For Christmas Sinead O'Connor - Silent Night, Holy Night Ella Fitzgerald - Sleigh Ride (The Latin Project Remix) Boney M. - Mary's Boy Child , Oh My Lord Traditional Choir - Joy To The World Tom Odell - Real Love MootBoxle - Merry Little Christmas (Album Mix) Queen - Thank God It's Christmas Scrooge - God Bless Us, Everyone
Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductee! Happy Holiday's, Merry Christmas!! Featured in the Academy Award Winning Documentary "20 Feet from Stardom", Darlene Has done a LOT #1 Hit Make, Actress on Stage & in Motion Picture Blockbusters like the "Lethal Weapon" Movies Rolling Stone Magazine has proclaimed Darlene Love to be “one of the greatest singers of all time” and that certainly rings true, but perhaps Paul Shaffer says it even more concisely: “Darlene Love is Rock N’ Roll!” From her first number #1 Hit,"He's A Rebel", through her string of label hits with legendary producer Phil Spector, including "Da Doo Ron Ron", "He's Sure The Boy I Love & "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" a classic she sangs every Christmas season on the "Late Show with David Letterman (it is David's favorite). Darlene on Lead Vocals #1 Hit ~ "He's a Rebel" ~ The Crystals #10 Hit ~ "He's Sure the Boy I Love" ~ The Crystals Darlene solo ~ "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" In December 2010, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" first on its list of The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Song, saying that "nobody can match Love's emotion and sheer vocal power." Several of the classic hit song's she sings backup on: Sam Cooke's ~ "Chain Gang", Bobby "Boris" Pickett ~ "The Monster Mash" "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" ~ The Righteous Brothers "Walking In The Rain" ~ The Ronettes The Beach Boys ~ "In My Room" "Poor Side of Town" ~ Johnny Rivers "Rock and Roll Lullaby" ~ B.J. Thomas "Let Us Pray" ~ Elvis Presley "Get It Right" ~ Luther Vandross And many other top 10 hits of the Rock n Roll Era. Her voice is on countless songs she sang backup on for artists like Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Cher, Luther Vandross and Aretha Franklin. One of Darlene's biggest fans is "The "Boss" Bruce Springsteen. She has proven herself a talented actress as well, on stage and screen, starring as Danny Glover's wife in all of the LETHAL WEAPON films and lighting-up Broadway in such musicals as GREASE and the Tony-award nominated LEADER OF THE PACK. Darlene also starred for three years on Broadway as ‘Motormouth Maybelle’ in the Tony Award winning musical HAIRSPRAY. Darlene Love was just a high school sophomore in Los Angeles when she was discovered out of a gospel choir, and asked to join a burgeoning girl group called The Blossoms, who began recording for Phil Specter. Soon thereafter, other artists like Sam Cooke were attracted to her powerful sound, and sought Darlene on their recordings. With The Blossoms and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene sang lead vocals on some of the greatest music hits of the 60's. The Blossoms landed a weekly spot on the landmark television series SHINDIG & Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special and through the 60's and 70's, Darlene continued to perform with and back-up such diverse artists as The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas, Tom Jones, The Righteous Brothers and Sonny & Cher. She has received great national press exposure, including a feature in PEOPLE magazine, a CNN television documentary on her life, and bookings on numerous national television programs, including NBC-TV's TODAY, Wendy Williams, CW and Oprah as her yearly stint on the David Letterman show which she has done 26 years strong. Darlene’s first studio Christmas album, “It’s Christmas, Of Course” was released December 2007 to national critical praise. In 2010 Darlene began a tour of Australia starring as ‘Miss Sherman’ in “Fame: The Musical”. Darlene has also released a CD and DVD of her live concert ”The Concert of Love” produced and released by Reel Good Productions. Her albums include AGE OF MIRACLES, recorded live in New York City and her first gospel album, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE released by Harmony records. A feature film based on Darlene’s autobiography “My Name Is Love” is in the works Along with more great new music for released in 2021. © 2020 All Rights Reserved © 2020 Join Me on ~ iHeart Radio @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBAS Spot Me on Spotify & Amazon
Two hours of Christmas music to remind us that we are all one world. We feature great artists you know and love. Danny Lane’s present to you, with no interruptions, Merry Christmas. Email us at dannymemorylane@gmail.com and "Like" this episode & please re-post, tell a friend. Here are the songs featured in this episode: 1) Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me) by Elvis Presley 2) All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey 3) Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane) by Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans 4) The Man With All The Toys by The Beach Boys 5) Baby's First Christmas by Connie Francis 6) Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer by The Temptations 7) Santa Claus Is Coming To Town by The Crystals 8) Frosty The Snowman by Jan & Dean 9) Christmas All Over Again by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers 10) My Favorite Things by The Supremes 11) Pretty Paper by Roy Orbison 12) Run Rudolph Run by Chuck Berry 13) Christmas Ain't Christmas (Without The One You Love) by The O'Jays 14) Merry Merry Christmas Baby by Dodie Stevens 15) Is 'Zat You, Santa Claus? by Louis Armstrong 16) Sleigh Ride by The Ronettes 17) White Christmas by The Drifters (with Clyde McPhatter, lead) 18) Gee Whiz, It's Christmas by Carla Thomas 19) Christmas Time Again by Extreme 20) Jingle Bell Rock by Bobby Helms 21) Merry Christmas Baby by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band 22) Merry Christmas by The Cameos 23) Winter Wonderland by Aretha Franklin 24) The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late) by The Chipmunks (David Seville) 25) It's Christmas by Marvin & Johnny 26) Baby, It's Cold Outside by Kelly Clarkson (with Ronnie Dunn) 27) Dominick The Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey) by Lou Monte 28) Christmas In America by Melissa Etheridge 29) There's Trouble Brewin' by Jack Scott 30) Merry Christmas Darling by The Uniques 31) Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree by Cyndi Lauper 32) Christmas Time Is Here by Ray Parker Jr. 33) The Twelve Days Of Christmas by Allan Sherman 34) Blue Christmas by Elvis Presley 35) Teenage Hall Of Fame by The Aztecs 36) Rosie Christmas by Donna Summer 37) Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love 38) Snoopy's Christmas by The Royal Guardsmen 39) Parade Of The Wooden Soldiers by The Crystals 40) Please Come Home For Christmas by The Eagles 41) Last Christmas by Wham! (with George Michael) 42) Sleigh Ride by The Ventures
Episode 104 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "He's a Rebel", and how a song recorded by the Blossoms was released under the name of the Crystals. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. A lot of resources were used for this episode. The material on Gene Pitney mostly comes from his page on This is My Story. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson is a good overview of the Brill Building scene. Girl Groups by John Clemente contains potted biographies of many groups of the era, including articles on both The Crystals and the Blossoms. I've referred to two biographies of Spector in this episode, Phil Spector: Out of His Head by Richard Williams and He's a Rebel by Mark Ribkowsky. And information on the Wrecking Crew largely comes from The Wrecking Crew by Kent Hartman. There are many compilations available with some of the hits Spector produced, but I recommend getting Back to Mono, a four-CD overview of his career containing all the major singles put out by Philles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A brief note -- there are some very brief mentions of domestic abuse here. Nothing I think will upset anyone, but you might want to check the transcript if you're at all unsure. Up to this point, whenever we've looked at a girl group, it's been at one that had, to a greater or lesser extent, some control over their own career. Groups like the Marvelettes, the Chantels, and the Bobbettes all wrote their own material, at least at first, and had distinctive personalities before they ever made a record. But today, we're going to look at a group whose identity was so subsumed in that of their producer that the record we're looking at was released under the name of a different group from the one that recorded it. We're going to look at "He's a Rebel", which was recorded by the Blossoms and released by the Crystals. [Excerpt: “The Crystals” (The Blossoms), "He's a Rebel"] The Crystals, from their very beginnings, were intended as a vehicle for the dreams of men, rather than for their own ambitions. Whereas the girl groups we've looked at so far all formed as groups of friends at school before they moved into professional singing, the Crystals were put together by a man named Benny Wells. Wells had a niece, Barbara Alston, who sang with a couple of her schoolfriends, Mary Thomas and Myrna Giraud. Wells put those three together with two other girls, Dee Dee Kenniebrew and Patsy Wright, to form a five-piece vocal group. Wells seems not to have had much concept of what was in the charts at the time -- the descriptions of the music he had the girls singing talk about him wanting them to sound like the Modernaires, the vocal group who sang with Glenn Miller's band in the early 1940s. But the girls went along with Wells, and Wells had good enough ears to recognise a hit when one was brought to him -- and one was brought to him by Patsy Wright's brother-in-law, Leroy Bates. Bates had written a song called "There's No Other Like My Baby", and Wells could tell it had potential. Incidentally, some books say that the song was based on a gospel song called "There's No Other Like My Jesus", and that claim is repeated on Wikipedia, but I can't find any evidence of a song of that name other than people talking about "There's No Other Like My Baby". There is a gospel song called "There's No Other Name Like Jesus", but that has no obvious resemblance to Bates' song, and so I'm going to assume that the song was totally original. As well as bringing the song, Bates also brought the fledgling group a name -- he had a daughter, Crystal Bates, after whom the group named themselves. The newly-named Crystals took their song to the offices of Hill and Range Music, which as well as being a publishing company also owned Big Top Records, the label that had put out the original version of "Twist and Shout", which had so annoyed Bert Berns. And it was there that they ended up meeting up with Phil Spector. After leaving his role at Atlantic, Spector had started working as a freelance producer, including working for Big Top. According to Spector -- a notorious liar, it's important to remember -- he worked during this time on dozens of hits for which he didn't get any credit, just to earn money. But we do know about some of the records he produced during this time. For example, there was one by a new singer called Gene Pitney. Pitney had been knocking around for years, recording for Decca as part of a duo called Jamie and Jane: [Excerpt: Jamie and Jane, "Faithful Our Love"] And for Blaze Records as Billy Bryan: [Excerpt: Billy Bryan, "Going Back to My Love"] But he'd recently signed to Musicor, a label owned by Aaron Schroeder, and had recorded a hit under his own name. Pitney had written "(I Wanna) Love My Life Away", and had taken advantage of the new multitracking technology to record his vocals six times over, creating a unique sound that took the record into the top forty: [Excerpt: Gene Pitney, "(I Wanna) Love My Life Away"] But while that had been a hit, his second single for Musicor was a flop, and so for the third single, Musicor decided to pull out the big guns. They ran a session at which basically the whole of the Brill Building turned up. Leiber and Stoller were to produce a song they'd written for Pitney, the new hot husband-and-wife songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were there, as was Burt Bacharach, and so were Goffin and King, who wrote the song that *Spector* was to produce for Pitney. All of them were in the control booth, and all of them were chipping in ideas. As you might expect with that many cooks, the session did not go smoothly, and to make matters worse, Pitney was suffering from a terrible cold. The session ended up costing thirteen thousand dollars, at a time when an average recording session cost five hundred dollars. On the song Spector was producing on that session, Goffin and King's "Every Breath I Take", Pitney knew that with the cold he would be completely unable to hit the last note in full voice, and went into falsetto. Luckily, everyone thought it sounded good, and he could pretend it was deliberate, rather than the result of necessity: [Excerpt: Gene Pitney, "Every Breath I Take"] The record only went to number forty-two, but it resuscitated Pitney's singing career, and forged a working relationship between the two men. But soon after that, Spector had flown back to LA to work with his old friend Lester Sill. Sill and producer/songwriter, Lee Hazelwood, had been making records with the guitarist Duane Eddy, producing a string of hits like “Rebel Rouser”: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Rebel Rouser"] But Eddy had recently signed directly to a label, rather than going through Sill and Hazelwood's company as before, and so Sill and Hazelwood had been looking for new artists, and they'd recently signed a group called the Paris Sisters to their production company. Sill had decided to get Spector in to produce the group, and Spector came up with a production that Sill was sure would be a hit, on a song called "I Love How You Love Me", written by Barry Mann with another writer called Jack Keller: [Excerpt: The Paris Sisters, "I Love How You Love Me"] Spector was becoming a perfectionist -- he insisted on recording the rhythm track for that record at one studio, and the string part at another, and apparently spent fifty hours on the mix -- and Sill was spending more and more time in the studio with Spector, fascinated at his attitude to the work he was doing. This led to a breakup between Sill and Hazelwood -- their business relationship was already strained, but Hazelwood got jealous of all the time that Sill was spending with Spector, and decided to split their partnership and go and produce Duane Eddy, without Sill, at Eddy's new label. So Sill was suddenly in the market for a new business partner, and he and Spector decided that they were going to start up their own label, Philles, although by this point everyone who had ever worked with Spector was warning Sill that it was a bad idea to go into business with him. But Spector and Sill kept their intentions secret for a while, and so when Spector met the Crystals at Hill and Range's offices, everyone at Hill and Range just assumed that he was still working for them as a freelance producer, and that the Crystals were going to be recording for Big Top. Freddie Bienstock of Hill & Range later said, "We were very angry because we felt they were Big Top artists. He was merely supposed to produce them for us. There was no question about the fact that he was just rehearsing them for Big Top—hell, he rehearsed them for weeks in our offices. And then he just stole them right out of here. That precipitated a breach of contract with us. We were just incensed because that was a terrific group, and for him to do that shows the type of character he was. We felt he was less than ethical, and, obviously, he was then shown the door.” Bienstock had further words for Spector too, ones I can't repeat here because of content rules about adult language, but they weren't flattering. Spector had been dating Bienstock's daughter, with Bienstock's approval, but that didn't last once Spector betrayed Bienstock. But Spector didn't care. He had his own New York girl group, one that could compete with the Bobbettes or the Chantels or the Shirelles, and he was going to make the Crystals as big as any of them, and he wasn't going to cut Big Top in. He slowed down "There's No Other Like My Baby" and it became the first release on Philles Records, with Barbara Alston singing lead: [Excerpt: The Crystals, "There's No Other Like My Baby"] That record was cut late at night in June 1961. In fact it was cut on Prom Night -- three of the girls came straight to the session from their High School prom, still wearing their prom dresses. Spector wrote the B-side, a song that was originally intended to be the A-side called "Oh Yeah, Maybe Baby", but everyone quickly realised that "There's No Other Like My Baby" was the hit, and it made the top twenty. While Spector was waiting for the money to come in on the first Philles record, he took another job, with Liberty Records, working for his friend Snuff Garrett. He got a thirty thousand dollar advance, made a single flop record with them with an unknown singer named Obrey Wilson, and then quit, keeping his thirty thousand dollars. Once "There's No Other" made the charts, Spector took the Crystals into the studio again, to record a song by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil that he'd got from Aldon Music. Spector was becoming increasingly convinced that he'd made a mistake in partnering with Lester Sill, and he should really have been working with Don Kirshner, and he was in discussions with Kirshner which came to nothing about them having some sort of joint project. While those discussions fell through, almost all the songs that Spector would use for the next few years would come from Aldon songwriters, and "Uptown" was a perfect example of the new kind of socially-relevant pop songwriting that had been pioneered by Goffin and King, but which Mann and Weil were now making their own. Before becoming a professional songwriter, Weil had been part of the Greenwich Village folk scene, and while she wasn't going to write anything as explicitly political as the work of Pete Seeger, she thought that songs should at least try to be about the real world. "Uptown" was the first example of a theme which would become a major motif for the Crystals' records -- a song about a man who is looked down upon by society, but who the singer believes is better than his reputation. Mann and Weil's song combined that potent teen emotion with an inspiration Weil had had, seeing a handsome Black man pushing a hand truck in the Garment District, and realising that even though he was oppressed by his job, and "a nobody" when he was working downtown, he was still somebody when he was at home. They originally wrote the song for Tony Orlando to sing, but Spector insisted, rightly, that the song worked better with female voices, and that the Crystals should do it. Spector took Mann and Weil's song and gave it a production that evoked the Latin feel of Leiber and Stoller's records for the Drifters: [Excerpt: The Crystals, "Uptown"] By the time of this second record, the Crystals had already been through one lineup change. As soon as she left school, Myrna Giraud got married, and she didn't want to perform on stage any more. She would still sing with the girls in the studio for a little while -- she's on every track of their first album, though she left altogether soon after this recording -- but she was a married woman now and didn't want to be in a group. The girls needed a replacement, and they also needed something else -- a lead singer. All the girls loved singing, but none of them wanted to be out in front singing lead. Luckily, Dee Dee Kenniebrew's mother was a secretary at the school attended by a fourteen-year-old gospel singer named La La Brooks, and she heard Brooks singing and invited her to join the group. Brooks soon became the group's lead vocalist on stage. But in the studio, Spector didn't want to use her as the lead vocalist. He insisted on Barbara singing the lead on "Uptown", but in a sign of things to come, Mann and Weil weren't happy with her performance -- Spector had to change parts of the melody to accommodate her range -- and they begged Spector to rerecord the lead vocal with Little Eva singing. However, Eva became irritated with Spector's incessant demands for more takes and his micromanagement, cursed him out, and walked out of the studio. The record was released with Barbara's original lead vocal, and while Mann and Weil weren't happy with that, listeners were, as it went to number thirteen on the charts: [Excerpt: The Crystals, "Uptown"] Little Eva later released her own version of the song, on the Dimension Dolls compilation we talked about in the episode on "The Loco-Motion": [Excerpt: Little Eva, "Uptown"] It was Little Eva who inspired the next Crystals single, as well -- as we talked about in the episode on her, she inspired a truly tasteless Goffin and King song called "He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss", which I will not be excerpting, but which was briefly released as the Crystals' third single, before being withdrawn after people objected to hearing teenage girls sing about how romantic and loving domestic abuse is. There seems to be some suggestion that the record was released partly as a way for Spector to annoy Lester Sill, who by all accounts was furious at the release. Spector was angry at Sill over the amount of money he'd made from the Paris Sisters recordings, and decided that he was being treated unfairly and wanted to force Sill out of their partnership. Certainly the next recording by the Crystals was meant to get rid of some other business associates. Two of Philles' distributors had a contract which said they were entitled to the royalties on two Crystals singles. So the second one was a ten-minute song called "The Screw", split over two sides of a disc, which sounded like this: [Excerpt: The Crystals, "The Screw"] Only a handful of promotional copies of that were ever produced. One went to Lester Sill, who by this point had been bought out of his share of the company for a small fraction of what it was worth. The last single Spector recorded for Philles while Sill was still involved with the label was another Crystals record, one that had the involvement of many people Sill had brought into Spector's orbit, and who would continue working with him long after the two men stopped working together. Spector had decided he was going to start recording in California again, and two of Sill's assistants would become regular parts of Spector's new hit-making machine. The first of these was a composer and arranger called Jack Nitzsche, who we'll be seeing a lot more of in this podcast over the next couple of years, in some unexpected places. Nitzsche was a young songwriter, whose biggest credit up to this point was a very minor hit for Preston Epps, "Bongo, Bongo, Bongo": [Excerpt: Preston Epps, "Bongo Bongo Bongo"] Nitzsche would become Spector's most important collaborator, and his arrangements, as much as Spector's production, are what characterise the "Wall of Sound" for which Spector would become famous. The other assistant of Sill's who became important to Spector's future was a saxophone player named Steve Douglas. We've seen Douglas before, briefly, in the episode on "LSD-25" -- he played in the original lineup of Kip and the Flips, one of the groups we talked about in that episode. He'd left Kip and the Flips to join Duane Eddy's band, and it was through Eddy that he had started working with Sill, when he played on many of Eddy's hits, most famously "Peter Gunn": [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Peter Gunn"] Douglas was the union contractor for the session, and for most of the rest of Spector's sixties sessions. This is something we've not talked about previously, but when we look at records produced in LA for the next few years, in particular, it's something that will come up a lot. When a producer wanted to make records at the time, he (for they were all men) would not contact all the musicians himself. Instead, he'd get in touch with a trusted musician and say "I have a session at three o'clock. I need two guitars, bass, drums, a clarinet and a cello" (or whatever combination of instruments), and sometimes might say, "If you can get this particular player, that would be good". The musician would then find out which other musicians were available, get them into the studio, and file the forms which made sure they got paid according to union rules. The contractor, not the producer, decided who was going to play on the session. In the case of this Crystals session, Spector already had a couple of musicians in mind -- a bass player named Ray Pohlman, and his old guitar teacher Howard Roberts, a jazz guitarist who had played on "To Know Him is to Love Him" and "I Love How You Love Me" for Spector already. But Spector wanted a *big* sound -- he wanted the rhythm instruments doubled, so there was a second bass player, Jimmy Bond, and a second guitarist, Tommy Tedesco. Along with them and Douglas were piano player Al de Lory and drummer Hal Blaine. This was the first session on which Spector used any of these musicians, and with the exception of Roberts, who hated working on Spector's sessions and soon stopped, this group put together by Douglas would become the core of what became known as "The Wrecking Crew", a loose group of musicians who would play on a large number of the hit records that would come out of LA in the sixties. Spector also had a guaranteed hit song -- one by Gene Pitney. While Pitney wrote few of his own records, he'd established himself a parallel career as a writer for other people. He'd written "Today's Teardrops", the B-side of Roy Orbison's hit "Blue Angel": [Excerpt: Roy Orbison, "Today's Teardrops"] And had followed that up with a couple of the biggest hits of the early sixties, Bobby Vee's "Rubber Ball": [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, "Rubber Ball"] And Ricky Nelson's "Hello Mary Lou": [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, "Hello, Mary Lou"] Pitney had written a song, "He's a Rebel", that was very strongly inspired by "Uptown", and Aaron Schroeder, Pitney's publisher, had given the song to Spector. But Spector knew Schroeder, and knew that when he gave you a song, he was going to give it to every other producer who came knocking as well. "He's a Rebel" was definitely going to be a massive hit for someone, and he wanted it to be for the Crystals. He phoned them up and told them to come out to LA to record the song. And they said no. The Crystals had become sick of Spector. He'd made them record songs like "He Hit Me and it Felt Like a Kiss", he'd refused to let their lead singer sing lead, and they'd not seen any money from their two big hits. They weren't going to fly from New York to LA just because he said so. Spector needed a new group, in LA, that he could record doing the song before someone else did it. He could use the Crystals' name -- Philles had the right to put out records by whoever they liked and call it the Crystals -- he just needed a group. He found one in the Blossoms, a group who had connections to many of the people Spector was working with. Jack Nitzsche's wife sometimes sang with them on sessions, and they'd also sung on a Duane Eddy record that Lester Sill had worked on, "Dance With the Guitar Man", where they'd been credited as the Rebelettes: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Dance With the Guitar Man"] The Blossoms had actually been making records in LA for nearly eight years at this point. They'd started out as the Dreamers one of the many groups who'd been discovered by Johnny Otis, back in the early fifties, and had also been part of the scene around the Penguins, one of whom went to school with some of the girls. They started out as a six-piece group, but slimmed down to a quartet after their first record, on which they were the backing group for Richard Berry: [Excerpt: Richard Berry, "At Last"] The first stable lineup of the Dreamers consisted of Fanita James, Gloria Jones (not the one who would later record "Tainted Love"), and the twin sisters Annette and Nanette Williams. They worked primarily with Berry, backing him on five singles in the mid fifties, and also recording songs he wrote for them under their own name, like "Do Not Forget", which actually featured another singer, Jennell Hawkins, on lead: [Excerpt: The Dreamers, "Do Not Forget"] They also sang backing vocals on plenty of other R&B records from people in the LA R&B scene -- for example it's them singing backing vocals, with Jesse Belvin, on Etta James' "Good Rocking Daddy": [Excerpt: Etta James, "Good Rocking Daddy"] The group signed to Capitol Records in 1957, but not under the name The Dreamers -- an executive there said that they all had different skin tones and it made them look like flowers, so they became the Blossoms. They were only at Capitol for a year, but during that time an important lineup change happened -- Nanette quit the group and was replaced by a singer called Darlene Wright. From that point on The Blossoms was the main name the group went under, though they also recorded under other names, for example using the name The Playgirls to record "Gee But I'm Lonesome", a song written by Bruce Johnston, who was briefly dating Annette Williams at the time: [Excerpt: The Playgirls, "Gee But I'm Lonesome"] By 1961 Annette had left the group, and they were down to a trio of Fanita, Gloria, and Darlene. Their records, under whatever name, didn't do very well, but they became the first-call session singers in LA, working on records by everyone from Sam Cooke to Gene Autry. So it was the Blossoms who were called on in late 1962 to record "He's a Rebel", and it was Darlene Wright who earned her session fee, and no royalties, for singing the lead on a number one record: [Excerpt: The "Crystals" (The Blossoms), "He's a Rebel"] From that point on, the Blossoms would sing on almost every Spector session for the next three years, and Darlene, who he renamed Darlene Love, would become Spector's go-to lead vocalist for records under her own name, the Blossoms, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, and the Crystals. It was lucky for Spector that he decided to go this route rather than wait for the Crystals, not only because it introduced him to the Blossoms, but because he'd been right about Aaron Schroeder. As Spector and Sill sat together in the studio where they were mastering the record, some musicians on a break from the studio next door wandered in, and said, "Hey man. we were just playing the same goddam song!" Literally in the next room as Spector mastered the record, his friend Snuff Garrett was producing Vicki Carr singing "He's a Rebel": [Excerpt: Vicki Carr, "He's a Rebel"] Philles got their version out first, and Carr's record sank without trace, while "The Crystals" went to number one, keeping the song's writer off the top spot, as Gene Pitney sat at number two with a Bacharach and David song, "Only Love Can Break a Heart": [Excerpt: Gene Pitney, "Only Love Can Break a Heart"] The Crystals were shocked that Spector released a Crystals record without any of them on it, but La La Brooks had a similar enough voice to Darlene Love's that they were able to pull the song off live. They had a bit more of a problem with the follow-up, also by the Blossoms but released as the Crystals: [Excerpt: "The Crystals"/The Blossoms, "He's Sure the Boy I Love"] La La could sing that fine, but she had to work on the spoken part -- Darlene was from California and La La had a thick Brooklyn accent. She managed it, just about. As La La was doing such a good job of singing Darlene Love's parts live -- and, more importantly, as she was only fifteen and so didn't complain about things like royalties -- the Crystals finally did get their way and have La La start singing the leads on their singles, starting with "Da Doo Ron Ron". The problem is, none of the other Crystals were on those records -- it was La La singing with the Blossoms, plus other session singers. Listen out for the low harmony in "Da Doo Ron Ron" and see if you recognise the voice: [Excerpt: The Crystals, "Da Doo Ron Ron"] Cher would later move on to bigger things than being a fill-in Crystal. "Da Doo Ron Ron" became another big hit, making number three in the charts, and the follow-up, "Then He Kissed Me", with La La once again on lead vocals, also made the top ten, but the group were falling apart -- Spector was playing La La off against the rest of the group, just to cause trouble, and he'd also lost interest in them once he discovered another group, The Ronettes, who we'll be hearing more about in future episodes. The singles following "Then He Kissed Me" barely scraped the bottom of the Hot One Hundred, and the group left Philles in 1964. They got a payoff of five thousand dollars, in lieu of all future royalties on any of their recordings. They had no luck having hits without Spector, and one by one the group members left, and the group split up by 1966. Mary, Barbara, and Dee Dee briefly reunited as the Crystals in 1971, and La La and Dee Dee made an album together in the eighties of remakes of the group's hits, but nothing came of any of these. Dee Dee continues to tour under the Crystals name in North America, while La La performs solo in America and under the Crystals name in Europe. Barbara, the lead singer on the group's first hits, died in 2018. Darlene Love continues to perform, but we'll hear more about her and the Blossoms in future episodes, I'm sure. The Crystals were treated appallingly by Spector, and are not often treated much better by the fans, who see them as just interchangeable parts in a machine created by a genius. But it should be remembered that they were the ones who brought Spector the song that became the first Philles hit, that both Barbara and La La were fine singers who sang lead on classic hit records, and that Spector taking all the credit for a team effort doesn't mean he deserved it. Both the Crystals and the Blossoms deserved better than to have their identities erased in return for a flat session fee, in order to service the ego of one man.
Episode 104 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “He’s a Rebel”, and how a song recorded by the Blossoms was released under the name of the Crystals. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. A lot of resources were used for this episode. The material on Gene Pitney mostly comes from his page on This is My Story. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson is a good overview of the Brill Building scene. Girl Groups by John Clemente contains potted biographies of many groups of the era, including articles on both The Crystals and the Blossoms. I’ve referred to two biographies of Spector in this episode, Phil Spector: Out of His Head by Richard Williams and He’s a Rebel by Mark Ribkowsky. And information on the Wrecking Crew largely comes from The Wrecking Crew by Kent Hartman. There are many compilations available with some of the hits Spector produced, but I recommend getting Back to Mono, a four-CD overview of his career containing all the major singles put out by Philles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A brief note — there are some very brief mentions of domestic abuse here. Nothing I think will upset anyone, but you might want to check the transcript if you’re at all unsure. Up to this point, whenever we’ve looked at a girl group, it’s been at one that had, to a greater or lesser extent, some control over their own career. Groups like the Marvelettes, the Chantels, and the Bobbettes all wrote their own material, at least at first, and had distinctive personalities before they ever made a record. But today, we’re going to look at a group whose identity was so subsumed in that of their producer that the record we’re looking at was released under the name of a different group from the one that recorded it. We’re going to look at “He’s a Rebel”, which was recorded by the Blossoms and released by the Crystals. [Excerpt: “The Crystals” (The Blossoms), “He’s a Rebel”] The Crystals, from their very beginnings, were intended as a vehicle for the dreams of men, rather than for their own ambitions. Whereas the girl groups we’ve looked at so far all formed as groups of friends at school before they moved into professional singing, the Crystals were put together by a man named Benny Wells. Wells had a niece, Barbara Alston, who sang with a couple of her schoolfriends, Mary Thomas and Myrna Giraud. Wells put those three together with two other girls, Dee Dee Kenniebrew and Patsy Wright, to form a five-piece vocal group. Wells seems not to have had much concept of what was in the charts at the time — the descriptions of the music he had the girls singing talk about him wanting them to sound like the Modernaires, the vocal group who sang with Glenn Miller’s band in the early 1940s. But the girls went along with Wells, and Wells had good enough ears to recognise a hit when one was brought to him — and one was brought to him by Patsy Wright’s brother-in-law, Leroy Bates. Bates had written a song called “There’s No Other Like My Baby”, and Wells could tell it had potential. Incidentally, some books say that the song was based on a gospel song called “There’s No Other Like My Jesus”, and that claim is repeated on Wikipedia, but I can’t find any evidence of a song of that name other than people talking about “There’s No Other Like My Baby”. There is a gospel song called “There’s No Other Name Like Jesus”, but that has no obvious resemblance to Bates’ song, and so I’m going to assume that the song was totally original. As well as bringing the song, Bates also brought the fledgling group a name — he had a daughter, Crystal Bates, after whom the group named themselves. The newly-named Crystals took their song to the offices of Hill and Range Music, which as well as being a publishing company also owned Big Top Records, the label that had put out the original version of “Twist and Shout”, which had so annoyed Bert Berns. And it was there that they ended up meeting up with Phil Spector. After leaving his role at Atlantic, Spector had started working as a freelance producer, including working for Big Top. According to Spector — a notorious liar, it’s important to remember — he worked during this time on dozens of hits for which he didn’t get any credit, just to earn money. But we do know about some of the records he produced during this time. For example, there was one by a new singer called Gene Pitney. Pitney had been knocking around for years, recording for Decca as part of a duo called Jamie and Jane: [Excerpt: Jamie and Jane, “Faithful Our Love”] And for Blaze Records as Billy Bryan: [Excerpt: Billy Bryan, “Going Back to My Love”] But he’d recently signed to Musicor, a label owned by Aaron Schroeder, and had recorded a hit under his own name. Pitney had written “(I Wanna) Love My Life Away”, and had taken advantage of the new multitracking technology to record his vocals six times over, creating a unique sound that took the record into the top forty: [Excerpt: Gene Pitney, “(I Wanna) Love My Life Away”] But while that had been a hit, his second single for Musicor was a flop, and so for the third single, Musicor decided to pull out the big guns. They ran a session at which basically the whole of the Brill Building turned up. Leiber and Stoller were to produce a song they’d written for Pitney, the new hot husband-and-wife songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were there, as was Burt Bacharach, and so were Goffin and King, who wrote the song that *Spector* was to produce for Pitney. All of them were in the control booth, and all of them were chipping in ideas. As you might expect with that many cooks, the session did not go smoothly, and to make matters worse, Pitney was suffering from a terrible cold. The session ended up costing thirteen thousand dollars, at a time when an average recording session cost five hundred dollars. On the song Spector was producing on that session, Goffin and King’s “Every Breath I Take”, Pitney knew that with the cold he would be completely unable to hit the last note in full voice, and went into falsetto. Luckily, everyone thought it sounded good, and he could pretend it was deliberate, rather than the result of necessity: [Excerpt: Gene Pitney, “Every Breath I Take”] The record only went to number forty-two, but it resuscitated Pitney’s singing career, and forged a working relationship between the two men. But soon after that, Spector had flown back to LA to work with his old friend Lester Sill. Sill and producer/songwriter, Lee Hazelwood, had been making records with the guitarist Duane Eddy, producing a string of hits like “Rebel Rouser”: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, “Rebel Rouser”] But Eddy had recently signed directly to a label, rather than going through Sill and Hazelwood’s company as before, and so Sill and Hazelwood had been looking for new artists, and they’d recently signed a group called the Paris Sisters to their production company. Sill had decided to get Spector in to produce the group, and Spector came up with a production that Sill was sure would be a hit, on a song called “I Love How You Love Me”, written by Barry Mann with another writer called Jack Keller: [Excerpt: The Paris Sisters, “I Love How You Love Me”] Spector was becoming a perfectionist — he insisted on recording the rhythm track for that record at one studio, and the string part at another, and apparently spent fifty hours on the mix — and Sill was spending more and more time in the studio with Spector, fascinated at his attitude to the work he was doing. This led to a breakup between Sill and Hazelwood — their business relationship was already strained, but Hazelwood got jealous of all the time that Sill was spending with Spector, and decided to split their partnership and go and produce Duane Eddy, without Sill, at Eddy’s new label. So Sill was suddenly in the market for a new business partner, and he and Spector decided that they were going to start up their own label, Philles, although by this point everyone who had ever worked with Spector was warning Sill that it was a bad idea to go into business with him. But Spector and Sill kept their intentions secret for a while, and so when Spector met the Crystals at Hill and Range’s offices, everyone at Hill and Range just assumed that he was still working for them as a freelance producer, and that the Crystals were going to be recording for Big Top. Freddie Bienstock of Hill & Range later said, “We were very angry because we felt they were Big Top artists. He was merely supposed to produce them for us. There was no question about the fact that he was just rehearsing them for Big Top—hell, he rehearsed them for weeks in our offices. And then he just stole them right out of here. That precipitated a breach of contract with us. We were just incensed because that was a terrific group, and for him to do that shows the type of character he was. We felt he was less than ethical, and, obviously, he was then shown the door.” Bienstock had further words for Spector too, ones I can’t repeat here because of content rules about adult language, but they weren’t flattering. Spector had been dating Bienstock’s daughter, with Bienstock’s approval, but that didn’t last once Spector betrayed Bienstock. But Spector didn’t care. He had his own New York girl group, one that could compete with the Bobbettes or the Chantels or the Shirelles, and he was going to make the Crystals as big as any of them, and he wasn’t going to cut Big Top in. He slowed down “There’s No Other Like My Baby” and it became the first release on Philles Records, with Barbara Alston singing lead: [Excerpt: The Crystals, “There’s No Other Like My Baby”] That record was cut late at night in June 1961. In fact it was cut on Prom Night — three of the girls came straight to the session from their High School prom, still wearing their prom dresses. Spector wrote the B-side, a song that was originally intended to be the A-side called “Oh Yeah, Maybe Baby”, but everyone quickly realised that “There’s No Other Like My Baby” was the hit, and it made the top twenty. While Spector was waiting for the money to come in on the first Philles record, he took another job, with Liberty Records, working for his friend Snuff Garrett. He got a thirty thousand dollar advance, made a single flop record with them with an unknown singer named Obrey Wilson, and then quit, keeping his thirty thousand dollars. Once “There’s No Other” made the charts, Spector took the Crystals into the studio again, to record a song by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil that he’d got from Aldon Music. Spector was becoming increasingly convinced that he’d made a mistake in partnering with Lester Sill, and he should really have been working with Don Kirshner, and he was in discussions with Kirshner which came to nothing about them having some sort of joint project. While those discussions fell through, almost all the songs that Spector would use for the next few years would come from Aldon songwriters, and “Uptown” was a perfect example of the new kind of socially-relevant pop songwriting that had been pioneered by Goffin and King, but which Mann and Weil were now making their own. Before becoming a professional songwriter, Weil had been part of the Greenwich Village folk scene, and while she wasn’t going to write anything as explicitly political as the work of Pete Seeger, she thought that songs should at least try to be about the real world. “Uptown” was the first example of a theme which would become a major motif for the Crystals’ records — a song about a man who is looked down upon by society, but who the singer believes is better than his reputation. Mann and Weil’s song combined that potent teen emotion with an inspiration Weil had had, seeing a handsome Black man pushing a hand truck in the Garment District, and realising that even though he was oppressed by his job, and “a nobody” when he was working downtown, he was still somebody when he was at home. They originally wrote the song for Tony Orlando to sing, but Spector insisted, rightly, that the song worked better with female voices, and that the Crystals should do it. Spector took Mann and Weil’s song and gave it a production that evoked the Latin feel of Leiber and Stoller’s records for the Drifters: [Excerpt: The Crystals, “Uptown”] By the time of this second record, the Crystals had already been through one lineup change. As soon as she left school, Myrna Giraud got married, and she didn’t want to perform on stage any more. She would still sing with the girls in the studio for a little while — she’s on every track of their first album, though she left altogether soon after this recording — but she was a married woman now and didn’t want to be in a group. The girls needed a replacement, and they also needed something else — a lead singer. All the girls loved singing, but none of them wanted to be out in front singing lead. Luckily, Dee Dee Kenniebrew’s mother was a secretary at the school attended by a fourteen-year-old gospel singer named La La Brooks, and she heard Brooks singing and invited her to join the group. Brooks soon became the group’s lead vocalist on stage. But in the studio, Spector didn’t want to use her as the lead vocalist. He insisted on Barbara singing the lead on “Uptown”, but in a sign of things to come, Mann and Weil weren’t happy with her performance — Spector had to change parts of the melody to accommodate her range — and they begged Spector to rerecord the lead vocal with Little Eva singing. However, Eva became irritated with Spector’s incessant demands for more takes and his micromanagement, cursed him out, and walked out of the studio. The record was released with Barbara’s original lead vocal, and while Mann and Weil weren’t happy with that, listeners were, as it went to number thirteen on the charts: [Excerpt: The Crystals, “Uptown”] Little Eva later released her own version of the song, on the Dimension Dolls compilation we talked about in the episode on “The Loco-Motion”: [Excerpt: Little Eva, “Uptown”] It was Little Eva who inspired the next Crystals single, as well — as we talked about in the episode on her, she inspired a truly tasteless Goffin and King song called “He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss”, which I will not be excerpting, but which was briefly released as the Crystals’ third single, before being withdrawn after people objected to hearing teenage girls sing about how romantic and loving domestic abuse is. There seems to be some suggestion that the record was released partly as a way for Spector to annoy Lester Sill, who by all accounts was furious at the release. Spector was angry at Sill over the amount of money he’d made from the Paris Sisters recordings, and decided that he was being treated unfairly and wanted to force Sill out of their partnership. Certainly the next recording by the Crystals was meant to get rid of some other business associates. Two of Philles’ distributors had a contract which said they were entitled to the royalties on two Crystals singles. So the second one was a ten-minute song called “The Screw”, split over two sides of a disc, which sounded like this: [Excerpt: The Crystals, “The Screw”] Only a handful of promotional copies of that were ever produced. One went to Lester Sill, who by this point had been bought out of his share of the company for a small fraction of what it was worth. The last single Spector recorded for Philles while Sill was still involved with the label was another Crystals record, one that had the involvement of many people Sill had brought into Spector’s orbit, and who would continue working with him long after the two men stopped working together. Spector had decided he was going to start recording in California again, and two of Sill’s assistants would become regular parts of Spector’s new hit-making machine. The first of these was a composer and arranger called Jack Nitzsche, who we’ll be seeing a lot more of in this podcast over the next couple of years, in some unexpected places. Nitzsche was a young songwriter, whose biggest credit up to this point was a very minor hit for Preston Epps, “Bongo, Bongo, Bongo”: [Excerpt: Preston Epps, “Bongo Bongo Bongo”] Nitzsche would become Spector’s most important collaborator, and his arrangements, as much as Spector’s production, are what characterise the “Wall of Sound” for which Spector would become famous. The other assistant of Sill’s who became important to Spector’s future was a saxophone player named Steve Douglas. We’ve seen Douglas before, briefly, in the episode on “LSD-25” — he played in the original lineup of Kip and the Flips, one of the groups we talked about in that episode. He’d left Kip and the Flips to join Duane Eddy’s band, and it was through Eddy that he had started working with Sill, when he played on many of Eddy’s hits, most famously “Peter Gunn”: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, “Peter Gunn”] Douglas was the union contractor for the session, and for most of the rest of Spector’s sixties sessions. This is something we’ve not talked about previously, but when we look at records produced in LA for the next few years, in particular, it’s something that will come up a lot. When a producer wanted to make records at the time, he (for they were all men) would not contact all the musicians himself. Instead, he’d get in touch with a trusted musician and say “I have a session at three o’clock. I need two guitars, bass, drums, a clarinet and a cello” (or whatever combination of instruments), and sometimes might say, “If you can get this particular player, that would be good”. The musician would then find out which other musicians were available, get them into the studio, and file the forms which made sure they got paid according to union rules. The contractor, not the producer, decided who was going to play on the session. In the case of this Crystals session, Spector already had a couple of musicians in mind — a bass player named Ray Pohlman, and his old guitar teacher Howard Roberts, a jazz guitarist who had played on “To Know Him is to Love Him” and “I Love How You Love Me” for Spector already. But Spector wanted a *big* sound — he wanted the rhythm instruments doubled, so there was a second bass player, Jimmy Bond, and a second guitarist, Tommy Tedesco. Along with them and Douglas were piano player Al de Lory and drummer Hal Blaine. This was the first session on which Spector used any of these musicians, and with the exception of Roberts, who hated working on Spector’s sessions and soon stopped, this group put together by Douglas would become the core of what became known as “The Wrecking Crew”, a loose group of musicians who would play on a large number of the hit records that would come out of LA in the sixties. Spector also had a guaranteed hit song — one by Gene Pitney. While Pitney wrote few of his own records, he’d established himself a parallel career as a writer for other people. He’d written “Today’s Teardrops”, the B-side of Roy Orbison’s hit “Blue Angel”: [Excerpt: Roy Orbison, “Today’s Teardrops”] And had followed that up with a couple of the biggest hits of the early sixties, Bobby Vee’s “Rubber Ball”: [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, “Rubber Ball”] And Ricky Nelson’s “Hello Mary Lou”: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Hello, Mary Lou”] Pitney had written a song, “He’s a Rebel”, that was very strongly inspired by “Uptown”, and Aaron Schroeder, Pitney’s publisher, had given the song to Spector. But Spector knew Schroeder, and knew that when he gave you a song, he was going to give it to every other producer who came knocking as well. “He’s a Rebel” was definitely going to be a massive hit for someone, and he wanted it to be for the Crystals. He phoned them up and told them to come out to LA to record the song. And they said no. The Crystals had become sick of Spector. He’d made them record songs like “He Hit Me and it Felt Like a Kiss”, he’d refused to let their lead singer sing lead, and they’d not seen any money from their two big hits. They weren’t going to fly from New York to LA just because he said so. Spector needed a new group, in LA, that he could record doing the song before someone else did it. He could use the Crystals’ name — Philles had the right to put out records by whoever they liked and call it the Crystals — he just needed a group. He found one in the Blossoms, a group who had connections to many of the people Spector was working with. Jack Nitzsche’s wife sometimes sang with them on sessions, and they’d also sung on a Duane Eddy record that Lester Sill had worked on, “Dance With the Guitar Man”, where they’d been credited as the Rebelettes: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, “Dance With the Guitar Man”] The Blossoms had actually been making records in LA for nearly eight years at this point. They’d started out as the Dreamers one of the many groups who’d been discovered by Johnny Otis, back in the early fifties, and had also been part of the scene around the Penguins, one of whom went to school with some of the girls. They started out as a six-piece group, but slimmed down to a quartet after their first record, on which they were the backing group for Richard Berry: [Excerpt: Richard Berry, “At Last”] The first stable lineup of the Dreamers consisted of Fanita James, Gloria Jones (not the one who would later record “Tainted Love”), and the twin sisters Annette and Nanette Williams. They worked primarily with Berry, backing him on five singles in the mid fifties, and also recording songs he wrote for them under their own name, like “Do Not Forget”, which actually featured another singer, Jennell Hawkins, on lead: [Excerpt: The Dreamers, “Do Not Forget”] They also sang backing vocals on plenty of other R&B records from people in the LA R&B scene — for example it’s them singing backing vocals, with Jesse Belvin, on Etta James’ “Good Rocking Daddy”: [Excerpt: Etta James, “Good Rocking Daddy”] The group signed to Capitol Records in 1957, but not under the name The Dreamers — an executive there said that they all had different skin tones and it made them look like flowers, so they became the Blossoms. They were only at Capitol for a year, but during that time an important lineup change happened — Nanette quit the group and was replaced by a singer called Darlene Wright. From that point on The Blossoms was the main name the group went under, though they also recorded under other names, for example using the name The Playgirls to record “Gee But I’m Lonesome”, a song written by Bruce Johnston, who was briefly dating Annette Williams at the time: [Excerpt: The Playgirls, “Gee But I’m Lonesome”] By 1961 Annette had left the group, and they were down to a trio of Fanita, Gloria, and Darlene. Their records, under whatever name, didn’t do very well, but they became the first-call session singers in LA, working on records by everyone from Sam Cooke to Gene Autry. So it was the Blossoms who were called on in late 1962 to record “He’s a Rebel”, and it was Darlene Wright who earned her session fee, and no royalties, for singing the lead on a number one record: [Excerpt: The “Crystals” (The Blossoms), “He’s a Rebel”] From that point on, the Blossoms would sing on almost every Spector session for the next three years, and Darlene, who he renamed Darlene Love, would become Spector’s go-to lead vocalist for records under her own name, the Blossoms, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, and the Crystals. It was lucky for Spector that he decided to go this route rather than wait for the Crystals, not only because it introduced him to the Blossoms, but because he’d been right about Aaron Schroeder. As Spector and Sill sat together in the studio where they were mastering the record, some musicians on a break from the studio next door wandered in, and said, “Hey man. we were just playing the same goddam song!” Literally in the next room as Spector mastered the record, his friend Snuff Garrett was producing Vicki Carr singing “He’s a Rebel”: [Excerpt: Vicki Carr, “He’s a Rebel”] Philles got their version out first, and Carr’s record sank without trace, while “The Crystals” went to number one, keeping the song’s writer off the top spot, as Gene Pitney sat at number two with a Bacharach and David song, “Only Love Can Break a Heart”: [Excerpt: Gene Pitney, “Only Love Can Break a Heart”] The Crystals were shocked that Spector released a Crystals record without any of them on it, but La La Brooks had a similar enough voice to Darlene Love’s that they were able to pull the song off live. They had a bit more of a problem with the follow-up, also by the Blossoms but released as the Crystals: [Excerpt: “The Crystals”/The Blossoms, “He’s Sure the Boy I Love”] La La could sing that fine, but she had to work on the spoken part — Darlene was from California and La La had a thick Brooklyn accent. She managed it, just about. As La La was doing such a good job of singing Darlene Love’s parts live — and, more importantly, as she was only fifteen and so didn’t complain about things like royalties — the Crystals finally did get their way and have La La start singing the leads on their singles, starting with “Da Doo Ron Ron”. The problem is, none of the other Crystals were on those records — it was La La singing with the Blossoms, plus other session singers. Listen out for the low harmony in “Da Doo Ron Ron” and see if you recognise the voice: [Excerpt: The Crystals, “Da Doo Ron Ron”] Cher would later move on to bigger things than being a fill-in Crystal. “Da Doo Ron Ron” became another big hit, making number three in the charts, and the follow-up, “Then He Kissed Me”, with La La once again on lead vocals, also made the top ten, but the group were falling apart — Spector was playing La La off against the rest of the group, just to cause trouble, and he’d also lost interest in them once he discovered another group, The Ronettes, who we’ll be hearing more about in future episodes. The singles following “Then He Kissed Me” barely scraped the bottom of the Hot One Hundred, and the group left Philles in 1964. They got a payoff of five thousand dollars, in lieu of all future royalties on any of their recordings. They had no luck having hits without Spector, and one by one the group members left, and the group split up by 1966. Mary, Barbara, and Dee Dee briefly reunited as the Crystals in 1971, and La La and Dee Dee made an album together in the eighties of remakes of the group’s hits, but nothing came of any of these. Dee Dee continues to tour under the Crystals name in North America, while La La performs solo in America and under the Crystals name in Europe. Barbara, the lead singer on the group’s first hits, died in 2018. Darlene Love continues to perform, but we’ll hear more about her and the Blossoms in future episodes, I’m sure. The Crystals were treated appallingly by Spector, and are not often treated much better by the fans, who see them as just interchangeable parts in a machine created by a genius. But it should be remembered that they were the ones who brought Spector the song that became the first Philles hit, that both Barbara and La La were fine singers who sang lead on classic hit records, and that Spector taking all the credit for a team effort doesn’t mean he deserved it. Both the Crystals and the Blossoms deserved better than to have their identities erased in return for a flat session fee, in order to service the ego of one man.
The vocal harmony group tradition, known as Doo Wop, developed in the post-World War II era. To those of us kids who were color-blind, it was just cool music coming from our transistor radios. That was the beauty of radio. Music wasn’t defined by a color, just by the beat and the mood you felt deep in your soul. We all have watched many movies that depict a group of guys standing on a street corner creating a vocal harmony which is the distinct aspect of the doo wop sound which achieved mainstream popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. Till today, it remains one of the most mainstream, pop-oriented R&B styles of the time. **** The Bronx borough of New York City was home to some of the greatest doo wop artists, whose music and certain songs have etched themselves into the memories of so many of us. Let’s take a walk down Memory Lane. We’ll even stop at Belmont Ave. and 187th Street. This episode is called “Street Corners of the Bronx” ***** You’ll hear: 1) Speedoo by The Cadillacs 2) I Do by The Marvelows 3) Why Do Lovers Break Each Others Hearts? By Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans 4) Baby Blue by The Echoes 5) Sacred by The Castells 6) The Closer You Are by The Channels 7) Mope-Itty Mope by The Bosstones 8) A Little Bit of Soap by The Jarmels 9) A Casual Look by The Six Teens 10) Hey Little Schoolgirl by The Paragons 11) Streets Of The Bronx by The Colgates 12) Once in Awhile by The Chimes 13) This Magic Moment by The Drifters 14) The Diary by Little Anthony & The Imperials 15) Duke Of Earl by Gene Chandler 16) Down The Aisle Of Love by The Quintones 17) Sh-Boom by The Crew Cuts 18) Valarie by The Starlites 19) Smokey Places byThe Corsairs 20) I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent by Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers 21) Oh Rosemarie by The Fascinators 22) Big Boy Pete by The Olympics 23) In My Younger Days by The Monarchs 24) Those Oldies But Goodies (Remind Me Of You) by Nino & The Ebb Tides 25) I'm a Happy Man by The Jive Five 26) United by The Love Notes 27) Somewhere by The Tymes 28) I Belong To You by The Fi-Tones Quintet 29) Barbara by The Temptations [NYC Group] 30) All Night Long by The Du Mauriers 31) Why Don't You Write Me? by The Jacks 32) Spanish Harlem by Ben E. King 33) Foot Stomping by The Flares 34) Babalu's Wedding Day by The Eternals 35) In My Heart by The Timetones 36) Crying In The Chapel by Sonny Till & The Orioles 37) The Great Pretender by The Platters 38) Dear One by The Scarlets 39) Devil Or Angel by The Clovers 40) Groovy Baby by Billy Abbott and The Jewels 41) Rocket Ship by The Medallions 42) My Treasure by The Aquatones 43) Everyday Of The Week by The Students 44) Green Eyes by The Ravens (w/ Jimmy Ricks) 45) My Flaming Heart by The Danleers 46) To Be Loved (Forever) by The Pentagons 47) Over The Rainbow by The Demensions 48) My Lullabye by The Ovations
Tommy Ridgley – The Girl From Kooka Monga Ernie K-Doe – I Cried My Last Tear Major Lance – Mama Don’t Know King Coleman – The Boo Boo Song Hurricane Harry – The Last Meal The Coasters – Down in Mexico The Five Keys – Ling, Ting, Tong Preston Epps – Bongo Rock Dee Mullins – Beers Roy Acuff & His Smoky Mountain Boys – As Long As I Live Bob Blum – Little Pink Elephants Bob B. Soxx – Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah Eric Burdon & The Animals – True Love (Comes Only Once In A Lifetime) James & Bobby Purify – I’m Your Puppet Percy Sledge – Take Time To Know Her The Hesitations – Whiter Shade of Pale
Om 22:00 Studio Bijlo met Vincent Bijlo op 40UP Radio. Met vandaag o.a. Elvis Presley, The Ronettes, The Supremes, Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans, Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré en Bette Midler.
Om 22:00 Studio Bijlo met Vincent Bijlo op 40UP Radio. Met vandaag o.a. Elvis Presley, The Ronettes, The Supremes, Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans, Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré en Bette Midler.
Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductee! Merry Christmas!! Featured in the Academy Award Winning Documentary "20 Feet from Stardom", Darlene Has done a LOT #1 Hit Make, Actress on Stage & in Motion Picture Blockbusters like the "Lethal Weapon" Movies Rolling Stone Magazine has proclaimed Darlene Love to be “one of the greatest singers of all time” and that certainly rings true, but perhaps Paul Shaffer says it even more concisely: “Darlene Love is Rock N’ Roll!” From her first number #1 Hit,"He's A Rebel", through her string of label hits with legendary producer Phil Spector, including "Da Doo Ron Ron", "He's Sure The Boy I Love & "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" a classic she sangs every Christmas season on the "Late Show with David Letterman (it is David's favorite). Darlene on Lead Vocals #1 Hit ~ "He's a Rebel" ~ The Crystals #10 Hit ~ "He's Sure the Boy I Love" ~ The Crystals Darlene solo ~ "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" In December 2010, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" first on its list of The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Song, saying that "nobody can match Love's emotion and sheer vocal power." Several of the classic hit song's she sings backup on: Sam Cooke's ~ "Chain Gang", Bobby "Boris" Pickett ~ "The Monster Mash" "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" ~ The Righteous Brothers "Walking In The Rain" ~ The Ronettes The Beach Boys ~ "In My Room" "Poor Side of Town" ~ Johnny Rivers "Rock and Roll Lullaby" ~ B.J. Thomas "Let Us Pray" ~ Elvis Presley "Get It Right" ~ Luther Vandross And many other top 10 hits of the Rock n Roll Era. Her voice is on countless songs she sang backup on for artists like Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Cher, Luther Vandross and Aretha Franklin. One of Darlene's biggest fans is "The "Boss" Bruce Springsteen. She has proven herself a talented actress as well, on stage and screen, starring as Danny Glover's wife in all of the LETHAL WEAPON films and lighting-up Broadway in such musicals as GREASE and the Tony-award nominated LEADER OF THE PACK. Darlene also starred for three years on Broadway as ‘Motormouth Maybelle’ in the Tony Award winning musical HAIRSPRAY. Darlene Love was just a high school sophomore in Los Angeles when she was discovered out of a gospel choir, and asked to join a burgeoning girl group called The Blossoms, who began recording for Phil Specter. Soon thereafter, other artists like Sam Cooke were attracted to her powerful sound, and sought Darlene on their recordings. With The Blossoms and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene sang lead vocals on some of the greatest music hits of the 60's. The Blossoms landed a weekly spot on the landmark television series SHINDIG & Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special and through the 60's and 70's, Darlene continued to perform with and back-up such diverse artists as The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas, Tom Jones, The Righteous Brothers and Sonny & Cher. She has received great national press exposure, including a feature in PEOPLE magazine, a CNN television documentary on her life, and bookings on numerous national television programs, including NBC-TV's TODAY, Wendy Williams, CW and Oprah as her yearly stint on the David Letterman show which she has done 26 years strong. Darlene’s first studio Christmas album, “It’s Christmas, Of Course” was released December 2007 to national critical praise. In 2010 Darlene began a tour of Australia starring as ‘Miss Sherman’ in “Fame: The Musical”. Darlene has also released a CD and DVD of her live concert ”The Concert of Love” produced and released by Reel Good Productions. Her albums include AGE OF MIRACLES, recorded live in New York City and her first gospel album, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE released by Harmony records. A feature film based on Darlene’s autobiography “My Name Is Love” is in the works Along with more great new music for released in 2019. © 2019 All Rights Reserved © 2019 Join Me on ~ iHeart Radio @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBAS Join Me on Facebook @ Facebook.com/BuildingAbundant Success
Xmas 2019 Playlist: Detroit Junior - Christmas Day (1961) Kelly Finnigan - Heartbreak For Christmas (2019) Charles Brown - Merry Christmas, Baby (1954) Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans - The Bells of St. Mary (1963) Stevie Wonder - What Christmas Means To Me (1967) Allen Toussaint - Silent Night, Holy Night (1997) The Countrymen - The Virgin Mary (1962) Aretha Franklin - Winter Wonderland (1964) Rotary Connection - Christmas Love (1968) Loretta Lynn - To Heck With Ole Santa Claus (1966) Brenda Lee - Papa Nöel (1958) Augie Rios - Donde Esta Santa Claus (1958) Bobby Vinton - The Bell That Couldn't Jingle (1964) Valerie June - Let It Snow (2019) Allen Toussaint - Winter Wonderland (1997) Milly & Silly - Getting Down For Xmas (1973) Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Jingle Bells (1966) The Poets Of Rhythm - Santa's Got a Bag of Soul (1994) Clarence Carter - Back Door Santa (1968) Canned Heat - Christmas Blues (1968) Donny Hathaway - This Christmas (1970) Ella Fitzgerald - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (1960) Peggy Lee - I Like A Sleighride (1960) Brenda Lee - Christmas Will Be Just Another Lonely Day (1964) Bobby Vee - A Not So Merry Christmas (1962) Charles Bradley (feat. Menahan Street Band) - Every Day Is Christmas (When I'm Lovin' You) (2010) Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Just Another Christmas Song (This Time I'll Sing Along) (2014) The Dip - Santa's Got a Sweet Tooth (2017) Bing Crosby - A Christmas Toast (1977) Dean Martin - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (1959) Elvis Presley - Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane) (1957) William Bell - Every Day Will Be Like a Holiday (1967) Marvin Gaye - Purple Snowflakes (1965) Glen Campbell - Christmas Is For Children (1968) The Band - Christmas Must Be Tonight (1977) The Sha La Das - I Wish Christmas Time Was Over (2019) Alessia Cara - Make It To Christmas (2019) Julian Casablancas - Christmas Treat (2009) Margie Joseph - Christmas Gift (1976) Brook Benton - You're All I Want For Christmas (1963) The Lettermen - Our Winter Love (1966) Cary Grant - Christmas Lullaby (1967) Reach out to the show at soulshiverradio@gmail.com Apple Podcasts: tiny.cc/itunes-soul-shiver-radio Spotify Podcasts: tinyurl.com/ssr-on-spotify Stitcher: tiny.cc/ssr-on-stitcher Spotify Archive: tiny.cc/spotify-archive
On s’intéresse à un personnage populaire pour deux raisons : parce qu'il a complètement changé la face de l’enregistrement studio dans les années 1960, mais aussi car il croupit en prison aujourd’hui pour meurtre. Dans cet épisode, on parle des déboires de l'américain Phil Spector et de ses multiples collaborations. Mix musical To Know Him Is To Love Him / The Teddy Bears / Single / 1958 I Love How You Love Me / The Paris Sisters / Single / 1961 Corrine, Corrina / Ray Peterson / Single / 1960 (Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry / Darlene Love / Single / 1963 Be My Baby / The Ronettes / Single / 1963 Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah / Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans / Single / 1963 Proud Mary / The Checkmates Ltd. / Single / 1969 Do You Remember Rock n Roll Radio? / The Ramones / End of the Century / 1980 Don’t Hurt My Little Sister / The Beach Boys / Today! / 1965 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer / The Crystals / A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector / 1963 Wah-Wah / George Harrison / All Things Must Pass / 1970 Extraits durant l'émission Be My Baby - The Ronettes / 1963 Then He Kissed me / The Crystals / 1963 River Deep, Mountain High / Ike and Tina Turner / 1966 Dancing Queen / ABBA / 1974 Good Vibrations / Beach Boys / 1966 Born to Run / Bruce Spingsteen /1975 God / John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band / 1970
The Chosen Few - I Second That Emotion Creepy John Thomas - (Do I Figure) In Your Life The Yellow Popcorn Band – Lovely Ladies The Rasquals - Groovin’ Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans - Why Do Lovers Break Each Other’s Hearts? Bobby Darin – Dream Lover Keith Richards - All I Have To Do Is Dream The Ventures – Hello, Goodbye Jake and the Family Jewels - At the Well Gene Clark – The Virgin Melanie – Mr. Tambourine Man
FRIDAYSToday’s Bombshell (Bombshell Radio) Bombshell RadioJazzamatazz Double Header Today 1pm-3pm EST 6pm-8pm BST 10am-12pm PDT bombshellradio.comSmiling Sixties is a collection of non-stop hits & classics from the 1960s. A blend of Rock'n'Roll,Soul,Pop,Beat,Rock & lots more groovy sounds from a great decade of music. 22 tracks that still put smiles on faces over half a century later.sixties, #oldies, #rocknroll, #pop, #60s, #rock, #R&B, #soul, #1960s, #classics1 Brown Eyed Handsome Man Buddy Holly 2 19th Nervous Breakdown The Rolling Stones 3 I Want You Back Jackson 5 4 Hello Goodbye The Beatles 5 Google Eye Nashville Teens 6 My Generation The Who 7 Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 Bob Dylan 8 Not Too Young to Get Married Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans 9 All I Have To Do Is Dream Bobbie Gentry & Glen Campbell 10 You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' The Righteous Brothers 11 I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself Dusty Springfield 12 Elusive Butterfly Bob Lind 13 (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher Jackie Wilson 14 Rosie Don Padridge 15 Moon River Danny Williams 16 You're All I Need To Get By Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell 17 For Your Love The Yardbirds 18 Walkin' Back To Happiness Helen Shapiro 19 You Can't Hurry Love The Supremes 20 Boris the Spider The Who 21 The Tracks Of My Tears Smokey Robinson & The Miracles 22 Green Green Grass Of Home
It's America's birthday and we're passing the savings on to YOU with this week's red-white-and-blue episode! The Reds--“Under Control” Red Aunts--“All Red Inside” The Tie Reds--“Gimme Conversation” Red Beard and the Pirates--“Go On Leave” Zeke--“Redline” The Jolly Green Giants--“Caught You Red-Handed” Butthole Surfers--“White, Dumb, Ugly, and Poor' The Bowel-Tones--“White Trash Calypso” “Weird Al” Yankovic--“Stuck in a Closet with Vanna White” The Urinals--“I'm White and Middle Class” Dwarves--“Dead Brides in White” The Makers--“White Bread” Shocking Blue--“Venus” Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans--“Not Too Young to Get Married” The Epics--“Blue Turns to Grey” The Strypes--“Blue Collar Jane” Squirtgun--“Blue Christmas” Tom “T-Bone” Stankus--“Existential Blues”
Bombshell Radio Jazzamatazz Double Header Today 1pm-3pm EST7pm -9pm BST 10am-12pm PDT bombshellradio.com Today's Bombshell (Bombshell Radio)Smiling Sixties 6Smiling Sixties is a collection of hits & classics from the 1960s. A blend of Rock'n'Roll,Soul,Pop,Beat,Rock & lots more groovy sounds from a great decade of music. 24 tracks that still put smiles on faces over half a century later. Volume 6.#classics #oldies #pop #rock #soul #rocknroll1 Something In The Air Thunderclap Newman2 Strawberry Fields Forever The Beatles3 The Mighty Quinn Manfred Mann4 Shout Shout Ernie Maresca5 Break On Through (To The Other Side) The Doors6 Getaway Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames7 Dandy The Kinks8 It's Not Unusual Tom Jones9 Yeh Yeh Georgie Fame And The Blue Flames10 Urban Spaceman Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band11 Why Do Lovers Break Each Others Hearts Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans12 Melting Pot Blue Mink13 Handbags And Gladrags Chris Farlowe14 Games People Play Joe South15 The Seeker The Who16 Big Bad John Jimmy Dean17 Amapola The Spotnicks18 Don't Ha Ha Casey Jones & The Governors19 Everybody's Gonna Be Happy The Kinks20 Baby Sittin' Bobby Angelo & The Tuxedos21 I'll Never Need More Than This Ike & Tina Turner22 California Sun The Rivieras23 I Can't Let Maggie Go Honeybus24 Tell Him The Exciters
femme fantasm · moon weather :: lonnie donegan · ham and eggs :: david werner · the ballad of trixie silver :: david kauffman & eric caboor · kiss another day goodbye :: phil harvey · bumbershoot :: bob b. soxx & the blue jeans· zip a dee doo dah :: the pailey brothers · come out and play :: the mamas and the papas · glad to be unhappy :: frank wilson · do i love you :: slim twig · slippin' and slidin' :: velvet morning · you're blue, i'm blue :: finnmark · transpennine express :: randy newman · rollin' :: lou christie · if my car could talk :: nato · je t'apprendrai à faire l'amour :: steely dan · only a fool would say that :: kevin morby · motors running :: pale lights · fourteen stories tall :: the shadows · shindig :: gerry rafferty · right down the line :: aline · avenue des armées :: niagara · l'amour à la plage :: ronnie spector · try some, buy some :: hinds · chili town :: kyo · le graal :: the marketts · out of limits :: the beach boys · keep an eye on summer :: tame impala · let it happen :: botibol · croyez moi :: bad bad hats · super america :: les fils de joie · plaisirs chers :: sharon van etten · i don’t want to let you down :: aimee mann · stupid thing · i should have known
femme fantasm · moon weather :: lonnie donegan · ham and eggs :: david werner · the ballad of trixie silver :: david kauffman & eric caboor · kiss another day goodbye :: phil harvey · bumbershoot :: bob b. soxx & the blue jeans· zip a dee doo dah :: the pailey brothers · come out and play :: the mamas and the papas · glad to be unhappy :: frank wilson · do i love you :: slim twig · slippin' and slidin' :: velvet morning · you're blue, i'm blue :: finnmark · transpennine express :: randy newman · rollin' :: lou christie · if my car could talk :: nato · je t'apprendrai à faire l'amour :: steely dan · only a fool would say that :: kevin morby · motors running :: pale lights · fourteen stories tall :: the shadows · shindig :: gerry rafferty · right down the line :: aline · avenue des armées :: niagara · l'amour à la plage :: ronnie spector · try some, buy some :: hinds · chili town :: kyo · le graal :: the marketts · out of limits :: the beach boys · keep an eye on summer :: tame impala · let it happen :: botibol · croyez moi :: bad bad hats · super america :: les fils de joie · plaisirs chers :: sharon van etten · i don’t want to let you down :: aimee mann · stupid thing · i should have known
2011 Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductee! From her first number #1 Hit,"He's A Rebel", through her string of label hits with legendary producer Phil Spector, including "Da Doo Ron Ron", "He's Sure The Boy I Love & "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" to the countless songs she sang backup on for artists like Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Cher, Luther Vandross and Aretha Franklin. One of Darlene's biggest fans is "The "Boss" Bruce Springsteen She has proven herself a talented actress as well, on stage and screen, starring as Danny Glover's wife in all of the LETHAL WEAPON films and lighting-up Broadway in such musicals as GREASE and the Tony-award nominated LEADER OF THE PACK. Darlene also starred for three years on Broadway as ‘Motormouth Maybelle’ in the Tony Award winning musical HAIRSPRAY. Darlene Love was just a high school sophomore in Los Angeles when she was discovered out of a gospel choir, and asked to join a burgeoning girl group called The Blossoms, who began recording for Phil Specter. Soon thereafter, other artists like Sam Cooke were attracted to her powerful sound, and sought Darlene on their recordings. With The Blossoms and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene sang lead vocals on some of the greatest music hits of the 60's. The Blossoms landed a weekly spot on the landmark television series SHINDIG & Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special and through the 60's and 70's, Darlene continued to perform with and back-up such diverse artists as The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas, Tom Jones, The Righteous Brothers and Sonny & Cher. She has received great national press exposure, including a feature in PEOPLE magazine, a CNN television documentary on her life, and bookings on numerous national television programs, including TODAY, Rosie O'Donnell, Maury Povich, Politically Incorrect, Donny & Marie and the Oprah Winfrey show as her yearly stint on the David Letterman show which she has done 20 years strong. Darlene’s first studio Christmas album, “It’s Christmas, Of Course” was released December 2007 to national critical praise. In 2010 Darlene began a tour of Australia starring as ‘Miss Sherman’ in “Fame: The Musical”. Darlene has also released a CD and DVD of her live concert ”The Concert of Love” produced and released by Reel Good Productions. Her albums include AGE OF MIRACLES, recorded live in New York City and her first gospel album, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE released by Harmony records. After three nominations, 2011 will mark Darlene being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Bette Midler has been chosen to induct Darlene. This year will also see a feature film based on Darlene’s autobiography “My Name Is Love”. The film is currently scheduled to begin shooting in the spring-summer. Join On Me Facebook ~http://artist.to/buildingabundantsuccess/
She’s one of the greatest singers in the history of music. Darlene Love has lent her voice to countless hit singles over the years, including “He’s a Rebel” by the Crystals, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” by the Righteous Brothers, and her own holiday classic “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”.She’s also had the opportunity to sing with many legends of music including Elvis,Sam Cooke, Aretha, Marvin Gaye, Cher, and even Cheech & Chong! Many others will remember her as Danny Glover’s wife in the Lethal Weapon movies. Darlene is currently gearing up for a run of “Fame the Musical” in Australia, where she stars as Miss Sherman, a no-nonsense teacher at the school for the arts. We’ll also discuss the new DVD release of “The T.A.M.I. Show”, which Darlene was a part of.You can find out more about Darlene, by going to her official site, www.darleneloveworld.comSinger Darlene Love has lent her voice to literally hundreds of recordings over the years. We’ve assembled a list of some of her “Greatest Hits”“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” – Darlene Love – One of Darlene’s greatest moments. A stone-cold holiday classic from Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift to You. You can close your eyes and feel the snow falling on you.“He’s a Rebel” – credited to the Crystals, but it’s actually Darlene on lead vocals. Her first #1 hit.“Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah – Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans – Darlene sings on this Disney classic turned inside-out. Extra points for Billy Strange’s guitar solo that sounds like it’s coming from another planet.“(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry” – Darlene Love – One of the few Spector tracks to actually sport Miss D’s name. Darlene reaches back to her days in the gospel choir for a gutty performance. Imagine her preaching to the congregation about her good news.“The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” – Betty Everett – Darlene and the Blossoms do the question-asking, like “Is it in his eyes”? sharing the lead vocalis with Betty. The vocal ascending that they do when Betty sings “Kiss him / and squeeze him tight” will send shivers.“Poor Side of Town” – Johnny Rivers – Darlene & the Blossoms show off their gentler side as they echo Johnny’s verses with sweet sophistication.“The Right Time” – Bobby Darin – Darlene duets with Bobby on this under-appreciated cut from a lost Darin LP called Bobby Darin Sings Ray Charles“Brown-Eyed Woman” – Bill Medley – The deep-voiced half of the Righteous Brothers testifies his love for Darlene, while she and her sisters turn up the heat.“Basketball Jones – Cheech and Chong – Showing that she truly is one of the most versatile of vocalists, Darlene lends her talents to C&C’s parody of the Brighter Side of Darkness “Love Jones.”
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