Podcasts about little saint nick

-As always, email your questions for Sip, Jake & Bill to earlybreak937@gmail.com or tweet them-Also, SONG OF THE DAY (sponsored by Sartor Hamann Jewelers): "Little Saint Nick" - Beach Boys (1963)Show sponsored by GANA TRUCKINGAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Peter from the KIDZ BOP Kids shares today's KIDZ BOP Daily update for Wednesday, December 6. It's Wednesday – which means it's time for our Wednesday Workout. Today's kids' song of the day is "Little Saint Nick" by the KIDZ BOP Kids!

Listen till the end to hear another side of Little Saint Vic... On this month's episode, host Victoria Horn answers listener requests for personalized book recommendations, shares Odell happenings, highlights the December book order, and reads her original poem, "Portrait of Christmas Eve." Parody of "Little Saint Nick" by the Beach Boys: written, performed, and produced by Victoria Horn Victoria's poetry Instagram Odell Public Library website Odell Kids' Area Amazon Wishlist Books mentioned: Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney One by One and The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette The King of Infinite Space by Lindsay Faye Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang Where the Road Bends by Rachel Fordham Claiming Her Legacy by Linda Goodnight The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal The Island of Missing Trees by Elik Shafak A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrows The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna Pig and Fox series by Jonathan Fenske Archie and Reddie series by Candy James Narwhal and Jelly series by Ben Clanton Jack Book series by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Greg Pizzoli Norma and Belly series by Mika Song Sydney and Taylor Explore the Whole Wide World by Jacqueline Davies and Deborah Hocking The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins The Terminal List by Jack Carr The Force and City on Fire by Don Winslow Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson Matrix by Lauren Groff Life is Meals by James and Kay Salter The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson The Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris Father Brown series by G.K. Chesterton Kurland St. Mary Mystery series by Catherine Lloyd Chief Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny Holiday/winter poems: “White-Eyes” and “The Storm” by Mary Oliver “December 26” by Kenn Nesbitt “Christmas Tree Lots” by Chris Green “Taking Down the Tree” by Jane Kenyon “Chicago and December” by W.S. Di Piero “Christmas Mail” by Ted Kooser "Portrait of Christmas Eve" by Victoria Horn

As we're in the period between Christmas and New Year, the gap between episodes is going to be longer than normal, and the podcast proper is going to be back on January the ninth. So nobody has to wait around for another fortnight for a new episode, I thought I'd upload some old Patreon bonus episodes to fill the gap. Every year around Christmas the bonus episodes I do tend to be on Christmas songs and so this week I'm uploading three of those. These are older episodes, so don't have the same production values as more recent episodes, and are also shorter than more recent bonuses, but I hope they're still worth listening to. Transcript We talked in the last bonus episode about how the American Christmas music canon more or less ends in 1963. One record that just got in under that wire was "Little Saint Nick", recorded by the Beach Boys in October 1963 and released in December: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Little Saint Nick"] Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' leader, was apparently inspired to write a Christmas song by Phil Spector -- Wilson turned up to at least one of the sessions for the Spector Christmas album, and had briefly played piano during a couple of takes of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", although he wasn't actually on the record itself, as Spector decided he wasn't a good enough player. The date the Beach Boys recorded their Christmas song, October the twentieth 1963, was actually a historic date for the group. We'll talk about this more in a few weeks' time when we next look at the Beach Boys in the main podcast, but they had gone through a bit of a lineup shuffle, and David Marks had played his last gig with the group the night before, while Al Jardine had rejoined the band shortly before that. That meant that this was the first session since their first single at which the Beach Boys were the classic five-person lineup of Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, and Al Jardine. There seems to be some confusion about what happened at that session, as they recorded two backing tracks. One of them became the "Little Saint Nick" that was a hit, but they also recorded a track that later became an album track called "Drive In": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Drive In"] But there also exists a recording of that backing track, but with the lyrics to "Little Saint Nick": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Drive In (Little Saint Nick version)"] I've seen conflicting accounts of how that track came to exist. Some say that they tried both backing tracks with the same lyrics at the original session, and that they then wrote the "Drive In" lyrics for the track that didn't make the cut as "Little Saint Nick", while others say that they actually sung the "Little Saint Nick" lyrics to the "Drive In" track as a joke a few months later, long after the original "Little Saint Nick" had already come out. Whichever is the truth, the version of "Little Saint Nick" that eventually came out as a single was this one, which became one of the last holiday classics in the US Christmas canon: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Little Saint Nick"] "Little Saint Nick" is very clearly modelled on an earlier hit by the group, "Little Deuce Coupe", and so it makes sense to me that the track that was chosen was the originally intended one, as musically that's quite close to the earlier song. "Little Saint Nick" was only a moderate success on the main chart, but it made number three on Billboard's Christmas Singles chart, which was enough of a success that the group decided the next year to record a full Christmas album. That album included a remixed version of "Little Saint Nick", with the backing track stripped down to sound more like the rest of the album's first side, which was rush-recorded with few overdubs. That album was recorded in a style that the Beach Boys did quite a bit at that time, with a side for "the kids" -- uptempo original songs -- and a side for "the adults", with orchestral versions of more traditional Christmas songs, arranged by the Four Freshmen's arranger Dick Reynolds, including a gorgeous version of "We Three Kings": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "We Three Kings"] The Beach Boys would have another attempt at making a Christmas album, in 1977, which went unreleased at the time -- mostly because much of it is truly terrible. However, there were a couple of worthwhile tracks on the album -- Brian Wilson's "Winter Symphony": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Winter Symphony"] And his brother Dennis' "Morning Christmas": [Excerpt: Dennis Wilson, "Morning Christmas"] Much of that album has since been released, with their 1964 Christmas album, on the compilation "Ultimate Christmas". Both Brian Wilson and Mike Love have since released solo Christmas albums. Both are patchy affairs, but Wilson's has a lovely version of "Joy to the World" as a bonus track: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson, "Joy to the World"] And it has a few other genuinely nice tracks, while the highlight of Love's is rather less impressive -- a reworking of "Shortenin' Bread" titled "Reason For the Season": [Excerpt: Mike Love, "Reason for the Season"] Both albums also include remakes of "Little Saint Nick", the one Beach Boys Christmas song that has really entered the consciousness of the general public. And while this podcast episode might have ended up being too late for you to still be hearing that one on the radio, I'm sure you'll start hearing it again, for the fifty-eighth straight year, come the last week of November 2021. Because some things, at least, stay the same no matter what's happening in the rest of the world.

In this Christmas Eve's edition of DriveTime Radio, New York Vinnie opens the show by talking the experience of driving in snowy and icy conditions, including the scares he had while driving south on I-5 recently. Plus, Nathan and Vinnie reflect on some of their memorable car related Christmas gifts, along with a discussion about videos captured on dash cams. This week, Vinnie drives the Toyota Tundra TRD and reviews. Listen to the Car Tune's at the links below: "Santa's Got A Hot Rod" by Randall Connell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpXTUD57njs "Driving Home For Christmas" by Chris Rea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSjq7x67kzM "Little Saint Nick" by The Beach Boys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp9rK8FmYog "Peterbilt Sleigh" by Ron Harbin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvEHIFxZ8fg

Cami from the KIDZ BOP Kids shares today's KIDZ BOP Daily update for Tuesday, December 20. It's Tuesday – which means it's time for Tune-In Tuesday! Today's kids' song of the day is "Little Saint Nick" by the KIDZ BOP Kids!

I dette afsnit af 'Rockhistorier' dedikerer Henrik Queitsch og Klaus Lynggaard intet mindre end to timer og tyve minutter til 'The Beach Boys'. Vi skal derfor igennem en playliste med hele 30 numre, der blandt andet indeholder ”Surfin' USA”, ”Kiss me baby” og julenummeret ”Little Saint Nick”.Playliste: 1. "Surfin'" (1961) 2. "Surfin' Safari" (1962)3. "Surfin' USA" (1963)4. "Lonely Sea" (1963)5. "Misirlou" (1963)6. "Surfer Girl" (1963)7. "Little Deuce Coupe" (1963)8. "In My Room" (1963)9. "A Young Man Is Gone" (1963)10. "Little Saint Nick" - Single Version (1963)11. "Fun, Fun, Fun" (1964)12. "Don't Worry Baby" (1964)13. "The Warmth of the Sun" (1964)14. "I Get Around" (1964)15. "Girls on the Beach" (1964)16. "All Summer Long" (1964)17. "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" (1964)18. "She Knows Me Too Well" (1965)19. "Please Let Me Wonder" (1965)20. "Kiss Me, Baby" (1965)21. "Help Me, Rhonda" (1965)22. "Let Him Run Wild" (1965)23. "California Girls" (1965)24. "Girl Don't Tell Me"  (1965)25. The Little Girl I Once Knew" (1965)26. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" (1966)27. "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" (1966)28. "God Only Knows" (1966)29. "I Know There's an Answer" (1966)30. "Caroline, No" (1966)

Is Santa Real?  That's the question that plagues every parent. We'll show you have every story you've ever heard about Santa are just stories from his life. In today's episode we track Clement Clark Moore,  the Scottish Kirk, snowglobes, Ak the Master Woodsman, Little Saint Nick,  Rudolph, Bumble the Abominable Snowman, Prince Albert and more. 

Congratulations to Indian Valley Middle School – 7th & 8th Grade Chorus performing Little Saint Nick for coming in 2nd place in B101.1's 2022 K-8 Christmas Choir Competition! Indian Valley Middle School will be taking home the 2nd place prize of $2,000 for their school's music program!

We compiled a list of our top Christmas songs. Look out for and vote during Christmas Music Madness! Polls will be posted on Instagram Lions lose a heartbreaker on Thanksgiving. Not mad, just dissapointed. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @cart.drinks Intro song: Little Saint Nick by The Beach Boys - 1991 Remix

Whether it is a turkey fryer that causes an unexpected cooking fire, or mishaps with trees and decorations that make the holidays literally go up in smoke, holiday related losses are common for subrogation professionals this time of year. So while it is the season to be joyful and hum along with the Beach Boys' Little Saint Nick, it is also the season for unusual loss scenarios that require creative approaches. In this episode of Subro on the Go, regular co-hosts Joe Rich and David Brisco are joined by their colleague Dana Meyers to discuss holiday loss scenarios and ways to evaluate recovery potential or avoid investing in nonviable claims. Happy Holidays from Cozen O'Connor and NSS.

Phil, Jake & Jason welcome Matt Hock back to the pod to rank Friday (the day of the week), the 90s movie Friday, and the song “Friday” by Rebecca Black on the List of Every Damn Thing.If you haven't already, check out Matt's band! You can get Space Cadet's record “Lion On A Leash” on Wiretap Records, listen to them on Spotify, and follow them on Instagram (@space_cadet_band).If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).SHOW NOTES: We get into some Bob's Burgers-style punny business right away, but don't worry it's brief. For the second episode in a row, Gingerdead Man (starring Gary Busey) finds its way into our conversation. “Roadie Friday” is the day before the day off on tour. Friday is a state of mind. TGI Fridays was a really revolutionary idea when it first came about. The premise was that it was a bar that women would feel comfortable visiting. The bar in the movie Cocktail where Tom Cruise recites poetry is based on TGI Fridays. Freaky Fridays are when you switch bodies with your parent. Freya is the mother of Thor and Friday is named for her the way Thursday is named for him. Here's DJ Pooh running and crying. Def Comedy Jam was a show on HBO where urban comedians could perform. The most famous set ever was probably Bernie Mac's first appearance but Chris Tucker's was really good too.  Phil was wrong here, there is no "other Chris Tucker". Deebo Samuel plays football for the San Francisco 49ers. Deebo is not his legal name but he confirms that it came from the movie Friday. We note how great Friday's soundtrack is, with songs like “Keep Their Heads Ringin” by Dr. Dre, “Friday” by Ice Cube & “Hoochie Mama” by 2 Live Crew. Jake compares Friday to two of his favorite books Cannery Row & Tortilla Flat (both by John Steinbeck). He also compares it to his new favorite TV show to insist everyone watch: Blindspotting (it's on Starz so you'll have to get a promotional subscription and binge the show within a month). Other songs discussed include “Little Saint Nick” by The Beach Boys, “American Pie” by Don McLean & “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” by Dionne Warwick. Jason sincerely apologizes for unknowingly dead-naming Cara Cunningham. Here's the 2021 hyperpop remix of “Friday” featuring Big Freedia and others. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Eddie and the Cruisers * the Jersey Shore * Michelob Ultra * football * Burning Man * Friday the 13th * 48 Hrs. * handkerchiefs* ice cream trucks * Frasier * Saturday Night Live * burritos * pie * square pizza * triangle pizza * Ice Cube * Chris Tucker * Chris Rock * “Tiny” Zeus Lister * John Witherspoon * the classical unities * Ferris Bueller's Day Off * the Crips * 90s indie movies * The Truman Show * Caddyshack * Flashdance * The Matrix * Bill Paxton * marijuana * autotune * earworms * Elvis Presley * Josta * AerosmithBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here).TOP TEN: Dolly Parton - person interspecies animal friends - idea sex - idea bicycles - tool coffee - beverage Clement Street in San Francisco - location Prince - person It's-It - food Doctor Doom - fictional character Cher - person BOTTOM TEN:263. Jon Voight - person264. Hank Williams, Jr - person265. British Royal Family - institution266. Steven Seagal - person267. McRib - food268. death - idea269. war - idea270. cigarettes - drug271. QAnon - idea272. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was produced & edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

The 12 Days of Christmas Music: Day 11Intro/Outro: Everyday is Christmas by Colbie Caillat5. Little Saint Nick by The Beach Boys (Andrew)5. It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas by Michael Buble (Aaron)4. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Frank Sinatra (Andrew)4. Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Frank Sinatra & Cyndi Lauper (Aaron)3. Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney (Andrew)Vote on your favorite song from today's episode!

'Tis the season here at Rankaholics! Christmas music is in the air and it's impossible to avoid. Everyone has an opinion on their favorite and non-favorite Christmas songs. How do you feel about "Jingle Bell Rock" or "Little Saint Nick". We put these songs and more in our good ol' tier list maker. Follow us on our social media platforms! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rankaholics/ Tik Tok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMd8tbc4L/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rankaholics/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCI195lFljx7deZWi-GadRig Leave us a review on Apple Podcast! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rankaholics/id1570883111

Episode NotesYes indeed, folks, Christmas time is here again!  We at What the Riff!?! want to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas, and here are a few rocking songs of the season for you to put on your playlist.“Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)” by the RamonesThe founders of the punk movement offer this take on a Christmas song, with the rapid tempo and rough lyrics we've come to know and love as a classic Ramones style.  Christmas is a time to be together with family,  but some families are a little less together than others!“Little Saint Nick” by the Beach BoysA little bit more sand than snow, this well-known Christmas classic takes inspiration from the surfin' genre of the Beach Boys in songs like "Little Deuce Coupe".“I Believe in Santa Claus” by REO SpeedwagonREO Speedwagon produced an album of Christmas standards in 2009.  The re-release in 2010 included three bonus tracks, one of which was this original song penned by Cronin and Hall.“You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” by  Thurl RavenscroftRavenscroft's bass voice is iconic for this classic song from the animated special, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."  He also contributed his voice to Tony the Tiger for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes commercials.“Santa Claus is Comin' to Town'” by Bruce SpringsteenHow we missed this song in the first three Christmas episodes is a mystery, but Springsteen's rendition of this Christmas standard has been heard on rock radio stations everywhere since the mid-70's.  This rendition has made lists of both the best and the worst Christmas songs of all time.“Blue Christmas” by Elvis PresleyBrian wouldn't let us get through another episode without taking on this iconic song.  Doye O'Dell may have recorded this sad Christmas tune in 1948, but Presley's version is without a doubt the most famous one.“Mele Kalikinaka” by Bing Crosby & The Andrews SistersThe name of this song is a phonologic translation of the word "Merry Christmas" into the Hawaiian language.  Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters sang this song in 1950, but it made us think of its appearance in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation."“Up on the Housetop” by Gene AutryWhile Autry sang this classic in 1953, it actually originated much earlier.  Benjamin Hamby wrote it in 1864, and it is the second-oldest secular Christmas song, after "Jingle Bells."   “I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas” by Gayla PeeveyBruce thought this was sung by Bernadette Peters, but it was actually performed by then 10-year-old child prodigy Gayla Peevey in 1953.  The song inspired a fundraiser which resulted in the Oklahoma City Zoo acquiring a baby hippo named Matilda..“Soulful Christmas”  by James BrownWhile it is definitely a Christmas song, it is also a song of Thanksgiving, with the Godfather of Soul expressing his thanks for his fans coming to his shows and buying his albums.“Another Lonely Christmas” by PrincePrince penned this original Christmas song during his "Purple Rain" days, and it appeared as the B-side to the single "I Would Die 4 U."  The initial recording took place on February 18th, 1984 when Prince was essentially operating solo, and it tells the story of a man whose lover died on Christmas Day.“The Christmas Song” by Nat King ColeRobert Wells and Mel Torme wrote this standard in a hot July, and it had its beginnings as a psychological way for Bob Wells to think of cold things during the heat wave.  Nat King Cole recorded the most famous version of this song in 1946, adding a small string section over the objections  of Capitol Records.“'Zat You Santa Claus” by Buster Poindexter & His Banshees of BluePoindexter and his band cover this lesser-known Christmas tune originally sung by Louis Armstrong and the Commanders in 1953.  It tells the story of a guy frightened by a knock on his door while hanging up his stocking.“Another Christmas Song” by Stephen ColbertIngrid brings us a track by comedian Stephen Colbert, who parodies a Christmas song with the intention of becoming rich off its popularity.“Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” by Burl IvesThis song was featured in the Rankin-Bass Christmas Special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."  Ives provides the voice for Sam the Snowman, the narrator of the show.  This song finishes off that special, and also finishes off our special podcast.Merry Christmas, y'all!

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…)

  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.

Jerry and Adrian bring a final round of holiday cheer to ya with the latest in sports! NBA finally kicks off, NHL sets their divisions, MLB sits in waiting and the NFL nears the playoffs! All that plus 3 brand new holiday-themed segments! Featured songs: "Little Saint Nick" by The Beach Boys "Last Christmas" (Single Version) by Wham! "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" by Thurl Ravenscroft

This week our road tests feature two vehicles that have just been named finalists in the prestigious North American Utility of the Year competition for 2021. The Land Rover Defender is the latest version to bear the fabled Defender name, and it has all the off-road credentials its name suggests. Co-host Chris Teague had the chance to throw the newest Defender up against the challenging snow, ice, and muck that characterize a Maine winter. In our second road test, host Jack Nerad, who also serves as vice president of the North American Car of the Year jury, put the new Genesis GV80 to an entirely different kind of test -- shuttling his entire family of five to a drive-through Christmas display at Dodgers Stadium just north of downtown Los Angeles. Of course, he and the GV80 had other adventures as well, and we'll tell you about the new SUV's many good points and the one area in which some might say it comes up short...or at the very least puzzling. The 2021 Land Rover Defender can take on virtually any terrain, even a light spring shower. In the news segment, the two hosts dissect the just-surfaced rumors that Apple is on the verge of introducing a revolutionary electric car. And they look at what Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson has to say about his company's next EV entry. The pre-Christmas episode also features an interview with CarParts.com CEO Lev Peker, an award-winning business leader, who is in the process of turning his company around by providing consumers with quicker delivery and better service.  And as a public service to kids of all ages, we will interview OnStar's Laura Thornton, who will reveal a very special way to track the imminent arrival of Santa Claus as Little Saint Nick makes his annual journey around the world. The 2021 Genesis GV80 is a genuine contender in the crowded midsize luxury SUV segment.

On the eve of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball season, team chaplain Kevin Harvey checks in. Harvey shares his testimony, his work with the 76ers, and the ministry of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) in local schools. Harvey attended LaSalle and played basketball there before suffering an injury early in his collegiate career which the Lord used to bring him to Himself and on the path of serving God to this day. Featured clips: Jen Hill, author of The Best Birthday Cake In The History of Ever Jody McBrayer (Avalon) Featured music: Winter Wonderland / STEVE TAYLOR      Little Saint Nick / MIKE LOVE (Beach Boys) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you content hounds. In this special holiday extravaganza the lyric boys discuss 10 Christmas songs across all genres of music. We discuss The Beach Boys' inability to write a song without mentioning cars, the horrifying concept of forgetting what Christmas is altogether, and what it means to be a Christmas unicorn. Songs discussed: Little Saint Nick by The Beach Boys Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer by Bing Crosby Father Christmas by The Kinks The Christmas Unicorn by Sufjan Stevens Jingle Bells by Frank Sinatra What is Christmas? By Trans-Siberian Orchestra Happy Holidays, You Bastard by Blink-182 Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon A Marshmallow World by Dean Martin Find the Lyric Boys online at www.TheLyricBoys.com. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelyricboys/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelyricboys Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thelyricboys YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS6Xws01HxTY7PYQsAgO9Mw Twitter: https://twitter.com/thelyricboys

Hello Friends, and welcome to a very festive installment of Mixology! Today we'll be taking a look at the wonderful 1964 Christmas Album from The Beach Boys, simply titled 'The Beach Boys' Christmas Album'. Featuring a number of band originals, and big band arrangements of Christmas classics, the album also brings together a few bizarre mono/stereo mix differences for us to dig our mittens in to. Even better, we've got 6 unique mixes of Little Saint Nick, 5 for Auld Lang Syne, and even a non LP B-side thrown in there too. So grab a hold of Santa's Beard, this is going to be one wild ride!Happy Listening, Frederick Email the show at: backtomonoradio@gmail.comListen to companion podcast Back to Mono here: backtomono.podbean.comJoin the Facebook Community here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/backtomono

We interview Ray Mohler Jr. the founder of The Little Saint Nick Foundation, who talks about how he was able to start this worthwhile organization at 5 years old. We discuss their mission and their Fall golf outing. Website: https://littlestnick.org Instagram: @littlestnick Facebook: @littlestnick  

Playlist: Jangling Sparrows, Bring A Little Christmas Spark, Athanor, I Remember You On Christmas, Delta Moon, Christmastime In New Orleans, Michele D’Amour & The Love Dealers, Funky Santa, The Weeklings, Gonna Be Christmas, Jonathan Pushkar, Little Saint Nick, Val Starr & The Blues Rocket, Bluesy Christmas, Little Jimmy King, Happy Christmas Tears, Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, I’m Your Santa, Little Charlie & THe Nightcats, Santa Claus, Roomful Of Blues, Santa Claus Do You Ever Get The Blues, The Red Hot Jalapenos, Jingle Bell Rock, Buddy Guy, Home For Christmas, Tersea James, I Need Christmas This Year, Peter V Blues Train, I’ll Be Home For Christmas, The Muffs, No Holiday, Dustin Douglas & The Electric Gentlemen, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Mindi Abair And The Boneshakers, All I Got For Christmas Is The Blues, Tomislav Goluban, Christmas Blues, Mindi Abair And The Boneshakers, Run Run Rudolph, Lurrie Bell, Drifting, Benny GTurner, I Want Some Christmas Cheer, Erin Harpe And The Delta Swingers, At The Christmas Ball, Chris “Bad News” Barnes, Christmas And New Year”s Blues, Billy Flynn, Christmas Blues, Micki Free, Five Minutes Till Christmas, Roomful Of Blues, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Charles Brown, Merry Christmas Baby/ Please Come Home For Christmas Many Thanks To: We here at the Black-Eyed & Blues Show would like to thank all the PR and radio people that get us music including Frank Roszak, Rick Lusher ,Doug Deutsch Publicity Services,American Showplace Music, Alive Natural Sounds, Ruf Records, Vizztone Records,Blind Pig Records,Delta Groove Records, Electro-Groove Records,Betsie Brown, Blind Raccoon Records, BratGirl Media, Mark Pucci Media, Mark Platt @RadioCandy.com and all of the Blues Societies both in the U.S. and abroad. All of you help make this show as good as it is weekly. We are proud to play your artists.Thank you all very much! Blues In The Area: FTC Stage One: Saturday, Brother Joscephus & the Love Revolution; Fairfield. (203)-319-1404 The Mohegan Sun (Wolf Den): Friday, David Foster & the Mohegan Sun All-Stars; Uncasville. (888) 226-7711 Tipping Chair Tavern: Sunday, Brian Calway & Hash Brown Blues Band; Monday, Shawn Taylor; Milldale. (860) 426-9688 Infinity Music Hall: Friday, Jerry Douglas; Norfolk. Note Kitchen & Bar: Friday, Bone Dry Duo; Bethel. Peaches Southern Pub & Juke Joint: Saturday, Otis and the Hurricanes; Norwalk. The Acoustic Café: Friday, Tree of Life Benefit: the Tree of Life Band, The Showdown Kids, The Elliott Peck Band, Colonel & the Mermaids. (Benefits Tree of Life Fund at Ferncliff Manor, Inc. and for Bright Strides Art and Equine Therapy); Bridgeport. (203)-335-3655 BRYAC: Friday, VIP Pre-show for Benefit for Tree of Life & Bright Strides Art and Equine Therapy; Black Rock. Boca Smooth: Saturday, Fake ID Acoustic Duo w/Shelia Fabrizio; Bridgeport. Old Post Tavern: Friday, Tony Ferrigno Band; Fairfield. SOHO Bar: Friday, Two Shots of Blue; Norwalk. Grey Goose: Saturday, Last Hoorah; Southport. Roger Sherman Inn: Friday, Vinnie Ferrone; New Canaan. Walrus + Carpenter: Friday, Cotton Gin and the Swamp Yankees (Residency); Black Rock. Redding Roadhouse: Saturday, Santa; Redding. (203) 938-3388 J House: Saturday, 5 O'Clocks; Riverside. Sails: Saturday, The B Side; Rowayton. Coal House Pizza: Friday, Jake Kulak and the LowDown; Stamford. Oak Haven Table & Bar: Saturday, Chicago Dawgs Duo; New Haven. Café 9: Friday, RG & Friends-ALS Fundraiser/Celebration of Rob Callahan's Music; New Haven. (203)-789-8281 Donahue’s: Sunday, The Barley Hoppers (4:30 pm); Madison. The Pit Stop: Saturday, Cassandra and the KnightHawks; Milford. Black-eyed Sally's: Friday, Ed Peabody and the Big Blue Thang; Saturday, The Blues-Jazz Project; Hartford. (860) 278 7427 Two Wrasslin' Cats Coffee House: Saturday, Terri and Rob Duo (12 pm); Middletown. Chamard Vineyards; Friday, Dan Stevens (5 pm); Clinton. (860) 664-0299 Paradise Hills Vineyard & Winery: Friday, Eran Troy Danner, solo acoustic(5 pm); Wallingford. (203) 284-0123 Red Rooster Saloon: Sunday, Eran Troy Danner, solo acoustic (1 pm); Winsted. Maple Tree Café: Saturday, Connecticut Blues Society Presents Sweet Daddy Cool Breeze; Simsbury. Main Pub: Friday, Balkun Brothers; Manchester. JJ Tavern at Heritage Village: Friday, Murray the Wheel; Southbury. Evergreen Inn Tavern: Friday, Shawn Taylor; South Woodbury. (203) 405-3735 Main Street Pint & Plate: Saturday, Eran Troy Danner, solo acoustic; Bristol. Hanging Hills Brewery: Saturday, Murray the Wheel (6:30p); Hartford. The Brass Horse Café: Friday, Jr Krauss and the Shakes; Sunday, Christmas Party with Johnny Larsen Band w/Carolyn Rae (3 pm); Barkhamsted. Lakeview Restaurant & Bar: Friday, 60 Cycle Hum Blues; Saturday, Frank and the Knows-It-Alls. Coventry. PUB 32: Friday, Patty Tuite Group; Storrs. 860-487-9785 Daddy Jack’s: Saturday, The Rivergods Annual Holiday Show; New London. Rocks 21: Friday, Sue Menhart (5:30 pm); Mystic. The Steak Loft: Friday, dave Robbins & the Amplifires; Mystic. (860)-536-2661 The Horsebrook Café: Saturday, Ms Marci & The Lovesick Hounds; Plainfield. The Stomping Ground: Saturday, Professor Harp; Putnam. (860) 928-7900 The Strange Brew Pub: Friday, Jeremiah Hazed Christmas Party w/Someone You Can Xray; Norwich. The Turning Point: Sunday, The Peach Project; Piermont, NY The Falcon: Sunday Brunch w/Annie & the Hedonists (11 am); Marlboro, NY. The Capitol Theatre: Friday, The Weight Band "Rock of Ages"; Port Chester, NY Theodores': Friday, Michelle Wilson; Saturday, Brian Calway & Hash Brown Blues Band; Springfield. (413) 736-6000 The Knickerbocker Café: Friday, Jeff Pitchell & James Montgomery; Westerly. (401) 315-5070 Calabrese Club: Saturday, Chris Leigh Band; Westerly, RI Weekly Blues Events Black Eyed Sally’s: Liviu Pop Invitational w/TBA (Thursday) Hartford. (860) 278-7427 The Hungry Tiger: Blues w/Dave Sadlowski (Tuesday) Manchester. (860) 649-1195 The Flying Monkey: David Stoltz Sunday Blues sg/TBA (4–7 pm) Hartford. Farmington Marriott: Happy Hour (5-7:30 pm) Steak Loft: Greg Piccolo (Monday) Mystic O'Neill's: Geoff Hartwell (First Saturday) Norwalk The Falcon: Sunday Brunch w/Big Joe Fitz & The Lo-Fis (11am); Marlboro, NY. Maple Tree: First Thursday’s Tim McDonald & Hally Jaeggi, Simsbury The Owl Shop: Planet Red (Tuesday) New Haven Nightingale's Acoustic Café: Dan Steven’s "Pickin' Parties" (Tuesday) Old Lyme Home: Rocky Lawrence (1st & 3rd Sunday) Branford Harvest Wine Bar: Guitar George and Willie (First Thursday) New Haven Crave: Rocky Lawrence (Thursday) Ansonia Hog River Brewing Co.: Wise Old Moon’s Twang Thursdays w/Orb Mellon Hartford. Knickerbocker Café: Let's Dance Wednesdays w/ TBA Westerly, RI Bongo Ron's Cigar & Lounge; Open Mic (Thursday) Old Saybrook, Main Pub Restaurant: Americana w/Bill Wallach, Don Sinetti, and Friends (Sunday) East Hartford The Falcon Underground: Hudson Valley Singer/Songwriters, Host, Jason Gisser (First Wednesday) Marlboro, NY Vincent’s: Tuesday, Boogie Chillin'; Worcester. Weekly Jams The Hungry Tiger: Blues Jam w/ Marcia Gamache (Monday); Manchester. (860) 649-1195 Black Eyed Sally’s: Community Blues Jam w/TBA (Wednesday); Hartford. (860) 278-7427 C J Sparrow Pub & Eatery: Ken Safety's Open Mic Show (Thursday); Cheshire The Hungry Tiger: Open Mic Jam Hosted Jimmy Photon & The Hungry Tiger All-Stars (Thursday) Manchester. (860) 649-1195 Club One Entertainment Complex: The Blues Jam (Sunday) Feeding Hills MA Fiddlers Green: Open Mic hosted by Jason Brownstein (Every other Fri) Stamford Maloneys Publick HOUSE: Musician's Hot Spot Open Mic w/Front Row Band (Saturday. 4 pm) Meriden The Buttonwood Tree: Terri and Rob Duo host the Open Mic (Monday) Middletown. Café 9: Original Blues Jam Session w/ TBA (Sunday) New Haven The Chicken Shack at Carter Hill Farm: The Shack Jam w/Lonnie Gasperini (Thursday) Marlborough Best Video: Second Wednesday Open Mic Hamden Turning Tide: Blues Jam w/Chris Leigh Band (First Sunday) New London Bobby Q's: Featured Act followed by a jam, hosted by Ed Train (Friday) Norwalk American Polish Citizens Club: Brandt Taylor's Blues Roundup (Sunday) Jewett City Donahue's Beach Bar: Open Mic Wednesday w/Sandy or Frankie; Madison Fast Eddie's Billiards Café: Thursday Open Mic; New Milford Peaches On the Waterfront: Juke Joint Wednesdays w/Pro Jam Hosted By Ed Train Norwalk. Peaches On the Waterfront: Brunch with Vinnie Ferrone (Sunday 12-3 pm) Four Seasons By the Lake: Sunday Open Mic Jam; Stafford Guilford Country Tavern: Sandy Connolly’s Open Mic Night; (last Wednesday) Guilford Note Kitchen & Bar: Open Mic Jam (Monday); Bethel. O'Briens Sports Pub and Rest: Open Mic with Piano hosted by Jonathan Chapman (Monday); Danbury Open Space: Open Mic Night (Wednesday); Hamden. Preston VFW: Jam w/ guest host TBA (Sunday); Preston Sobieski John III Club: Wednesday, Open Mic w/TBA; Deep River. Spill the Beans Coffee House: Acoustic Open Mic w/Johnny I; (Thursday) Prospect (203) 758-7373 The Acoustic Café: Blues Jam hosted by Tom Crivellone (Monday) Bridgeport. (203)-335-3655 Stonehouse: Blues Jam sg/TBA (Sunday); Baltic. (860) 822-8877 Strange Brew: Bill's Garage Jam/ Bill Thibault (Monday) Norwich. SeaGrape Café: The 5 O'Clocks Lamb Jam (Wednesday) Fairfield The Black Duck: Open Jam Hosted by Wendy May (Thursdays) Westport. Black Duck: Friday Jam Session 11 pm hosted by Ed Train; Westport The Black Sheep Tavern: Open Blues Jam w/ Greg Sherrod (Thursday) Niantic (860) 739-2041 O'Neils Bar: Acoustic open mic w/Dee Brown (Thursday) Bridgeport The Stomping Ground: Open Mic (Sunday) Putnam. (860) 928-7900 Cady's Tavern: Rick Harrington Weekly Roadhouse Jam (Sunday) Chepachet RI Theodores’: Open Mic (Wednesday, Springfield, MA) ; Springfield. (413) 736-6000 The Still Bar: Blues Jam (Sunday) Agawam, MA Snow's Restaurant & Bar: Open mic (Sunday, Worcester, MA) Park Grill and Spirits: Two Left Blues Jam (Tuesday, Worcester, MA) Jillian’s: Open mic (Thursdays, Worcester, MA) Greendale's Pub: Jim's Blues Jam (Sunday, Worcester, MA) Greendale's Pub: Open mic (Tuesday, Worcester, MA) Greendale's Pub: Wackey Blues Jam (Wednesday, Worcester, MA) Boundary Brewhouse: Sunday Blues Jam (Pawtucket, RI) The Falcon Underground: Petey Hop's Roots & Blues Sessions (Third Wednesday) Marlboro, NY The Falcon Underground: Acoustic Open Mic Sessions w/Jason Gisser (first Wednesday) Marlboro, NY Lucy's Lounge: Petey Hop's acoustic open mic (Monday) Pleasantville, NY June's: CT Music Showcase Acoustic Open Mic (Monday) Killingworth. (860)-663-1292 The Bayou: Blues jam (Monday) Mount Vernon, NY https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id502316055

The Beach Boys and Kacey Musgraves both produced quintessential Christmas albums – they just happened to be generations and decades apart. The similarities are striking: both albums are a mix of well-known holiday standards plus original compositions – and all are true to the artists’ unique sounds. Both albums make you excited for all of the “Ribbons and Bows” of the season and the coming of “Little Saint Nick.”

Our beloved Eagles headed west and enjoyed some California lovin vs the LA Rams. With Carson Wentz out due to a back injury, Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles is back under center and helps the birds keep their slim playoff chances alive.

Christmas is near and I'm in a jolly mood. This week I talk about visiting Santa, son and ornaments, being ahead of Christmas for a split second and an attempt to settle an St. Nick tradition disagreement. Also, my son is potty training, and how those toy commercials are sucking my daughter right in. Plus I cover weird news, what's trending on Twitter, tales from the neighborhood and much more.

La Salle College High School's Annual Choral Christmas Concert was performed on Monday, December 11. Song list: 1) O Come (with brass) 2) In the Bleak Midwinter (with piano) 3) Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (with piano) 4) I'll Be Home for Christmas (with piano) 5) I'm Bound Away (with piano) 6) Born, Born in Bethlehem (with piano) 7) Magnificant (a cappella) 8) Set Me as a Seal (with piano) 9) Veni, Veni Emmanuel (a cappella) 10) There is Faint Music (with piano) 11) Sleigh Ride (with piano) 12) Vuelie (a cappella) 13) You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch (with piano) 14) Little Saint Nick (with piano) 15) O Holy Night (with piano) --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

We make it offical. Christmas begins with Little Saint Nick.

It's the second week of our fortnight celebration of the 1960s! We cover two classics from The Beach Boys' Christmas Album, "Little Saint Nick" and "The Man With All The Toys". Revelations follow.

Shrunken Head Lounge Surf Radio Show Running Time: 29 minutes 30 seconds The Beach Boys - Ultimate Christmas Album Part 2   Singles     * "Little Saint Nick" released 2 December 1963 US #3 (on Christmas chart)    * "The Man with All the Toys" b/w "Blue Christmas" (Capitol 5312), 16 November 1964 US #3 (on Christmas chart) The Beach Boys' Christmas Album  peaked at number 6 on Billboard magazine's special, year-end, weekly Christmas Albums sales chart during a 13-week chart stay spread out from 1964 to 1968. Reissues     * The Beach Boys' Christmas Album was first issued on CD in 1988 (CDP 7 91008-2), with the single mix of "Little Saint Nick" (in mono and with overdubbed sleigh bells) replacing the stereo LP version as the first track. All twelve tracks are in mono.     * It was reissued on CD in 1990 by Toshiba EMI Japan (TOCP-5945), with all twelve original tracks in stereo, plus the single mono version of "Little Saint Nick" and its B-side "The Lord's Prayer" (mono version) added as bonus tracks.     * It was again reissued on CD in 1991 (CDP 7 95084-2), with the stereo "Little Saint Nick" reinstated as the leadoff track and four bonus tracks added: the single version of "Little Saint Nick", its B-side "The Lord's Prayer" (this time in stereo), and alternate takes of "Little Saint Nick" (utilizing the melody from the group's song "Drive-In") and "Auld Lang Syne" (without Denis' message overdubbed). "The Man With All The Toys", "Santa's Beard", "Merry Christmas, Baby" and "Christmas Day" are in mono, while other eight tracks from the original sequence are in stereo.     * 1998 saw the release of Ultimate Christmas, a new CD compilation containing all of the twelve tracks from the original LP (in stereo), all of the bonus tracks from the previous CD except for "The Lord's Prayer", and 11 additional tracks including the 1974 single "Child of Winter" and several previously-unreleased tracks from an aborted 1977 Christmas album.     * Christmas with the Beach Boys, issued in 2004, is essentially a reissue of Ultimate Christmas with a new title and cover art and one song ("Christmas Time Is Here Again") deleted from the tracklist. Like Ultimate Christmas, it omits "The Lord's Prayer" from the "Little Saint Nick" single.     * Christmas Harmonies, a 2009 compilation, includes 11 of the 12 tracks from the original LP (including the single mix of "Little Saint Nick" and rare mono mixes of the other Wilson/Love compositions), as well as the alternate take of "Auld Lang Syne", the "Child of Winter" single, and two of the 1977 tracks.

Shrunken Head Lounge Surf Radio Show Running Time: 29 minutes 30 seconds The Beach Boys' Christmas Album released on November 16, 1964   Containing five original songs and seven standards, the album proved to be a long-running success during subsequent Christmas seasons, initially reaching #6 in the US Christmas album chart and eventually going gold. Of the original songs, "Little Saint Nick" was already famous, having been a hit single the year before. "The Man with All the Toys" was another hit during Christmastime 1964 and "Christmas Day" is noteworthy for being the first Beach Boys song to feature a lead vocal from Al Jardine. While leader Brian Wilson produced and arranged the "rock" songs, he left it to Dick Reynolds (an arranger of The Four Freshmen, a group Wilson idolized) to arrange the orchestral backings on the traditional songs to which The Beach Boys would apply their vocals. The album was released in both mono and stereo; the stereo mix, prepared by engineer Chuck Britz, would be the last true stereo mix for a Beach Boys album until 1968's Friends.

We're back with the second episode in Season 2 of Everything Disney's Corny Christmas Season! Today, we bring you a full feature, this being Mickey's Christmas Carol. At the end, our Christmas song is our very own theme song, Little Saint Nick! Stay tuned for Episode 2.3 on this Saturday!!!