The Ronettes Featuring Veronica – Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes [180g Vinyl LP]

The Ronettes Featuring Veronica – Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes [180g Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: LP, Album, Reissue, Mono, 180 Gram Audiophile Vinyl
• Catalogue Number: MOVLP674
• Barcode: 8718469531998
• Genre: Pop, Girl Group, Rock & Roll
• Label: Music On Vinyl / Philles Records
• Originally Released: November 1964
• Reissue Released: 5 February 2013
• Pressing: 180 Gram Audiophile Vinyl
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

In the summer of 1963, three mixed-race cousins from Spanish Harlem walked into Gold Star Studios in Hollywood and recorded 'Be My Baby' with producer Phil Spector. The session brought together the Wall of Sound — Spector's method of layering massed instruments, voices, and echo in Gold Star's celebrated Studio A to create a dense, reverberant sonic architecture previously unheard in pop music — with the lead voice of Veronica Bennett, whose combination of vulnerability, warmth, and barely contained desire was unlike anything else on the radio. Within weeks the record was number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Ronettes — Veronica, her sister Estelle, and their cousin Nedra Talley — were the most viscerally exciting group in American pop. Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes, released in November 1964 on Spector's own Philles Records label, is the only studio album they ever made.

The album is a collection of the group's Philles singles rather than a conventional studio set, and its logic is one of accumulation — each track another deployment of the Wall of Sound against a different emotional situation. Spector worked from Gold Star's echo chambers outward, stacking up to a hundred musicians for some sessions, with the core rhythm section drawn from the Los Angeles session players who would later be known collectively as the Wrecking Crew: Hal Blaine on drums, Carol Kaye, Barney Kessel, Tommy Tedesco, and Bill Pitman on guitars, Larry Knechtel and Don Randi on keyboards, and Ray Pohlman on bass. Jack Nitzsche handled orchestration and arrangements; Larry Levine engineered. Backing vocalists on various tracks included a young Cher (then Cherilyn LaPiere), Sonny Bono, Bobby Sheen, and the Blossoms. The songwriting credits across the album bring together Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich — who co-wrote 'Be My Baby', 'Baby, I Love You', and 'Chapel of Love' with Spector — alongside Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, who wrote 'Walking in the Rain'.

That final song became the album's Grammy moment: 'Walking in the Rain' won the 1965 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary (Rock and Roll) Recording, one of the earliest Grammy acknowledgements of the genre that had transformed popular music. The album was placed at number 422 on Rolling Stone's original 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. The record remains one of the defining artefacts of early 1960s pop — simultaneously intimate and monumental, its productions pressing Veronica Bennett's voice into an enormous sonic frame that amplifies rather than diminishes her presence.

This Music On Vinyl reissue presents the album in its original mono configuration on 180 gram audiophile vinyl. The mono mix is the definitive version: Spector conceived the Wall of Sound for mono playback, and the cohesion of the productions — their depth, weight, and internal balance — is fully realised only in this format.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Walking in the Rain
2. Do I Love You?
3. So Young
4. (The Best Part of) Breakin' Up
5. I Wonder
6. What'd I Say?

Side B

1. Be My Baby
2. You, Baby
3. Baby, I Love You
4. How Does It Feel?
5. When I Saw You
6. Chapel of Love

Credits

• Veronica (Ronnie) Bennett – lead vocals
• Estelle Bennett – vocals
• Nedra Talley – vocals
• Produced by – Phil Spector
• Arranged by – Jack Nitzsche
• Engineered by – Larry Levine
• Recorded at – Gold Star Studios, Hollywood, California
• Hal Blaine – drums
• Carol Kaye, Barney Kessel, Tommy Tedesco, Bill Pitman, Vini Poncia Jr. – guitars
• Larry Knechtel, Don Randi, Leon Russell, Al De Lory, Harold Battiste – piano/keyboards
• Ray Pohlman, Jimmy Bond, Larry Knechtel – bass
• Steve Douglas, Jay Migliori, Lou Blackburn, Roy Caton – horns
• Frank Capp, Julius Wechter, Sonny Bono – percussion
• Backing vocals – Cher, Sonny Bono, Bobby Sheen, The Blossoms
• Label – Music On Vinyl / Philles Records