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Nedra Talley Ross wasn’t a household name any longer, but she had been once upon a time. When she turned 18 in January 1964, George Harrison was among the guests who helped her celebrate. She and her cousins were feted, surrounded, adored. For she and her cousins were the Ronettes, the girl group above all others, the sound of teenage emotional extremity set to soaring, symphonic pop. Nedra was the last surviving Ronette and now she is gone.
Nedra’s cousins were Veronica and Estelle Bennett, and the three of them had sung and danced and played as long as they could remember. She was only a Ronette between 1963 and 1967, but in a few short years she was part of some of the greatest pop ever recorded: Be My Baby, Walking in the Rain, Sleigh Ride and the rest. Not that she was taken with Phil Spector, who produced them. “I wasn’t impressed by him, and he didn’t stir me with what he was saying, didn’t scare me with what he was doing,” Nedra told me when I interviewed her just before Christmas last year. “He was quite arrogant, and who wants to deal with an arrogant person?”
By the time I spoke to her, the effects of dementia were plain. But her daughter, Heather, felt it would be good for Ross to remember the old days after a miserable couple of years in which, as well as illness, she had lost her husband of nearly 60 years. Memories came in and out of focus: she remembered how people were obsessed by the Ronettes’ magnificent beehive hairstyles.
“They would really want to know who you were and touch you,” she said. “They’d look at our hair and say, ‘Is that real?’”
I laughed. “But you were the Ronettes. You were the coolest looking group in the history of pop! And you know it!”
She laughed, and a hint of sauce entered her voice. “Now, where were you looking at us?”
Nedra did not have linear anecdotes. What came out were memories triggered by questions; half-formed images that would disappear as she moved on. Such as an aunt in New Jersey, who stood up to the mafia when they wanted the Ronettes to extend a run of concerts: “She was like, ‘No, we have another show we’ve agreed to do. They’re not doing it, can’t you understand?’”
A little while later I spoke to Heather, who told me more about her mother’s remarkable life. Although Nedra had walked away from pop stardom when she met her husband Scott Ross, she found another kind of fame as the couple became famous on the Christian circuit. They had bought a barn, converted it to a church.
“It was the 70s, so it was a hip church, and it was packed,” Heather said. “It wasn’t normal – my dad was like a comedian on the mic and my mom sang, and the music was different, it had a rock’n’roll feel to it. Everyone sat on the floor on these shag rugs that were all different colours. It looked cool.” They started preaching on cruises, Scott became a popular TV minister, and Nedra embraced her second act.
I asked Heather, slightly awkwardly, if Nedra had put sexiness behind her when she embraced the Lord. She laughed, as if it were the most ridiculous question. “There’s no denying it,” she said. “My mom would come into school wearing a fur jacket and tight jeans. People were breaking their necks to see. My mom always kept her sex appeal.”
I speak to a great many musicians in their 70s and 80s. Most of them made pop music their life, and at this point what matters to them is tending the legacy of a lifetime in music. Nedra had a scant couple of years making hit singles, and while she certainly fought hard to win back her royalties in a lawsuit against Spector that she and her bandmates eventually lost, legacy didn’t seem to be a pressing matter for her in her later years. Yet her voice, her group, remain heard all over the world – especially at Christmas time, when the Ronettes’ contributions to A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector ring out across shopping centres, radio stations and TV shows.
She would take pleasure instead from what the songs had meant to families. “When I signed autographs, I would make it very, very personal. And a lot of people would say, ‘My mom used to listen to you,’ or, ‘My dad listened to that all the time.’ I was proud of that because it’s a business that can go fast.”
I was talking to Nedra about Christmas songs, so it made sense to ask her what her favourite childhood present had been. “A blue Schwinn bike. My room was right near the [front] door, and so I heard a sound, and I ran to the bed to check Santa Claus was there – and he wasn’t, but it was my dad bringing in the bicycle. It was wonderful. I couldn’t wait for it, and then I was so sad when it was ending.”
The Ronettes were wonderful: the platonic ideal of a girl group. Their records will live on, as they have for more than 60 years. And every time we hear them, let us remember the incredible young women who made them.
English (US)