How a chance encounter at a New York City nightclub birthed the Ronettes.
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They would make you think you were really good and then theyd give us money.
So we started getting paid at 5, recalls Talley-Ross inBut Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
An Excerpt From But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
It was like what the Charleston was in the 1920s.
It defined the pre-Beatles 60s.
Billy Joel, musician:There was a lot of dancing going on in those days.
Just a lot, a lot, of dance crazes.
And the thing is … it became super-popular with our audience.
Blavat:It was the newest dancing creation, the newest club.
Vera:The Peppermint Lounge was literally a hooker-and-sailor joint before the Twist came along.
Dee:It was a dump, really.
You walked in the front door, there was an L-shaped room.
Then there was a stage the size of a postage stamp.
And then to the left theLpart of it there would be a little dance floor and tables and chairs.
There was a wrought-iron railing around the stage.
Blavat:Were talking about this phenomenon where Zsa Zsa Gabor is dancing, Cary Grant is dancing.
Dee:Well, you cant get any bigger.
Marilyn Monroe was there.
Jackie Kennedy was there.
John Wayne was there.
Nat King Cole was there.
I mean anybody who was anybody was in the Peppermint Lounge dancing this phenomenon.
These major stars are doing this new dance old people!
Jackie O. was learning the Twist!
Were like, Is he talking to us?
]They thought that we were the people that were going to perform because we were all dressed alike.
Talley-Ross:And we went in, we were like, Okay, were in the door.
What are we doing now?
Spector:The management was waiting for another girl group; we never found out what group.
He says, Girls, youre late!
I told the girls, Dont say a word.
And they took us in there and they said, Get up onstage.
I say, Can you dance?
And they said, Oh yeah, we can dance.
Talley-Ross:Joey Dee and them were performing they were like, Come on up!
Dee:The song happened to be Whatd I Say.
Talley-Ross:We gave it all we had because we were like,We got in here.
Lets just show them what were working with!
Spector:They hired us that night.
They gave us $10 per girl per night.
Dee:I said, Would you like to work for me?
So I took a ride up to Harlem the next day, and I met the parents.
And I said, Of course.
They said, No hanky-panky.
I said, Nope.
So Aunt Helen became the chaperone.
And I said, Dont worry, Ill get my homework!
We were not; we were singing for our family and making money.
Thats when she said, Do something with your daughter.
Spector:Weekends at my grandmas house were the best.
Talley-Ross:Ronnie and Estelle are my first cousins.
My grandmother and grandfather had 14 kids and everybody went to Mamas house.
Thats where our grandmother had lived, which was Sugar Hill.
You could hear the balls hit.
And Ronnie and Estelle at one point lived on 152nd.
It was tough, but we loved where we lived.
Spector:I had, like, seven girl cousins.
Talley-Ross:It was really just our family.
There were so many of us that we didnt need to really have friends over.
And my family was so supportive of you; they would make you think you were really good.
]And then theyd give us money.
So we started getting paid at 5, you know?
Give her a quarter you could buy a lot of candy back then with a quarter.
Because being family, you tend to have a family sound.
There was a song: Jambalaya, coffee, pie, fillet, gumbo.
She would scream it.
Spector:I sang, with no idea what the words meant or even had them right.
Talley-Ross:Ronnie was honestly my breath growing up my life.
If I could be with Ronnie, I was okay.
We were such close cousins.
We shared the toilet together.
Because if she went, I needed to go.
I loved Ronnie so much.
My mother would say, Ronnie took every bottle Nedra had.
Shes two and a half years older than me.
So it started early days.
Its like,Oh, Nedras got a bottle let me pull it out of her mouth.
Spector:The cousin who I was closest to was my Aunt SuSus daughter, Nedra.
Her father was a Spanish man, which made her a half-breed like me.
Even though she was two years younger, we were inseparable.
Ronnie used to be in the middle.
Ronnie needed to be in the middle.
Spector:She said, Im going to put you at the Apollo.
And then well see how good you are.
Talley-Ross:We did amateur night at the Apollo … and won.
He didnt have his belt he forgot it so he was like, I cant go onstage.
I dont have my belt.
Spector:That was my key I knew I was good.
And they were saying, You know what?
Boy groups are good; girls will want to get married.
Theyll want to have children.
So a lot of people said, No, its not going to work.
My mom didnt play.
She held the other girls tight too.
Spector:The three of us were determined, especially me.
Talley-Ross:We started doing the Brooklyn Fox with Murray the K. We did it on our breaks.
And that would be on Labor Day, Christmas, and Easter.
And we would do these big rock-and-roll shows.
We didnt have a hit, but Murray the K was like, These are my dancing girls.
You know, da, da, da.
It would say on the poster on the marquee And Others.
So we used to all laugh and go, Were And Others.
We got to meet the Shirelles on that show too.
Talley-Ross:We did our own dance routines.
Id say, I was probably, for me Im not boasting was more the dancer.
I just loved to dance.
Ronnie would say, Come on, Ned, you pick up the dancing!
Estelle, you know, didnt ruffle her hair.
Her hair came offstage looking exactly the same.
Talley-Ross:Our heels and our makeup was for the audience to see us way off.
You had to project your voice, but you had to project your look, too.
]So thats sort of the early days of the Ronettes.
Paul Shaffer, musician:Of course the Ronettes had an image.
Talley-Ross:Estelle loved fashion she went to the Fashion Institute of Technology.
So she was the one going, Well, lets wear this and wear that.
She liked Brigitte Bardot and had a picture in her room.
Estelle was always very soft-spoken, but she was so sophisticated.
La La Brooks, the Crystals:They were original with that.
And the bouffant hair.
Everything was very original.
Talley-Ross:You had to find something to make you stand out from the other girl groups.
So then all of a sudden because of how we dressed we brought attention to ourselves.
Its so easy for New Yorkers not to see you because theyre just on their way.
But if youre coming in threes, looking alike, you know.
But we always did that we had extremely long and thick hair.
Spector:My mother is Cherokee Indian and Black, and my fathers Irish.
She understood what being dark meant.
Talley-Ross:We wore high collars with Asian-looking tops.
If youre going to wear something formfitting, you had to have the place where your knee went out.
We didnt do the flare little dresses with bows thats not who we were.
We were New Yorkers.
And I think when people saw that, they said, Yeah, this is sort of it.
This is New York.
Nobody was doing that the girls were all flare, 50s with the crinolines underneath.
Spector:So when we turned our backs to the audience and shook … the crowd would go nuts.
Talley-Ross:We were special to the family.
We felt the security of all of our family.
We did the Apollo Theater.
The aunts would take turns traveling with us, and the uncles were there as the chaperones.
Brooks:It was like the Partridge Family.
I mean, so many people of family in a dressing room.
It was like, Oh my God.
It was crazy uncles, cousins.
They took everybody in and those halls had echoes at the Apollo the halls was lit up.
Talley-Ross:But it was like, We can do this.
Weve got the strength of each other.
Because we were a trio, you know, and family.
And we knew our family was someplace in that building supporting us and rooting us on.
And we had a big, big following of different parts of the people in the community.
Vera:Estelle was the great beauty of the three.
I mean, she was like, you know, a folk model.
She was just a breathtakingly beautiful woman.
Talley-Ross:After a while, we were known for that.
Ronnie got a little bit wild.
How many times did I say, Get the dress down.
Pull it further down?
Brooks:I was shocked.
I was like, Oh my God, Ronnie.
And she took it with a grain of salt, because she wanted the attention.
Ronnie loves attention shed sing to a pineapple.
My mothers maiden name was Mobley, and she was like, Moblettes … that doesnt sound good.
Everybody was yelling to give their opinion.
So the name came from RO, for Ronnie, NE, Nedra, and ES, for Estelle.
We put it together, Ronettes.
We always held each others hands before we went onstage.
Ive got high-heel shoes on.
Anyway, life was good, and things just came our way.
Colpix Records, I was 15 first contract.
Signing a contract, you know, to be with a major company … that was major for us.
When we had stuff pressed, we could start doing sock hops.
You were legitimate when you had a record with a label on it.
Spector:We were the most popular girl group ever for bar mitzvahs people wanted the Ronettes.
Patrick Swayze was not there, which saddens me, but Honi Coles did our choreography for the clubs.
Laurels was another Laurels and Grossingers.
We felt very accepted there.
Spector:One day Estelle called Philles Records, which was run by Phil Spector.
He was probably the hottest producer in America, but he answered the phone himself.
Talley-Ross:The big lie.
No, it didnt happen that way.
You got a look.
Talley-Ross:I think from the beginning with Phil, he had eyes for Ronnie.
She was 18, so she wasnt illegal.
Spector:We met Phil at a place called Mira Sound in New York on 57th Street.
And he says, Well, sing me some songs.
And I said, Well, all I know is, like, Frankie Lymon and Little Anthony.
And he said, Well, let me hear it.
Talley-Ross:He did the audition in the apartment building that he lived in.
He had the office there and lived down the hall from it.
So we went there and just went to the piano.
It didnt happen that way.
It sounded right since thats probably what we would have done if Phil hadnt come along when he did.
Spector:The story worked, and Colpix let us out of our contract within a week.
Phil finally signed us in March of 1963.
- Excerpted fromBut Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
An Oral History of the 60s Girl Groups,by Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz.
Available from Hachette Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
