Remember The Ronettes
On the occasion of Nedra Talley-Ross' death, DJ Short offers an in-depth history of midcentury American music, the three-part harmony, and a group that never got its due.
Art by DJ Short
In Western music, the three-part harmony dates back to the 12th and 13th centuries, when Léonin and Pérotin developed polyphonic compositions that expanded on the early heterophonic harmonies of sacred Gregorian chants. Followers viewed these harmonies as reflective of a spiritual unity: many voices coming together, becoming anonymized for the greater purpose of worship.
In the United States, three-part harmony became an integral ingredient in some of the earliest forms of popular recorded music. Drawing on techniques pioneered by Black gospel and quartet singers, trios like The Boswell Sisters helped codify the Big Band sound of the 1930s. The doo-wop boom of the 40s, though typically anchored by a quartet if not a quintet, at its core generally utilized a three-part harmony structure. Early girl groups like The Chantels employed rich harmony in their pioneering blend of doo-wop, rock and roll, and white pop music. By the time a group of young girls from Spanish Harlem who called themselves The Ronettes came around, three-part harmony was nothing new. But their music would forever change its function.
Nedra Yvonne Talley was born on January 27, 1946 in Washington Heights. She grew up in a multi-cultural, family-oriented Baptist home, where Saturday nights were spent at her grandmother’s house singing with a rotating cast of cousins working out harmonies to perform for the rest of the family. “They would make you think you were really good and then they’d give us money,” she recollects in But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?: An Oral History Of 60’s Girl Groups. “So we started getting paid at 5.”
In 1957 Nedra’s cousin Veronica, known as Ronnie, decided to take advantage of the family’s talents. Ronnie was infatuated with the doo-wop sensation Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, so she recruited her sister Estelle and their cousins Nedra, Diana, Elaine, and Ira, who spent their weekends perfecting songs like “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight” and “When The Red, Red Robin”.
When then-frontman Ira got cold feet during the group’s performance of Frankie Lymon’s “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” at The Apollo’s famously cutthroat amateur night, Ronnie took over, and was immediately enamored with the power her voice could wield over the audience. After that night, the group was whittled down to Ronnie, Nedra, and Estelle, who dubbed themselves Ronnie and the Relatives and began cutting their teeth at local sock-hops and barmitzvahs between vocal lessons.
While loitering outside of the Peppermint Lounge in 1961, that club’s manager mistook the girls for the backup dancers of Joey Dee and the Starliters, who were set to perform that night. Nedra and Ronnie, still underage at the time, had their mothers do their hair and makeup to make them appear much older, an exaggerative foreshadowing to what would soon be the girls’ signature look. A bombastic performance, including a vocal solo by Ronnie during Joey Dee’s rendition of the Ray Charles classic “What’d I Say,” led Ronnie and the Relatives to a residency at the lounge, where they would perform as twist dancers and eventually rechristen themselves The Ronettes.
A chance meeting with promoter Phil Halikus led the group to producer Stu Philips of Colpix Records, who put out their first batch of singles. It was during their time at Colpix when they perfected their now-iconic stylings of winged eyeliner, pencil skirts, and beehive hairdos—maximalized versions of what they’d grown up around in Spanish Harlem. “We’d look out the window; I’d see the Spanish girls, and the Puerto Rican girls, and the Black girls, and that was the look I wanted!” Ronnie said to Vogue in 2016. “I wanted to look street and tough, because I wasn’t, and neither were the other Ronettes!” Along with their uniforms, the girls’ being related deepened their homogenous visual branding, something Nedra noted in an interview with Bruce Morrow: “What was different with the Ronettes was were we were family, so we looked alike. We held hands. Other girl groups didn’t have that.” They pushed contemporary girl group fashion to its idealized extreme, setting the standard for every group that would come after them.
Following a series of failed singles, The Ronettes auditioned for Phil Spector, who—in what would become perhaps the most consequential act of their lives—wriggled the group out of their contract with Colpix and signed them to his own Philles Records. Nedra and Estelle were, unfortunately, afterthoughts for Phil. His initial intentions were to only sign Ronnie, for whom his infatuation would soon prove to be a gift and curse for the group.
Spector had already seen success in the girl-group realm with his recent signees The Crystals, who in reality were more of an idea than a group: many of their hit records were ghost-performed by The Blossoms, an L.A.-based act that could deliver the quick turnarounds demanded by Spector. This was a practice he continued with The Ronettes, whose first four songs recorded by Spector were also released under the Crystals name. It was through those Crystals experiments that Phil began developing what would become his “wall of sound,” a technique he perfected on the Ronettes’ first major single, “Be My Baby.”
Recorded on July 29, 1963 at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles “Be My Baby” is a song full of what you might call happy accidents. The record’s famous drum intro was born out of drummer Hal Blaine dropping a stick during recording. When background singer Darlene Love didn’t show, Phil used a young man who was working for him at the time and his girlfriend—also known as Sonny Bono and Cher.
But “Be My Baby” is also a song of intention. It was Phil’s first time utilizing a full orchestra in the studio, as he was determined to create his most sonically colossal recording yet. Musicians would rehearse for hours before Spector even turned the tapes on; even once he did it would be dozens of takes before they wrapped. Most notably, Ronnie is the only actual Ronette to appear on the record. “Be My Baby” was in many ways a culmination of Spector’s obsession with her, and his disregard for Nedra and Estelle.
The song was an instant smash, by the end of the year it had sold 2 million copies and ingrained itself—and the wall of sound—into the minds of youth nationwide. Among those was a 21-year-old Brian Wilson, who reportedly was so struck by the song when he first heard it through his car radio that he had to pull over to the side of the road. It became an immediate influence on his songwriting and production style, and he would later write “Don’t Worry Baby” as a direct response record and pitch it to The Ronettes—only to have the notion rejected by Spector.
The success of “Be My Baby” was a double-edged sword. On the surface, it turned The Ronettes into an international sensation. But it also sowed the division that would lead to the group’s demise.
First, the girls landed a gig on Dick Clark’s nationwide “Caravan Of Stars” tour. Spector had already been working on a follow-up single, “Baby, I Love You,” and saw the tour as getting in the way of not only the recording of his new song, but his time with Ronnie. He sent Nedra and Estelle on the tour along with their cousin Elaine, while keeping Ronnie in L. A. to record, once again sapping The Ronettes of the harmony that made them unique.
Despite leaving Nedra and Estelle off of most of the Ronettes’ recordings, Phil still pushed them with his infamous studio perfectionism. It was during the sessions for A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector when Nedra’s disillusionment with the recording process began to really kick in. She called the album “the one where I’d thought I’d lost it mentally.”
In 1964, “Be My Baby” was still a smash hit in Europe, and The Ronettes planned a UK tour. They were supported on the tour by a then up-and-coming band known as The Rolling Stones, which kick-started a lifelong friendship between Ronnie and the Stones’ Keith Richards. It was also in the UK that the Ronettes would meet The Beatles, who had professed their love and admiration for the group—as musicians and as women. George Harrison and Estelle began dating shortly after, while John’s romantic advances were rejected by Ronnie.
The Ronettes’ return to the States meant an immediate return to the studio, where they recorded a quartet of singles, including the elusive “Keep On Dancing,” a rare instance of Nedra and Ronnie sharing the lead. Phil refused to release the song, instead opting for the Ronnie-led singles “(The Best Part Of) Breakin’ Up” and “Do I Love You?” Later in ‘64, The Ronettes released their debut album, Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica. The album’s title was emblematic of what had already been clear behind the scenes, and marked Phil’s first obvious public dismissal of Nedra and Estelle. All subsequent Ronettes singles were billed under the name “The Ronettes featuring Veronica.”
The Fabulous Ronettes stands as the group’s sole studio album, due in no small part to Spector’s intentional obstruction. As Phil’s obsession with Ronnie grew, so did his paranoia. The girls recorded a litany of songs that would remain unreleased, as Phil lived in constant fear that the group would outshine him. What few singles did make it out the studio produced diminishing returns.
Tensions began to rise in the group, particularly for Nedra. “I hated the ‘dog-eat-dog’ side of show-business,” she said in a 1982 interview. “I hated pushing for the next record and the feeling of failure if we didn’t get it. There was a continual demand on us to produce that I thought was unfair. My personality didn’t like that.”
The Ronettes’ penultimate tour was a 14-date excursion across the US opening for The Beatles—sans Ronnie. Spector had become so livid at Ronnie for suggesting that she join the others that he forced her to remain in Los Angeles; she was replaced on the tour once again by Elaine. This was bittersweet for Nedra, who got a rare moment in the spotlight as she took over the group’s lead vocal duties.
A year later, in early 1967, The Ronettes called it quits. Subsequent releases under the Ronettes name, such as 1969’s “You Came, You Saw, You Conquered!” were recorded entirely by Ronnie while she was kept virtual prisoner in Spector’s mansion. The final recording between any arrangement of the original trio was on Jimi Hendrix’s “Earth Blues,” for which Ronnie and Estelle contributed background vocals. Ronnie would later reform the group, replacing Nedra and Estelle with singers Chip Fields and Denise Edwards.
A year before the Ronettes split, Nedra traveled to Maryland with her then-boyfriend, New York disc jockey Scott Ross. Scott’s mother insisted the couple come with her to church. It was there that, according to Nedra, she received a vision from God of a blackboard on which he cleared all of her sins. She returned to New York a born-again Christian, a decision that was met with apprehension by her friends and family. “I basically got, ‘Listen, we have invested in a career for you for many, many years,’” Nedra recalled in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. “‘A lot of people have invested their lives into you. You’ve always been a part of the church. What are you saying?’”
This spiritual revelation led Nedra to question her place in the Ronettes. Drawn toward Christian music and feeling constrained by the secular demands of pop and rock, she found herself increasingly at odds with the group’s direction. Combined with the everpresent dread brought by Spector, this set the stage for what would become a mutual parting of ways.
Nedra and Scott married and returned to Maryland to devote their lives to God before relocating to Virginia in the ‘70s to join televangelist Pat Robertson. Her first foray into Christian music came in 1977 when she contributed to Ted Sanquist’s The Courts of the King: The Worship Music of Ted Sandquist.
Nedra’s debut solo album, 1978’s Full Circle, is actually quite good. Her lifelong dedication to the three-part harmony is present to the extent that, if you tune out the overt religiosity, it conjures an idea of what a Ronettes record might have sounded like had the group survived to explore the world of ‘70s funk and pop-soul. The album is produced entirely by her husband, which further negates the notion that the brilliance of any of the Ronettes was due entirely to any Spector not named Ronnie.
Phil Spector’s obsession, abuse, and dehumanization of these women fundamentally altered their art—and more importantly, the trajectory of their lives. In a public sense, the most damnable thing he did was reducing the Ronettes’ legacy to a single song—a song only one of them appears on. In an artistically just world, someone like Brian Wilson would have gotten the chance to join minds with The Ronettes. Maybe then their time as a group would have seen the longevity they deserved. Maybe they would have been able to take advantage of the shift, in the mid-‘60s, toward albums as serious art pieces a la Rubber Soul or Pet Sounds. We’ll never know. Instead they were left to be remembered, cynically, as Phil Spector’s pet project, while cultural juggernauts like The Beach Boys, The Supremes, Amy Winehouse, and The Ramones drew from their blueprint.
A three-part harmony is defined as three individual voices coming together to form a singular chord. When done correctly, each unique voice gets lost, and the sound becomes something greater than the sum of its parts. Nedra Talley passed away in her Virginia home in the early hours of April 26, 2026. Today we honor her as a singular voice, one greater than the sum of its parts. An essential piece in advancing centuries-old traditions, and changing music as we know it in the process.