Be My Baby

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  For my mom and Austin and Jason

  Introduction by Keith Richards

  I met Ronnie Bennett—that was her name then, she was still a few records away from becoming Ronnie Spector—in January 1964. AD, in case you’re wondering. To set the scene, I’ll take you backstage at a dark, dank little theater. It was the Rolling Stones’ second tour. In England this was, and suddenly we find ourselves on the road with the Ronettes, who were enormous at the time. Every record they made was a number one. Or if it wasn’t, it should have been. They knew how to make records. I’d never set eyes on Ronnie before that day. I knew of her the same as everybody else, by the radio. Before we ever actually met each other, Ronnie and me, the sound was happening between us.

  Being on the road, I’d just climbed out of my little cubicle and found my way backstage in this little theater, I think it was the Granada Mansfield in the East Midlands, near Nottingham, where the last band to duck and dive into the local pub might have been Robin Hood and his Merry Men. The theater got torn down about ten years later. It’s a discount dress store now. But that’s not the end of my fable.

  Back to the Granada theater. 1964. I’m walking down the backstage corridor. It’s green. It’s still dark. It’s still dank. It still smells. And I get to a stairwell where I hear these voices. Heavenly. Three angels singing. For a minute I wonder if maybe they really are angels. “Is this it? Am I done already? Well, it was a nice send-off, anyway.”

  I continue walking down this stairwell. I hear Nedra and Estelle singing this mesmerizing chant. That’s the sound. The Ronettes. Rehearsing. And then I hear the pure, pure voice of Ronnie singing “Be my little baby…” Draws me right into the theater. I recognize the voice immediately. Can’t be imitated. Except maybe by Frankie Lymon, who Ronnie loved. I find a seat in the empty auditorium. I’m just going to watch. And listen. Ronnie sees me straightaway. Of course. And fixes me in a gaze. Suddenly, I’ve got a command performance by the hottest girl group in the world. All to myself. Talk about shock and awe.

  Hearing them singing, just the three girls, a capella, even without those gorgeous arrangements by Jack Nitzsche. Without the Wrecking Crew pounding away behind them. Without any of it, Ronnie and the Ronettes, on their own, built a Wall of Sound. Right there in an empty theater. They didn’t need any help at all.

  Of course it was love at first sight. Isn’t it always? It is so long ago it’s hard to recapture it. All I can say is Ronnie and I started to get along really well from the very first day. We had almost nothing in common, a guitar player from Dartford and this extraordinary girl from Spanish Harlem. But we had music. You know? We wouldn’t’ve met but for music. And I wouldn’t be writing these words now, except for the music. I mean that’s the wonderful magnet, isn’t it?

  So we met in England. And then a few months later, the Stones found ourselves in America, let loose in New York City. And, of course, the Ronettes show up the first morning in this enormous red Cadillac convertible. “C’mon,” Ronnie called. “We’re taking you to Jones Beach!”

  We pack into the convertible, Ronnie, Nedra, and Estelle—the whole Ronettes—and as many Rolling Stones as could fit into this endless red car. And off we go. It was quite a day. I mean, we just arrived in New York City for the first time ever. I look over at Mick, who’s got his arm around Estelle, and I say, “Oh, this is the way to go, man!” The Ronettes drove us all around New York City and we ended up in Jones Beach. And later on, I ended up at Ronnie’s place. Amazed. We had fun like that.

  Do I have to tell you that Ronnie’s got one of the greatest female rock and roll voices of all time? She stands alone. Absolutely. She’s worked with a lot of producers and arrangers, some of them quite good. But, if you listen to her vocals, you can always tell who’s in control. You know that every song she sings is gonna go her way, and no one else’s. Ronnie’s a very strong girl. After all, for a long time she was prevented from singing anything. So it’s not surprising to me that she’s still working. She can still sing, man. I have tapes that she recorded down here at my house. That was 2001.

  I have a little studio in my basement, and I had some time off in 2000, 2001. So I’d invite whoever was around to drop by and make music. Ronnie’s my neighbor—she lives about four towns down the road from me in Connecticut—so she came by several times. We recorded a duet of the old Ike & Tina Turner song “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine.” We were working on a song called “Love Affair” the day before 9/11 happened. After that, everything just scattered into the winds. We had a really good thing going and then the bomb dropped. But I’ve got a couple of tracks that I still want to work on, and that’s one of them. Ronnie, I just love her around. And I’d like her to hang in for as long as possible. Like me.

  The last time I saw Ronnie—and heard Ronnie—was at my dentist’s office. 2020, just before the pandemic. This is in New York City. And I’m in the chair, the dentist is working on my teeth, my mouth wide open. And suddenly from out in the corridor, I hear singing. A beautiful pure, pure voice that I recognize immediately. She’s singing, “Be my little baby…” And I think, It cannot be true! And then into this little exam room walks Ronnie. She was having her teeth done the same day, and when she heard I was there, she decides to surprise me with a serenade.

  With my mouth still propped open, I just wave at Ronnie, sort of vaguely. I couldn’t speak, but that didn’t matter. It was enough to know that between the two of us, Ronnie and me, the sound is still happening.

  Keith Richards

  September 2021

  1

  Ozzie and Harriet in Spanish Harlem

  Skinny yellow horse. That was the name the Black kids had for me when I was growing up because I had light skin and I was so small that I’d always kick like a little pony whenever I got into a fight. And I was always getting beat up. PS 153 on 145th Street and Amsterdam Avenue was one of the toughest Black schools in Harlem, and the kids were always making fun of me. “Hey, half-breed,” they’d yell, “get your ass back to the reservation.”

  I didn’t have it as bad as my sister. I was a tomboy and I could run fast, but Estelle was always so poised and proper that the kids at PS 153 thought she was a snob. So they’d pick on her worse than me. Even though Estelle was two years older than I was, there were times when I had to defend her against some of those kids.

  The worst thing about all of it was that I never even understood prejudice until I got to school. I was born in Spanish Harlem on August 10, 1943. My mother, Beatrice Bennett, is Black and Cherokee, and my father, Louis, was white, which makes me about as mixed as you can get. My sister, Estelle, and I were raised on 151st Street between Amsterdam and Broadway, in a neighborhood that had Chinese laundries, Spanish restaurants, and Black grocery stores. We saw people of every color on the street. A lot of the kids on our block were mixed, so interracial marriage seeme
d normal to us. But the kids at PS 153 didn’t agree.

  Estelle and I both had long, straight hair, and that got us into more trouble than anything else. My mother used to put my hair in these long, thick braids that went all down my back, and then she’d tie bright yellow bows on the ends. That was the way I had my hair the day this girl named Barbara asked if she could touch it. I was sitting at my desk in second grade when she leaned forward from behind me.

  “Ooh, Ronnie. Your hair looks so soft,” she whispered. “Can I feel it?”

  My kind of hair wasn’t common on Black girls, so kids were always asking if they could touch it. “Sure,” I told Barbara, and went back to reading my Dick and Jane.

  “Oh, it’s nice,” she said. “This is some pretty hair.”

  I could feel her stroking my braid, but I didn’t think anything about it until some of the kids sitting around us started to giggle. The teacher hadn’t come into the classroom yet, so a lot of the kids turned around and started watching Barbara. I was used to being poked fun at, but I still couldn’t understand what was so damn entertaining about what was going on behind my head. Then I found out.

  “Oooh, Barbara!” a girl named Cynthia screamed. “Why you do Ronnie like that?”

  I turned around to see what she was talking about, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Barbara was dangling a strange piece of brown rope in her hands, and it had a yellow bow tied to the end. I gasped and reached up to touch the back of my head. My braid was gone. Barbara had cut it right off my head.

  “This sure is some pretty hair,” she said, taunting me by swinging my own long, beautiful brown braid in front of my face. “Let me keep it. Okay, Ronnie? Can I keep it?”

  I held my hand over the stubby little patch that was left on my head, and I started crying hysterically, which only made the other kids laugh even harder. “Gimme that,” I cried, grabbing the braid out of her hands. Then I ran into the closet in back of the classroom and locked the door behind me, cradling my poor cutoff braid in my hands. I refused to come out, even after the teacher walked into the classroom and ordered me out.

  “Come out of there, Veronica,” she demanded. “And I mean now.” I don’t know what story the other kids had told her, but she sure wasn’t taking my side. So I stayed put. The teacher finally called my mother, who came to carry me home after all the other kids left.

  The next week my mother signed us up at PS 92 on 134th, where they had a mixture of Hispanic and Black kids, along with a few whites. It was a better school, and it was right across the street from my grandmother’s house in Spanish Harlem. After school we’d always go straight to Grandma’s, where we’d play with all of our other cousins. My mother has seven brothers and six sisters, so you can imagine how crowded it got over there.

  Estelle and I used to play with my aunt Hermean’s kids, Diane and Elaine, who were about our age. But the cousin who I was closest to was my aunt Susu’s daughter, Nedra. Nedra Talley. Her father was Puerto Rican, and Aunt Susu was Black and Cherokee like my mom, so Nedra was just as mixed as me. Even though she was two years younger, we were inseparable. We even climbed up on the toilet and peed together—that’s how close we were. We must have shared a spirit of adventure because we were always getting in trouble together at Grandma’s house.

  My grandmother was very strict with us. We weren’t even supposed to go outside and play. If we wanted sunshine we had to find it up on the roof, where she could keep an eye on us. We weren’t allowed out to the park because that’s where strangers hung out. This was Spanish Harlem, and there were all kinds of weird people out there. I’ll never forget the one time Nedra and I did go outside alone. It was the first time I saw a man’s penis.

  I was about eight years old when I convinced Nedra to sneak across the street to the candy store with me. We got there without anyone catching us, and we were already chewing our licorice whips and candy corn outside the store when we noticed this guy standing in the middle of the sidewalk with his back toward us. We tried to walk past him, but as we did, he turned around and showed us his penis, which was dangling outside of his pants. We screamed so loud they must have heard us in Queens. Then we ran home and told our grandmother and all of our aunts what had happened. They made us stay inside for a month.

  But that wasn’t much of a punishment since we almost never went out anyway. After what happened to us outside the candy store, I was happy to stay inside.

  Especially on weekends. Weekends at my grandma’s house were the best. That’s when all my aunts and uncles would come over, and there would be nothing but food and singing the whole time. Most of my mother’s sisters and brothers liked to sing, or act, or tell jokes, so every weekend they’d get together and stage little amateur shows at Grandma’s. None of them sang or performed professionally—this was just something they did for fun.

  It was all so exciting, especially to a little girl like me. I’d stand in Grandma’s living room watching everyone rehearse, and I would be amazed. Four of my uncles would be harmonizing like the Mills Brothers in one corner, while three aunts worked up an Andrews Sisters number in the other. Another aunt would be throwing her leg up in ballet movements in the kitchen while someone else practiced an accordion in the bedroom. On weekends that house turned into a little do-it-yourself Juilliard.

  I guess I’ve got performing in my blood. Besides all the uncles and aunts on my mother’s side, my father also loved music. My dad worked in the subway yard all day long, but he had a great big drum kit set up in our living room that he’d bang all night. His dream was to play drums in a Harlem jazz club. He never did make that dream come true, but he sure passed his love of music on to me.

  I’ve loved singing for as far back as I can remember. Since I was a baby, according to my mother. When I was just sixteen months old, Mom tells me, she was holding me in her arms one cold December morning when I began singing Christmas carols on the Number 1 subway train. The other passengers looked over at this little baby singing “Jingle Bells” in her tiny voice, and they nearly fell off their straps.

  “Look at that,” one of them said. “That little ole baby’s singing!” I was so small that everyone on the train thought I was even younger than I was. “I never saw no baby that could sing before,” an old lady said. According to Mom, I just glanced around at all the attention I was getting and smiled. Even as a baby, I loved having an audience.

  Everyone in my family knew how much I loved to sing, so it didn’t surprise any of them when I climbed up on my grandma’s coffee table at the age of four and started singing my little nonsense songs. I liked it up on that coffee table, and once I got up there, I never did climb down. By the time I was eight, I was already working up whole numbers for our family’s little weekend shows. And when I stood up to sing, I was always the center of attention in that room. One afternoon my uncles even surprised me with my own spotlight, which was really just an old Maxwell House can with a light bulb stuck in it. But I loved it. That light seemed to focus all the warmth in the room on me as I belted out Hank Williams’s “Jambalaya” in my eight-year-old voice.

  “Jambay-lie, cold fish pie, diddly gumbo,” I sang, with no idea what the words meant or if I even had them right. But when I looked around the room and saw all my aunts and uncles smiling and tapping their feet to keep time, I knew I must have been doing something right. In the middle of the song, I stopped singing and improvised a little yodel. I was trying to imitate what all the cowboy singers used to do. And that was the beginning of the “whoa oh-oh-oh-oh-ohs” that would become my trademark as a singer.

  When I finished the song I looked out over that 75-watt bulb and saw that everyone in Grandma’s living room was clapping and looking at me. When it was over I got down and sat on the rug between my sister and Nedra. That’s it, I thought. That’s the feeling I want for the rest of my life.

  Then Estelle would get up onstage and do a song, or she’d join Nedra or my cousin Elaine and me in a number that we’d worked out in three-part har
mony. Our mother loved to see us sing together, and she encouraged our show business leanings in every way she could. She even sent Estelle to Startime, a dancing school that was big in New York in the 1950s. I begged Mom to let me take classes there, too. But she could only afford to send one of us, and Estelle was the oldest. Of course, that made me very jealous.

  I’d go down to Startime and hang around outside the dance studio while Estelle took her class. I wasn’t enrolled, but I thought I might pick up a few free pointers anyway. I’d stand in the hallway until the class started; then I’d sneak over to the doorway and peek in the window. If I saw my sister’s leg go up in the dance studio, I’d mimic her and do the same thing out in the hall, except that I’d lift my leg even higher. I’d stand outside that door until I’d memorized an entire routine. Then I’d practice the routine all week long, until it was good enough to show all the aunts and uncles at Grandma’s house.

  I wanted to be the best dancer of all. The fact that I wasn’t even supposed to be in that dance class only made me all the more determined. And when I was growing up, one thing I had was determination.

  * * *

  What I remember most about those early days in Spanish Harlem is how hard my mom worked to make our life at home seem like an Ozzie and Harriet kind of thing. We ate every meal together, and Dad always had a place at the head of the table, just like all those families on TV. We didn’t have a lot of money, but our parents always made sure we had toys to play with. And we were creative kids—if we couldn’t have a dollhouse, Estelle and I would take our dolls and crawl out on the fire escape and pretend that it was their summer home.

  Dolls were a big thing in my life; I loved them so much. All my girl cousins bragged about how they outgrew their dolls, but I never got tired of mine. I slept with dolls all the way up until I was married.