The Ronettes in 1966. From left, Estelle Bennett, Ronnie Spector and Nedra Talley-Ross.
From left, Nedra Talley, Estelle Bennett, Phil Spector and Ronnie Bennett in a Los Angeles recording studio in 1963.
Photo of the Ronettes on the sleeve for their 1964 single, "Walking in the Rain."
Estelle Bennett of The Ronettes passed away recently.
I just found out the sad news........I'm wrecked.
The music of The Ronettes touched me at a very young age, and today they remain one of my favorite bands ever. Their music is youth, innocence and love amplified to epic levels.
Like Estelle, I also went to The Fashion Institute of Technology. Estelle had a truly iconic look. Her look (teased beehive, thick eyeliner, fitted clothing) inspired Amy Winehouse, whos look inspired a Peter Lindbergh French Vogue editorial starring Isabeli Fontana.
This Christmas, I listened to Phil Spector's Christmas album over and over and over. Their music is the only thing I look forward to at Christmas time.
Estelle Bennett's music captured a time when she was young, successful, beautiful and adored. I will always listen to her music, and remember her that way.
From The New York Times:
Estelle Bennett, a Singer for the Ronettes, Is Dead at 67
By BEN SISARIO
Estelle Bennett, one of the beehived queens of 1960s girl-group pop as a member of the Ronettes, has died at her home in Englewood, N.J. She was 67.
She was found on Wednesday in her apartment by a friend, after family members had been unable to reach her for several days, said her daughter, Toyin Hunter. The cause was colon cancer, Ms. Hunter said.
With their short skirts, heavy makeup and enormous towers of Aquanet-steadied hair, the Ronettes were New York’s sassy, street-smart variation on the virginal girl-group model. Their biggest hits, like “Be My Baby” and “Baby, I Love You,” embodied the forceful “wall of sound” aesthetic of their producer, Phil Spector, with a simple but reverberant backbeat and swells of strings and vocals.
The group was led by Ms. Bennett’s younger sister, Veronica (better known as Ronnie), who, with Ms. Hunter, survives her. It also included their cousin Nedra Talley. Their unpolished but flirty voices, and Ronnie’s breaking “whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh” in “Be My Baby,” have echoed through generations of female rock singers.
After winning a talent contest at the Apollo Theater in 1959, they started to make a name for themselves dancing the twist at the Peppermint Lounge. The three young singers sang backup for Joey Dee, Bobby Rydell and others, and beginning in 1961 began making their own records. After several early singles failed to become hits, they signed with Mr. Spector’s Philles label in 1963 and released “Be My Baby” that August.
An immediate hit, the song went to No. 2 and sold two million copies. Over the next three years the Ronettes released a series of singles that have become classics, including “(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up” and “Walking in the Rain,” though none of the singles after “Be My Baby” reached the Top 20.
The three young women developed their signature look together, but Estelle, who attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, had a particular flair for fashion and design. Ronnie — who married Mr. Spector in 1968 and later divorced him — dominated the group, while Estelle developed a role as “the quiet, sophisticated one,” Ms. Talley, who now goes by the name Nedra Talley-Ross, said in an interview on Friday.
As the group became famous, Estelle had a series of famous suitors, including Mick Jagger, George Harrison and Johnny Mathis, Ms. Talley-Ross said.
The group broke up in 1966, leaving Estelle devastated. She released a single, “The Year 2000,” which set a vision of nuclear apocalypse to Ronettes-like music, and made a few other recordings. But soon she left music, and for much of her adult life Ms. Bennett struggled with mental illness; she was also homeless for a time, her daughter said.
The Ronettes sued Mr. Spector in 1988, seeking $10 million in what they said were unpaid royalties and income made from licensing the group’s songs to movies and commercials; they said that they had received only one payment from Mr. Spector, for $14,482.30. They lost the licensing part of the case but were still able to collect more than $1 million in royalties, according to Jonathan Greenfield, Ronnie Spector’s husband.
In 2007 the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, introduced by Keith Richards. Ms. Bennett made a brief acceptance speech but did not perform with her old band mates. Still, Ms. Talley-Ross said, she had not seen her so happy in years.
“Estelle did not want the Ronettes to end,” she said.
Also from The New York Times
A Life of Troubles Followed a Singer’s Burst of Fame
By BEN SISARIO
She was the quiet Ronette, the one people called the prettiest, the one who was content to remain in the shadow of her younger sister, Ronnie, because even in the shadow there’s still some spotlight.
For a few years in the mid-1960s Estelle Bennett lived a girl-group fairy tale, posing for magazine covers with her fellow Ronettes and dating the likes of George Harrison and Mick Jagger. Along with her sister and their cousin Nedra Talley, she helped redefine rock ’n’ roll femininity.
The Ronettes delivered their songs’ promises of eternal puppy love in the guise of tough vamps from the streets of New York. Their heavy mascara, slit skirts and piles of teased hair suggested both sex and danger, an association revived most recently by Amy Winehouse.
But Ms. Bennett’s death last week at 67 revealed a post-fame life of illness and squalor that was little known even to many of the Ronettes’ biggest fans. In her decades away from the public eye she struggled with anorexia and schizophrenia, and at times she had also been homeless, said her daughter, Toyin Hunter.
“I want to know who my mother was,” Ms. Hunter, 37, said in an interview. “From the time I was born she suffered with mental illness; I never really got to know Estelle in a good mental state.”
Those who knew Ms. Bennett in her healthier days portray her as gentle and intelligent, and as playing a critical part in the development of the Ronettes’ style. The eldest of the group, she worked at Macy’s and attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the look she helped devise for the group was all superlatives: bigger, badder and sexier than anybody. Racial ambiguity lent an exotic element: the Bennett sisters had black, American Indian and Irish blood; Ms. Talley was black, Indian and Puerto Rican.
“We called them the bad girls of the ’60s,” said the singer Darlene Love, who met the Ronettes in 1962, a year before they became famous with “Be My Baby.” “They had the really, really short skirts and they had big, big, big hair. Most of the black entertainers of the ’60s didn’t look like that, but they wanted to be separate from everybody else.”
By the time they met Phil Spector and began recording with him in 1963, the Ronettes had their look precisely calibrated. That August “Be My Baby” went to No. 2, and the Ronettes were instant stars. When they toured Britain in 1964, the Rolling Stones were an opening act.
But even in the early days there were signs that Estelle was fragile. When their grandmother died in 1959, Estelle was shattered, said her cousin, now known as Nedra Talley Ross.
“She was going to buy Mama knee warmers,” Ms. Talley Ross said, “and I remember Estelle being so devastated — screaming, like she would never go on. Just screaming for this thing that would never get done.”
After the Ronettes broke up, in 1966, and Ronnie married Mr. Spector, in 1968, Estelle was lost, Ms. Talley Ross said. She made several failed attempts at a solo career, and when Ronnie Spector, who divorced Mr. Spector in 1974, formed a new version of the Ronettes in the early ’70s it did not include either of her former band mates. (Ms. Spector did not respond to messages left for her.)
Meanwhile, Ms. Bennett was gradually becoming more ill. When she brought her infant daughter to visit, Ms. Talley Ross said, she slept straight through the baby’s crying. Not long after, Ms. Bennett was hospitalized with anorexia, and her grip on reality continued to loosen. In recent years, Ms. Hunter said, she sometimes wandered the streets of New York, telling people that she would be singing with the Ronettes in a jazz club.
“Estelle had such an extraordinary life,” Ms. Talley Ross said. “To have the fame, and all that she had at an early age, and for it all to come to an end abruptly. Not everybody can let that go and then go on with life.”
In 1988 the Ronettes sued Mr. Spector for back royalties, and the suit dragged on for 14 years. Part of the case was dismissed, but the three women won the right to some royalties, and according to Jonathan Greenfield, Ms. Spector’s husband, they received “in excess of $1 million.” After lawyers’ fees, Ms. Hunter said, each woman took home about $100,000. Ms. Talley Ross said the figure was a little higher.
During the litigation Ms. Love was called as a witness, and one day at court she saw Estelle.
“She didn’t remember me,” Ms. Love said. “They cleaned her up and made her look as well as possible. She wore white gloves. She looked the best she could for somebody who lived on the street. It broke my heart.”
Her daughter and her cousin said they also helped her to look her best for the Ronettes’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame two years ago. They were worried that the ceremony would overwhelm her, so one of Ms. Spector’s current backup singers performed in Ms. Bennett’s stead. But before the concert Ms. Bennett did give a brief acceptance speech.
"I would just like to say thank you very much for giving us this award,” she said. “I’m Estelle of the Ronettes. Thank you.”
