Ronnie Spector
Ronnie Spector (born Veronica Yvette Bennett; August 10, 1943) is an American rock and roll singer known as "The Bad Girl of Rock & Roll". Spector was the lead singer of the rock/pop vocal girl group the Ronettes, who had a string of hits during the early to mid–1960s such as "Be My Baby", "Baby, I Love You", and "The Best Part of Breakin' Up". Subsequently, Spector launched her solo career and has since released five studio albums ("Siren" in 1980, "Unfinished Business" in 1987, "Something's Gonna Happen" in 2003, "Last of the Rock Stars" in 2006, and "English Heart" in 2016) and one extended play ("She Talks to Rainbows" in 1999).
The Ronettes
The Ronettes began as a family act where the girls grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan. According to Nedra Talley, they started singing during childhood visits to their grandmother's home. "Estelle and Veronica are sisters," she said in a later interview. "I'm their cousin. Our mothers are sisters. We came out of a family that, on Saturday nights, home for us was at our grandmother's, entertaining each other." The Bennetts' mother was African-American and Cherokee; their father was Irish-American. Their cousin, Talley, is African-American, Cherokee and Puerto Rican. The trio also had a great-grandfather who was Chinese."By the time I was eight, I was already working up whole numbers for our family's little weekend shows," Ronnie Spector later recalled. "Then Estelle would get up onstage and do a song, or she'd join Nedra or my cousin Elaine and me in a number we'd worked out in three-part harmony."