The group signed to Colpix in 1961 and released a single, “I Want a Boy,” as Ronnie and the Relatives. Soon they were spotted by scouts for famed DJ Murray the K’s regular “Caravan of Stars” events at the Fox Theater in Brooklyn. As teens inspired by the Chantels’ smash hit “Maybe,” the Bennett siblings and their cousin Nedra started singing at sock hops before landing a regular gig at the Peppermint Lounge. 10, 1943, Veronica Yvette Bennett grew up in Manhattan’s Washington Heights section, one of two sisters to a mother of Cherokee and Black heritage and an Irish American father.

“If I had known I wasn’t going to sing, I wouldn’t have married him.” After four years of forced isolation and domestic abuse, she divorced Spector in 1972.īorn Aug. “I didn’t realize I’d have to retire along with him,” Ronnie later told The Times. A few months later, he announced he was going into semi-retirement. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in October 1963, earned a second life when Martin Scorsese featured it in the opening montage of his gritty 1973 crime drama “Mean Streets.” That energy comes back to me every time: when I’m singing ‘Be My Baby,’ I’m thinking of us in the studio,” Ronnie said in a 2013 interview.

The future Ronnie Spector earned her most prominent commercial success early on, when Phil Spector signed the group in 1963. Spector - then still Bennett - famously promised a similar brand of attention in “Be My Baby.” “I’ll make you happy, baby, just wait and see / For every kiss you give me I’ll give you three,” she pleaded.

Cher on phil spectre