Nedra Talley Ross wasn’t a household name any longer, but she had been once upon a time. When she turned 18 in January 1964, George Harrison was among the guests who helped her celebrate. She and her cousins were feted, surrounded, adored. For she and her cousins were the Ronettes, the girl group above all others, the sound of teenage emotional extremity set to soaring, symphonic pop. Nedra was the last surviving Ronette and now she is gone.
Nedra’s cousins were Veronica and Estelle Bennett, and the three of them had sung and danced and played as long as they could remember. She was only a Ronette between 1963 and 1967, but in a few short years she was part of some of the greatest pop ever recorded: Be My Baby, Walking in the Rain, Sleigh Ride and the rest. Not that she was taken with Phil Spector, who produced them. “I wasn’t impressed by him, and he didn’t stir me with what he was saying, didn’t scare me with what he was doing,” Nedra told me when I interviewed her just before Christmas last year. “He was quite arrogant, and who wants to deal with an arrogant person?”
