Directions

In 1961, following the release of Twist Around the Clock, my agent at William Morris, Roz Ross promoted a twist revue, Clay Cole’s Twist-a-rama, as a night club tour, with my friends The Capris (“There’s A Moon out Tonight”), The Furies, a band led by drummer-showman, Lou Dana and three young dancing girls Roz Ross had discovered twisting on the railings of the NYC Peppermint Lounge.

Sisters Veronica, 18 and Estelle Bennett, 17 and Cousin Nedra Talley, 15, came to me without an act, but with a refreshing “what you see is what you get” outlook.

The Ronettes were multiracial, which was uncommon in the '60s; the Bennett’s mother was black and Native American and their father was white. Ronnie said “at one point in my childhood I was not sure if I was black or white.” They were three hot-looking (Latin-looking) girls who clearly understood their assets: they were very exotic and danced a mean shimmy. Each modeled an embellished beehive hair-do and dark Cleopatra eyeliner – little girls playing grownup ladies. Their wardrobe was the cheongsam, an embroidered, tight-fitting silk dress, slit up the thigh, preferred by Hong Kong beauty queens and Imelda Marcos.

1961 The Peppermint Lounge: Joey Dee remembers:

"One night in 1961, a trio of pretty teenagers were waiting on line outside the club hoping to be allowed inside. Dressed in matching brightly colored dresses, they looked like professional entertainers (which in fact they were) and in a case of mistaken identity, thinking they were the dancers he'd hired, the manager of the Peppermint Lounge ushered the girls - Ronnie and Estelle Bennett and their cousin, Nedra Talley - up to the stage and told them to dance. The Ronettes spent the rest of that night dancing and singing along with The Starliters, and the reaction from the group and the crowd was so positive that the club manager, having realized his error, offered the girls a job on the spot."

"Every night, The Ronettes would dance and perform along with The Starliters at the Peppermint Lounge, even traveling with us to the club's Miami, Florida location in early 1962."

1962 Clay Cole's Twist-a-rama

In spite of their inspiring booty, they arrived as three sweet, easy-going, eager and malleable girls. We gathered together to create an act, reaching into the Ray Charles songbook for “I Got a Woman,” the Raeletts “Hit the Road Jack” and a tambourine-twirling routine to “Wha’d I Say,” which became our frantic finale. I learned that Veronica, nick-named Ronnie, could do a dead-on impression of Pearl Bailey -- it was added. We assembled a medley of kooky dances and the Capris and I wrote “Limbo Rock,” which became an audience-participation show-stopper. The Limbo was also extremely sexy, with customers lobbing under a bamboo pole. An hour revue was shaping up.

We played a week at Brooklyn's Town Hill club (pictured left), at the Brasserie in Manhattan as a birthday surprise for movie star Marilyn Maxwell and with Liberace and Ethel Merman at the famed Latiun Quarter. We settled in for two weeks at an Eastside clip-joint, The Camelot Club.

When our future bookings took us out of the country, the young girls dropped out to persue a Colpix recording contract.

(The Ronettes were replaced by The Delicates.)

The Ronettes recorded five unsuccessful singles for Colpix Records and accepted an offer from Murray the K to become his “dancing girls.”

1963, when Phil Spector returned to New York from a stint in Los Angeles, he struck up a friendship with Georgia Winters, the 16 magazine editor, who arranged a meeting between Spector and The Ronettes – the rest is rock ‘n’ roll history.

Phil Spector, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry produced the doo-wop classic, “Be My Baby,” a hodgepodge of castanets, maracas, strings and Ronnie’s seductive, now-legendary “who-oh-oh-oh,” which drove teen boys wild. The July review in Billboard stated flat-out, “This is the best record The Ronettes ever made.” This is also the record that defined Phil Spector’s famous “wall of sound.”

Their growing reputation led to a spot on the Beatle’s final summer tour in August 1966, with the bad-assed Ronettes in their sequined shifts, and the clean-cut Cyrkle ("Red Rubber Ball") in their snazzy, striped blazers.

A footnote, to set the record straight: The Ronettes did not appear in Twist Around the Clock as has been noted in most every rock encyclopedia and Internet biography, and erroneously repeated in the pages of People magazine. It was following the release of the film, on my subsequent Twist-a-rama tour that our lives became irrevocably linked.

Ronnie, Sister Estelle and Cousin Nedra split up in 1965.

Nedra Talley, after a longtime on-again, off-again romance with Ringo Starr, married my Happening Place dance club MC, Scott Ross.

Scott Ross later enjoyed great success as a television talk show host, and a contributor to Pat Robertson’s Christian Ministries, appearing as an on-camera interviewer on the 700 Club television shows.

Estelle Bennett lived quietly, suffering from severe depression, and died in 2009 leaving a grown daughter Toyin, who many believe was raised by record producer Teddy Vann and his wife Rita. .

Finally married in 1968, Phil Spector and Ronnie had a stormy relationship; Spector forced her into retirement, forbidding her to tour

with the Beatles, replacing her with yet another Bennett cousin.

After their widely reported, high profile divorce, and the publication of

her heartbreaking tell-all book, Ronnie remarried, and lives quietly and comfortably in Connecticut, simply becoming a rock ‘n’ roll legend.

The Ronettes were inducted intoThe Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

February 11, 2009, police found Estelle Bennett dead at her Englewood, NJ apartment.

She was 67. Cause of death was colon cancer, according to Estelle's daughter, Toyin Hunter, of Santa Monica, California. She leaves daughter Toyin and three grandsons, sister Ronnie Spector-Greenfield and cousin Nedra Talley-Ross.

Estelle had been living in Englewood for only a few years. She was found after a friend, Kevin Dilworth went there to check on her, concerned because he and others had not been able to reach her. "After that group disbanded in 1966, I don't think she was ever right again. The only time I really saw her come to life was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame," Dilworth said.

Nedra Talley-Ross, a cousin of the Bennett sisters, said that Estelle had led a hard life, struggling with anorexia and schizophrenia. Ross also said Bennett had dated people like Mick Jagger, George Harrison, Johnny Mathis and George Hamilton decades ago.

"She was quiet; not pretentious at all. She had a very, very good heart. Not a bad bone in her body. Just kindness," Nedra Ross said.