It’s currently 94 degrees in the SLC, and there’s a gaggle of bare-chested, tattoo’d, and be-pierced skateboard punks sprawled on the plaza outside my building, in the shade near the fountain. I think it’s safe to say that summer has finally arrived.
To celebrate the arrival (which I’ll no doubt be cursing a month from now when 94 becomes 104), let’s have a listen to one of my favorite tunes, a golden oldie that always makes me think of summer for some reason, “Be My Baby” by Ronnie Spector and The Ronettes. The year was 1965, before most of us were born, kids:
Ronnie was a sexy little thing, wasn’t she? In a mid-Sixties, big-haired sort of way. Not that there was anything wrong with that at the time.
As a special bonus, here’s another summertime song that featured Ronnie twenty years after “Be My Baby,” Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight,” from 1986:
Talk about big hair…
Oh the feathered mullet that I couldn’t even grow when it was in style 😉
In all honesty I never put two and two together. I had no idea that the Ronnie he was talking about was the same one from the Ronettes. Just thought it sounded similar…
Very cool.
I didn’t realize it was the same Ronnie either for a long time, largely because I wasn’t sure what Eddie Money was actually singing on his line. (“Just like Ronnie sang…” could’ve been “just like Ronnie sigh,” “just like rorrnrogjgn,” or “just like Ronald Reagan signed,” for all I could tell.) But at some point, somehow, I figured out what that line was, realized I’d heard the woman’s voice before, and it all clicked.
Couple of great tunes, regardless…