But teenage doo-wopper Frankie Lymon was her biggest influence. “My family would all come watch.” Spector’s signature, soaring woah-oah-oahs were inspired early on by attempts to yodel like Hank Williams with her grandmother. “I’d go to my grandmother’s and get up on a coffee table and start singing,” she recalls. Spector learned to sing using the fantastic echo in the lobby of the apartment building where her grandmother lived her cousins were her backup singers. “I didn’t just like Christmas, like most kids, or even love it,” she explains, her voice peaking with excitement. But at Christmas her father would take her to watch the ice skaters at New York’s Rockefeller Center, and to see Macy’s ornate window displays of trains and dolls. “My family didn’t have a lot of money when I was little,” she says. Since the Ronettes’ versions of Frosty the Snowman and Sleigh Bells appeared in 1963 on their producer Phil Spector’s album A Christmas Gift for You, Ronnie’s aching voice – a perfect pop storm of innocence and rebellion, grit and glee – has been a ubiquitous seasonal treasure. We are meeting ahead of her Best Christmas Party Ever! tour. As the lead singer of the beehived 1960s girl group the Ronettes, Spector helped invent rock’n’roll, and at 76, she still exudes it: teased dark hair, leather jacket, tight jeans and black sunglasses that stay affixed to her made-up face throughout most of our conversation. “Hey hon,” says the host, before leading us to a long table in the corner that they save for Spector when she has business to attend to. ![]() R onnie Spector is a regular at the Black Angus steakhouse in suburban Danbury, Connecticut.
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