The Ronettes "Baby I Love You" Isolated Vocals

Here's a real treat. It's the isolated vocal track from The Ronette's 1963 hit "Baby, I Love You," an excellent example of the Phil Spector "wall of sound." The song featured The Wrecking Crew on the backing track, and background vocals that included Cher and The Blossoms (with Darlene Love). Here are some things to check out.

1. The track is swimming in reverb, but that was the Spector sound. Gold Star Recording had a unique live chamber that had a frequency response that was just right for packing on a lot of verb without getting in the way.

2. Everything was recorded on the same track. This was probably done on a two track tape machine with the instruments all recorded on one track, which left the second track open for vocal overdubs. That's why you hear the lead vocal, background vocals and claps, which were all recorded at the same time.

3. The track is panned to the left, which probably means that the music was panned to the right. In the early days of stereo, there was no standards and no one really had any idea how to pan things (believe it or not). Not only that, pan pots didn't exist yet, so the engineer only had the ability to pan hard left, hard right or in the center.

4. Check out the claps, which you don't hear well in the full mix. The song starts with them, they come back during the instrumental breakdown and then do double time on the outro.

5. Listen to the end to hear Phil Spector.

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The Ronettes "Baby, I Love You" Isolated Vocals

Here's a real treat and a piece of music history as well. It's the isolated vocals from the Phil Spector produced "Baby, I Love You" by The Ronettes. The song was recorded and released in 1963 and reached #24 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and #11 in the UK.

The recording, like most of Spector's early hits, was done at the now defunct Gold Star Studios in Hollywood with background vocals by Cher (yes, that Cher) and The Blossoms, and the backing track played by the famous Wrecking Crew.

Listen for:
1) The beautiful Gold Star reverb, thanks to their cavernous chamber. It's big and lush and deep, but non-intrusive despite being piled on here.

2) The background vocals sound like they're doubled, which is possible if the song was done on a 3 or 4 track tape machine. Anyone know for sure?

3) The distortion on the track. There's a definite grit to it that's not totally unpleasant.

4) The claps at the beginning and ending. On the end they get out of time, not that anyone ever noticed in the mix.

5) Go all the way to the end to hear what the real song ending sounded like.

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