Today’s classic song of the day is a premier example of producer Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound style. The song is “Da Doo Ron Ron” and it was a major hit for Spector’s group, the Crystals. Released as a single in April of 1963, “Da Doo Ron Ron” peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 on the Cash Box Top 100.
“Da Doo Ron Ron” was written by the legendary songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, with some sort of assist by Phil Spector. (He gets co-writing credit, in any case.) The phrase “da doo ron ron” was initially just a bunch of nonsense syllables intended as filler between lines, but they never came up with anything better and the nonsense words stuck.
The recording was produced by Phil Spector, of course, with engineer Larry Levine behind the board and Jack Nitzsche arranging. The Crystals’ La La Brooks sang lead and was accompanied by Darlene Love and members of her group, the Blossoms. (Cher supposedly sang backup on this one, too.) The story goes that Spector originally intended the tune for the Blossoms and practiced it with Darlene Love on lead, but changed his mind at the last minute and had La La Brooks take over lead vocal duties for the recording. Instrumental backing was provided by the usual members of the Wrecking Crew, including Barney Kessel, Tommy Tedesco, and Glen Campbell on on guitars; Larry Knechtel and Leon Russell on pianos; Steve Douglas on saxophone; and the ubiquitous Hal Blaine on drums. The recording was made at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles.
“Da Doo Ron Ron” is thought to be the very first recording to incorporate Spector’s Wall of Sound. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, it refers to a production technique that involves multiple players on each instrument (3 or 4 guitars, 2 or 3 pianos, etc.) all playing at the same time around a bevy of carefully placed microphones. All those instrumentals are then mixed with lead and backing vocals and fed into an echo chamber to create a massive wall of sound. And it’s all in glorious monophonic sound.
Sonny Bono, Spector’s head go-fer at the time, said that after Spector listened to the playback of the recording, he told him:
“That’s gold. That’s solid gold coming out of that speaker.”
And it was.
A decade and a half later, teen idol Shaun Cassidy, younger brother of David, recorded a cover of “Da Doo Ron Ron.” His version, released in March of 1977, went all the way to #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100—even though it’s not even half as good as the original, at least in my humble opinion.
So here’s that original again, as today’s daily bonus video of the day. It’s the Crystals lip-synching “Da Doo Ron Ron” on some television show in the early ’60s. It doesn’t get much better than this.
