[UPDATE: I just realized I’d already posted about “Do I Love You” on November 1, 2025. Believe it or not, this is the first duplicate post I’ve made to date. Given that I’ve made on this blog. Given that I’ve made more than 1300 posts to date, I guess the only surprise is that I haven’t duplicated myself sooner. It just goes to show that (a) I really like the songs I post about and only post about songs I like and (b) I’m really not all that organized. Read them both to learn the whole story!)
For today’s classic song of the day let’s travel back to the early ’60s and Phil Spector’s monumental Wall of Sound. The song is “Do I Love You?” by the Ronettes and, when it was released as a single on the Philles Records label in June of 1964, it peaked at #34 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #36 on the Cash Box Top 100.
“Do I Love You?” was written by Pete Andreoli (AKA Peter Anders) and Vini Poncia, with the obligatory songwriting co-credit to producer Phil Spector. Anders and Poncia were a songwriting team from Rhode Island who first got together as members of a local vocal group, The Videls, in 1956. They started writing songs, both together and separately, soon after. They moved to New York and took up residence in the famed Brill Building, where they started palling around with the likes of Doc Pomus, Carole King, and Barry Mann. After being taken under the wing of Phil Spector, they moved to the West Coast and became part of the Wrecking Crew, Spector’s favored group of first-call studio musicians. They subsequently wrote songs that were recorded by the Ronettes (“Do I Love You?” and “The Best Part of Breakin’ Up”), Darlene Love (“Stumble and Fall”), Elvis Presley (“Harem Holiday,” the theme from his movie, Harum Scarum), Cher (“Ringo I Love You,” recorded under the name Bonnie Jo Mason), and their own group, the Tradewinds (“New York’s a Lonely Town”). Vini Poncia later co-wrote, with Leo Sayer, “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing,” a big hit for Mr. Sayer.
Producer Phil Spector a small army of Wrecking Crew members to record this one, including the legendary Hal Blaine on drums. The recording was done at Gold Star Studios, as was the norm for Mr. Spector. Jack Nitzche did the arrangement and Larry Levine engineered. The Ronettes, of course, were lead singer Ronnie Spector, her older sister Estelle Bennett, and their cousin, Nedra Talley.
Now here’s a treat for you. It’s raw audio from the recording session for “Do I Love You?” back in 1964. Interesting to get inside the way Phil Spector works, and it’s today’s daily bonus track of the day.
