Today’s classic song that was so nice it was a hit twice of the day is “Baby, I Love You.” This one was a hit originally for the Ronettes and, about a half-dozen years later, for singer Andy Kim.
“Baby, I Love You” was written by the team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, with the typical-for-that-era addition of Phil Spector to the songwriting credits. Jeff and Ellie were the songwriters behind a ton of hits during the girl group era, including “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Then He Kissed Me” for the Crystals, “Be My Baby” for the Ronettes, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” for Darlene Love, “People Say” and “Chapel of Love” for the Dixie Cups, “I Have a Boyfriend” for the Chiffons, “The Kind of Boy You Can’t Forget” for the Raindrops, “Maybe I Know” and “Look of Love” for Leslie Gore, and “Leader of the Pack” for the Shangra-Las. They also wrote “Hanky Panky” for Tommy James and the Shondells, “He’s Got the Power” for the Exciters, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” for Manfred Mann, “I Can Hear Music” for the Beach Boys, and the immortal “River Deep, Mountain High” for Ike and Tina Turner.
“Baby, I Love You” was a follow-on of sorts to their previous hit for the Ronettes, “Be My Baby,” a #2 hit earlier in 1963, written at the request of producer Phil Spector. Spector applied his typical Wall of Sound magic to the recording that featured members of the Wrecking Crew backing up lead singer Ronnie Bennett, with Cher, Darlene Love, and the Blossoms on background vocals.
That recording, while not as successful as “Be My Baby,” was still a smash hit. Released in November of 1963, the single went to #24 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100 and #6 on Billboard’s R&B chart.
In May of 1969, Andy Kim—a protege of Jeff Barry—recorded his cover of “Be My Baby.” His version, while not as memorable, did even better on the charts than the original, reaching #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #6 on the Cash Box Top 100.
Here’s what Mr. Kim remembers about recording his guitar-heavy version of the tune, which sounds quite different from the Ronettes’ version:
“We went to A&R Studios [in New York]—Studio A or 1, whatever they called it at the time. A huge room. Sat in the middle of this huge recording space with a microphone next to the guitar. Jeff went into the booth, and was kind of the metronome. He just clapped and hummed along the way—what he needed from me was to get one guitar down from beginning to end. I was able to do that five more times on separate tracks, and it would bounce back and forth. And if you do that, there are overtones and there is a sound without drums or anything. So that’s how the song was built—one instrument at a time. Drums were played by hand, percussion. Then Chuck Rainey came in to put bass on the song, and everything just glued together.”
“Baby, I Love You” is a great tune no matter who does it, but I definitely prefer the Ronettes’ Wall of Sound original.
