Ellie Greenwich (October 23, 1940 – August 26, 2009) was an American pop music singer, songwriter, and record producer. She wrote or co-wrote “Be My Baby”, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Leader of the Pack”, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, and “River Deep, Mountain High”, among others. (More from Wikipedia)
The idea for the magazine Who Put the Bomp originally was that the title of each issue would be taken from the name of a great rock song; thus, the second issue was to have been called Da Doo Ron Ron. Greg Shaw was persuaded that this was not a good idea for an ongoing publication, so the issue was named Who Put the Bomp #2, with Da Doo Ron Ron as the subtitle. This practice was dropped after the third issue, although the initials R.I.A.W.O.L. were frequently present on the front page, standing for “Rock Is a Way of Life”.
“Da Doo Ron Ron” was a #3 hit in 1963 for the girl-group the Crystals; and it was written by another famous 1960’s songwriter couple, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, together with Phil Spector (now infamous for his 2009 conviction for a murder in his home in 2003). This song is a classic example of Spector’s legendary “Wall of Sound” production technique.
(May 2013)
* * *
The girl group era attracted some of the greatest songwriters of all time: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann, etc. Carole King would go to become one of the outstanding singer-songwriters in music history; her Tapestry album is one of the largest selling albums ever, with more than 25 million copies sold worldwide.
(October 2013)
