Christmas Song #18:

The Ronettes--Sleigh Ride



OK, so it’s the second day in which I’m posting about music from Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You, and I had a really hard time deciding which song by The Ronettes to play. I might just include them all. You hear them all on the radio. They’re all great.

So, at the time, the lead singer (Ronnie Barrett) was Phil Spector’s main squeeze (I don’t know when the relationship started, but I’m assuming Spector had a thing for her quite early on), and would soon become Ronnie Spector. So I’m guessing that since most of his interest could have been directed towards Ronnie Spector, that he saved his best songs and best arrangements for The Ronettes. Plus, the best song on the album (which we’ll cover tomorrow) was written with Ronnie’s vocals in mind, until it was realized she didn’t have what it took to sing it and it was passed off to Darlene Love. (I wonder if this is where their relationship started to go sour. Probably not.)

In any case, The Ronettes still have the greatest batch of songs from this collection, which is why these are the songs from this album you hear on the radio the most(except for maybe tomorrow’s song). The above song is the one my local station plays all the time—and for good reason, since it’s a killer version of “Sleigh Ride.” I mean, it was already a pretty damn catchy song—but it’s even moreso here, mainly because of the “ring-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding” backing vocals (which was then often duplicated in later versions of the song), but both Spectors do their part in making it sound even better.

It does, however, eschew the whole “giddy up let’s go” verse, which may or may not sit well with people. It doesn’t really bother me, since it’s less catchy than the main portion of the song. Whenever someone with arguable musical quality (like, I don’t know, Amy Grant) sings the song, I can enjoy the song up till the middle-eight, in which it just sounds too overdone with vocal pyrotechnics or overproduced or whatever. (I’m mainly basing this on memory. Amy Grant might have a perfectly fine version of “Sleigh Ride.”) But I do know the lack of the verse bothers some people… so be prepared, I guess.

But the other songs are no slouches either. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” is almost a miracle in how it makes a really stupid song sound amazingly not-stupid. Check out the opening string arrangement—it makes the song sound almost poignant and sentimental! I mean, there are extraneous sounds that distracts from the loveliness of that opening, but it’s still great. Combined with the usual Wall Of Sound (and an almost marching drum pattern that I love), it’s better than anything one could possibly imagine.

The other one is a rendition of “Frosty The Snowman,” which to my ears is the least of the three—although I was reading a list of best Christmas songs a while back (can’t find it now) that listed it exceptionally high. So your mileage may vary, I guess.