Song of the Day: 'Don't Worry Baby' by Ronnie Spector

  I never got around to blogging about seeing Ronnie Spector's "Beyond the Beehive," a cabaret show the head Ronette performed over the summer at City Winery, very much in the vein of Darlene Love's "Portrait of a Singer," which dazzled audiences (including me) at the Bottom Line back in the mid-90s. "Beyond the Beehive" covers the Ronettes' rise to fame, and all of the gory details that came after. Ronnie, now 69, relied heavily on a iPad script perched on a mike stand, but the words are all hers, from the early days when she and sister Estelle and cousin Nedra were mistaken for dancers at the Peppermint Lounge -- they went along with it! -- to having the Rolling Stones open for them back in the day (it really seems to tickle her!), to Brian Wilson writing a follow-up single to "Be My Baby," which he believed was the best pop song of all time. The show reveals little that we didn't already learn in Ronnie's 1992 autobiography, save for getting to see lots of wonderful rare archive footage. But one thing is clear: Wilson's gift, "Don't Worry Baby," would have been the perfect song for the Ronettes to record, if Ronnie's future husband -- and future convicted murderer -- Phil Spector hadn't been too jealous and controlling to allow his muse to accept it. She finally recorded it some 30 years later, and it was well worth the wait.