The Accidental Rosa Parks
Veronica Bennett & the Soft Power of Beauty
When the well-coifed comet JFK streaked through American politics, his velocity was synchronized with the arrival of pop media. He was the audio-visual candidate. He sounded like aristocracy and looked like fantasy — as if his conniving brute of a father had genetically anticipated the arrival of television. Nixon won the radio debate wherein ideas were more heavily weighted, and JFK won the television debate wherein hair and tailoring were paramount; American didn’t vote against Nixon; they voted for television.
The era of the image began long before; churches revealed the Bible in stained glass for the illiterate. Marx wrote a bit of propaganda and a few read it, but the Communists in pursuit of power printed posters and it turned a nation on its head. The Communists were, of course, visual propagandists before they were policy makers, an order of operations that remains true today. And the most fervent unbridled enthusiasm for movies in the 1920s wasn’t to be found in the West but rather in the young chaos of image-thirsty Russia, raised in the visual faith of Orthodoxy and the illiteracy of farming.
But it was the confection of new images and new sounds and consumerism and teen culture that doomed the 1950s like so many presidents in convertibles. The sniper or the marches on Washington lurked ‘round the corner to protest their parents — protest cloaked as anti-hegemony but like every other generation not much more than anti-parents. Yet the effect of these new images and sounds were profound because, despite the best efforts of the patient and the wise, this new civilization was fueled by audio clips and photographs.
Lost in the mythologizing of the gods of change are the accidental yet not incidental heroes who, perhaps more than the statue’d men of righteousness, effected the change that brought us to modernity. Men are moved less by philosophy than by the feminine charisma — it was the face that launched a thousand ships, not The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of Peloponnesian Foreign Policy by Helen of Troy.[1]
…heard ‘round the world.
In August 1963, Brian Wilson — something of a pop-song guru — was driving when a song came on the radio. He had to pull over so that he could become absorbed in what he was hearing. He couldn’t believe it. He later characterized his reaction as “… My God! … Wait a minute! … No way! I was flipping out. It wasn’t like having your mind blown, it was like having your mind revamped.” What he heard was a voice so commanding that it seemed conflicted by its intoxicating youth; this was the voice of a child-general leading a wall of sound into some kind of battle. It was Veronica Bennett singing “Be My Baby,” and it was, for Brian Wilson, the most perfect pop song. By Brian’s own admission, he listened to the song at least 1,000 times. He wasn’t alone. The songwriter’s agency BMI estimated the song had been played as a feature about four million times since 1963 — or about seventeen consecutive years.
Veronica Bennett singing “Be My Baby” mesmerized a generation in 1963–64. Scorsese and others later used the song in movies; Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Joel idolized it. Future Time magazine correspondent Michael Enright wrote that “Ronnie had a weird natural vibrato that modulated her little-girl timbre into something that penetrated the Wall of Sound like a nail gun. It is an uncanny instrument. Sitting on a ragged couch in my railroad flat, I could hear her through all the arguments on the street, the car alarms, the sirens. She floated above the sound of New York while also being a part of it…stomping her foot on the sidewalk and insisting on being heard.” And that’s what Phil Spector, the man who invented modern pop music, said when he heard Veronica sing; listening to her audition at a New York City studio, “he knocked the bench over from the piano and said, ‘That’s the voice I’ve been looking for.’” Veronica did not have the best voice — in fact, Phil Spector had singers under contract who were objectively superior. But they didn’t have Veronica’s siren charisma.
Sung by Veronica and backed by her sister and cousin, The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” became a worldwide hit, selling over two million copies in the first few months it was released. During The Ronettes’ 1963–64 tour, the U.K. press ran headlines such as “Girls Scream at Stones, Boys for Ronettes.” Their opening act was the Rolling Stones. The Ronettes spent a night of dancing with John, George and Ringo, and for the Beatles’s last U.S. tour in August ’66, the Beatles had requested The Ronettes as their opening act. In 1971, George Harrison wrote and co-produced a song for Ronnie, and, in likely the last such instance, all four Beatles played on the track. Bob Seger said, “I love the way Ronnie sang.” Everyone did.
And yet, fame does not dissipate context. Veronica and The Ronettes first toured with a Dick Clark tour. Everyone stayed on buses because hotels sometimes wouldn’t admit blacks. The whitish tour members would go on restaurant excursions to bring food back for the black musicians. There were doubtless many conversations from the older generation about what was happening. What was Veronica? She wasn’t white. Was she black? Something else?
A mid-sixties concert demonstrates the ease with which Veronica connects with the audience and the even greater ease with which the crowd — black and white — responds to her.[2] Footage of thousands of white concert-goers attests that the answer to What was Veronica? couldn’t possibly matter to the younger generation. Teenage boys everywhere were love with this singer; girls were enchanted by her charisma. Still-segregated audiences lost themselves in “Be My Baby,” knowing yet not knowing that just a year or two later, such segregation would seem so odd. And this siren who called America’s children to equality with the blood of a black mother and a white father was not some perversion hidden in a Harlem club; she was broadcast right into America’s living rooms to tempt and confound with her infectious agreeableness.
Corrupting the Youth
Phrene, the great whore of ancient Athens, stood before the court. She’d been charged with that usual Athenian charge of corrupting the youth. She was wealthy and powerful, had been the model for the world’s most famous work of art, but here, before the old wise men of Greece, she fought for her life.[3] For her defense, she stood up, walked before the judges, and removed her clothes. Whatever the charges of corruption of mind and body, the Athenians believed most powerful was the knowledge that the gods speak through beauty. Phrene was found innocent. And so, what was God saying in the squeal Veronica lets out after the second chorus? Those kids in the audience — black and white and all else — didn’t wonder but they knew. Veronica had pushed against the contours of civilization with a smile.
Veronica and The Ronettes dominated the media in 1964. She was the irresistible force; even the newspapers agreed that boys screamed for the Ronettes. And like the old men of Athens, the old men of Congress knew too the undeniability of the irresistible force. If you were an old white Democrat, what you witnessed when 21-year-old Veronica took the stage was a charismatic nobody from Spanish Harlem driving a stake through the heart of millennia of inequality with a smile. The record charts tabulated the success of The Ronettes, but the best tabulation is probably found in the records of Congress.
Veronica was something so perfect that the producer of the song had to own her. In the fall of 1969, while Veronica was imprisoned in the L.A. home of the same man who discovered her, down the road from her another woman — single, black and very pregnant — received an urgent midnight phone call from Jack Nitzsche.[4] Mick and Keith needed her. So, for an hour in the middle of the night while Veronica was captive, Merry Clayton howled the lines that would end the Be My Baby era: Rape, murder, is just a shot away … a shot away.[5] In the winter of 1969, The Rolling Stones executed the optimism of just a few years before with the release of Let It Bleed, which opened with Merry Clayton screaming murder on “Gimme Shelter.” [6]
The end was not just in “Be My Baby” optimism but in a method of engagement and a mode of dialogue. Veronica’s suasive smile gave way to the bitter aggression of Franco-Marxist theory, and her siren squeal lost itself in stripper-chic and bitches aint shit but hoes n tricks aesthetics.[7] But “Be My Baby” lived on not in music but in something greater. The monument to MLK stands in Chinese marble on the Mall.[8] The monuments to Veronica stand in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Act had stalled in the Senate in 1963. As JFK was ascending into mythology, Veronica was traveling across the nation with the Dick Clark tour. It was some kind of chrysalis that American televisions would turn from the death of a president to the birth of a pop star. The Civil Rights Act was passed the following summer and the Voting Rights Act the following year.
- Note on the absurd go-go dancers in that Ronettes video.
Prior to the current era, when naked women required no reason nor no purpose, the only way to get a mostly undressed woman on the screen was to have her dance. Dance numbers were such a substantial part of Code era Hollywood not because everyone wanted dance numbers. Well, many women enjoyed the dance numbers but men just wanted to see mostly undressed women, so the dance numbers were the route. No one particularly complained about this formulation because, without it, we wouldn’t have gotten Rita Hayworth.
Also note that not all the go-go dancers are white. While the audience members are segregated, the dancers are not.
2. This article is an extension of the previous article on the Fourteenth Amendment and the establishment of personhood (The 1,000 Year Argument). In many ways, the dawn of personhood in the eighth century culminated in the 1960s.
3. [1] Charisma is derived from the Greek term for grace. The term does have religious connotations, thus “grace from God.” The early church often uses the term charisma in this manner, and thus God bestows charisma. Helen, of course, wrote no such book; there is no evidence she was given to such ephemeral succor as book-writing. The book title is a mockery of one of Kissinger’s books.
Charisma is vastly more interesting and enveloping than sex appeal.
4. [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KH6e_6O_dE
Another great performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrVbawRPO7I
The studio version the drove Brian Wilson insane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV5tgZlTEkQ
5. [3] Phrene comes in at #2 in greatest works of art: https://medium.com/@nathan.a.allen/top-5-works-of-art-all-time-b879137f40b0
6. [4] I assume everyone knows the story of psychopath Phil Spector, perhaps the only man in music crazier than Ike Turner. Veronica was virtually imprisoned in Phil’s house; he even confiscated her shoes. When she finally escaped, she was barefoot.
7. [5] At the 2:55 mark, Merry’s voice breaks on “murder”; Mick can be heard yelping in the background at the power of Merry’s performance. Her baby did not survive. A few years later, she sang back up on Sweet Home Alabama.
8. [6] If “Be My Baby” is the perfect pop song, then “Gimme Shelter” is the perfect rock song. And if you’re ever feeling down, just remember that Lisa Fischer exists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kl6q_9qZOs
9. [7] Dr. Dre. 1992. http://www.metrolyrics.com/bitches-aint-shit-lyrics-dr-dre.html
10. [8] The MLK memorial in DC was made in China and erected with Chinese labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr._Memorial
About Nathan Allen
Formerly of Xio Research, an A.I. appliance company. Previously a strategy and development leader at IBM Watson Education. His views do not necessarily reflect anyone’s, including his own. (What.) Nathan’s academic training is in intellectual history; his next book, Weapon of Choice, examines the creation of American identity and modern Western power. Don’t get too excited, Weapon of Choice isn’t about wars but rather more about the seeming ex nihilo development of individual agency … which doesn’t really seem sexy until you consider that individual agency covers everything from voting rights to the cash in your wallet to the reason mass communication even makes sense….
