Nedra Talley Ross, the last surviving founding member of The Ronettes, died April 26 at 80. [1] With her cousin Ronnie Bennett and her sister Estelle Bennett she sang on "Be My Baby," "Baby, I Love You," "Walking in the Rain," and the Phil Spector productions that defined the wall-of-sound era of American pop. [2] The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the trio in 2007, three years after Spector was charged in the death of Lana Clarkson. [3]

The voice on the records is Ronnie's. The harmonies behind her are Nedra's and Estelle's, and the harmonies are why the records sound the way they do — a teenage trio out of Spanish Harlem singing into a New York studio Spector was building into a single instrument. Ronnie's voice carried the song; Nedra and Estelle carried the air around it.

Talley Ross left the group in 1966 when she married, an early exit from the music business that became permanent. [1] She wrote a 1990 memoir; she lived quietly in Virginia for the next three decades; she did not return to the road. The 2007 induction brought her on stage one more time. She did not perform on it.

What ends with her is not the catalog — the catalog has not ended in sixty years — but the founding line. The three voices that made the records are now all silent. The records still sound the way they did. They sound a little smaller.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles