Unless you have ears made of an old dog’s blanket, Darlene Love is almost certainly the voice on one of your favourite records of all time. But there’s also a chance you don’t know that. The Crystals – He’s A Rebel? That’s her. Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans – Not Too Young To Get Married? Her. Backing vocals on The Ronettes – Be My Baby? Her again. And of course, under her own name, the immortal Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) from Phil Spector’s Christmas Album. Holy Moly spoke to Darlene about her amazing 50-year career, and the genius and madness of Phil Spector…

Darlene, let’s go back to the beginning. Are we right in thinking you started singing in church?

“Right. My father was a minister, he was the pastor of a church. And I was in the choir, along with my brothers and my sister, and that’s how I started. I didn’t really know I could sing until people told me I could sing!”

What does gospel teach you, as a singer?

“It really teaches you control, and you learn how to sing harmony. I learned how to sing my part and stay on my part – which is great practice.”

And you were still at school when you joined your first group The Blossoms, were you tempted to ditch the books for pop fame?

“No, no, no… My mother was not gonna let me quit school to sing. Ha ha ha! Back in those days we didn’t know we could make a living singing. We had to find a real job. I had done quite a lot of backup singing in school things, but when I joined The Blossoms that’s when it really started – when I started getting paid to sing.”

You got to work with some really big names straight away, didn’t you?

“Yeah, which was amazing. I think when The Blossoms started singing backup, there weren’t any other groups doing that. There were choirs, or back in those days we called them ‘readers’; most singers who did backup in those days were white singers who could read music. The Blossoms could not read music, we could sight read but we couldn’t actually read music.

“But we had a sound that everybody wanted. So the more we sang the better our sound got, therefore we started backing up everybody that needed a group. With The Blossoms we could sound any way they wanted us to sound: gospel, rock & roll, country & western… so we picked up a lot of work.”

Who were some of the star names you worked with? 

“Sam Cooke was one of the biggest, Bobby Darin, Jan & Dean, The Beach Boys… we were able to sing with different people because we could change our sound and nobody would know it was The Blossoms.”

So when you started working with Phil Spector, did it just seem like another job or did you realise it was something very different?

“Not at the time. I met Phil because of his partner, who was Lester Sill. Lester told me that Phil was looking for a singer to record this song that he just knew was gonna be a hit. Goldstar was the name of the studio, and I met Phil and we made a deal that I was going to sing this record, He’s A Rebel. I knew when I recorded it it wasn’t going to be my record, it was going to be The Crystals’ record.

“One reason for that was Phil loved the sound of my voice but he thought the members of The Crystals, at that time, didn’t have a voice that was mature enough for his records. And so I ended up singing He’s A Rebel.”

Did Phil let you know how important you were to him, as a singer?

“Not in the beginning, but later on he’d say, ‘Darlene Love has one of the greatest voices I’ve ever heard in my life. She can sing anything, she has control…’

“With a lot of singers, if you hear the original melody of the song you’ll find they’ve changed it. But I learned early on in life to sing melodies and that’s one thing Phil Spector really loved about my voice. I could sing the melodies and sing it powerful.”

Were you aware of how integral to those records you were? Because along with the Wall of Sound production, your voice is the sound of Phil Spector's records…

“I didn’t even realise that people like Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt and Elton John really loved those records that Phil Spector produced. And not only did they love the records but they loved my voice that was on those records.”

Most people probably don’t know how many of those records featured your voice. You and Cher were also The Ronettes on occasion, weren’t you?

“Sometimes we were The Ronettes, yes. We would do their backup. And The Ronettes would put their vocals on ours, because Phil would want them to do exactly what we were doing. Be My Baby is The Blossoms, Cher and a few other backup singers.”

What are your favourites, of the records you made at that time?

“One of my favourites, which actually was a Darlene Love record, was Today I Met The Boy I’m Gonna Marry. I enjoy singing that even today. And I actually still make a lot of money singing that song at weddings, which is amazing!”

Speaking of The Ronettes, how did you feel about Phil making Ronnie his star vocalist?

“Well I think Phil could handle Ronnie much more than he could me. Phil could not really handle me. But Ronnie needed a hit record so bad she would do anything that Phil asked her to do. So he had control over Ronnie where he didn’t have that control over me, because I looked at him like, ‘You must be crazy!’ Ha ha ha!

“He backed off of me because I was never that kind of person that was gonna be run by anybody. I wasn’t belligerent or nasty or anything like that, but I knew what I wanted to do.”

In Ronnie Spector’s autobiography she recalls you being the one to break it to her that Phil was married. Can you remember that?

“I told her that! I met Ronnie in 1964, when I came to New York to do a show at The Brooklyn Fox. And she was saying, ‘Oh I’m dying to meet Phil Spector ‘cause I know he could have a hit with me. And eventually I wanna marry him’. And I said, ‘Girl, you don’t wanna marry Phil Spector. He’s already married, plus he’s a nut!’ Ha ha ha!

“But she didn’t take my advice. She married him anyway, then had to run for her life. Now he’s in jail so she’s not scared of him anymore. She didn’t say a whole lot about Phil in the beginning but now, since he’s in prison, she just lets it all hang out!”

Your songs on A Christmas Gift For You have become the definitive sound of the season. What do you remember about those sessions?

“I know. It’s amazing. Those were the greatest sessions Phil Spector ever did, because we all enjoyed doing the Christmas songs.  It was like the hottest year I could remember, but we were in this cold studio.

“We had so much fun, especially when it came to doing Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) because after we recorded it everybody stood up and applauded, because the song was so great.

“Most people don’t know that the great Leon Russell was the piano player for all those Phil Spector songs. Glen Campbell played the guitar on all of those… it was an unbelievable band that Phil put together. They weren’t famous yet but they were great musicians.”

It’s often said that Phil was difficult to work with, but you’ve just described it as being fun…

“It was in the early days, it was a lot of fun to work with Phil Spector. It was the later years, around the time I did Lord If You’re A Woman, that things got real testy with me and Phil. Because he wouldn’t let me out of my contract, and when he did let me out of my contract I went to Philadelphia International to record and they sold my contract back to him. So it wasn’t really a good feeling that we had, when I went back to do that record. I actually left very angry. I took the earphones off, put them down, walked out of the studio and I never saw Phil again for another 15 years.”

And we hear you’ve only just been paid. That’s a long time to wait for your wages…

“Yes, and even after I won the case it took seven years to eventually get the money, because they kept appealing. It was a lot of money, but not what I should’ve gotten if I’d have got all my royalties from 1962 to 2000. But I wanted everyone to know that I was a recording artist for Philles Records, and Phil was trying to prove I was not under contract.”

As well as those incredible Philles Records, you sang on Elvis Presley’s ’68 Comeback Special. What are your memories of that?

“Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Just meeting Elvis Presley… He wasn’t doing his drugs thing yet, he was just there trying to get back into singing again because he’d been just doing movies. It was wonderful for me to be on something like that, because he knew my background as a gospel singer – that’s the reason we were actually in the video along with him.”

Your sister Edna Wright was in Honey Cone, Holland Dozier Holland’s fantastic post-Supremes girl group. Is she still singing?

“Ha ha, yeah! My sister’s actually going to be performing with me for the first time, doing my Christmas shows. It’s going to be really exciting because she took like a 25-year hiatus to raise her family. I raised mine along with my career! So I’ve been telling her, you’ve gotta get back out there and work again.

“I have quite a few dates coming up. One of my most exciting dates is I’m gonna be at Carnegie Hall, which I always dreamed. Everybody has a dream and I always dreamed of being at Carnegie Hall, performing my Christmas show. So this is amazing to me. It’s gonna be mind blowing!”

The records you made are as popular now as they were five decades ago, how does it feel to be a member of such an exclusive club?

“It’s amazing that I’m in that club. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would have a career as big as it is today, because of those records. I’ve not had a hit record since the 60s but these records are still great and people love to hear them. So since He’s A Rebel I have not stopped working. I’m celebrating 50 years in showbusiness."

You can hear Darlene Love, in her many guises, on the new, remastered 7 CD boxset: the Philles Album Collection.