‘Be My Baby’: Hurray for the Riff Raff’s greatest cover
With the release of their 2024 album, The Past is Still Alive, Alynda Lee Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff has finally started to receive the wider acclaim that they have long deserved. Alongside the various musicians who have made up Hurray for the Riff Raff over the years, Segarra has been restlessly exploring the links between traditional North American roots music and their Puerto Rican heritage.
Blending a socially conscious, politically engaged and progressively minded driving force with a poetic sensibility, fantastically powerful voice, and love of old music, Segarra has written an array of dazzling compositions over the years in a range of styles, from folk to rock and country, such as ‘Look Out Mama’, ‘Blue Ridge Mountain’, ‘The Body Electric’ and ‘I Know It’s Wrong (But That’s Alright)’.
With the success of The Past is Still Alive, hopefully, more people have since tuned into the vital, shocking and powerful work that Segarra was doing in 2017 with their album The Navigator, on songs like ‘Rican Beach’, ‘Living in the City’, ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl’ and, especially, on the standout ‘Pa’lante’.
The more their work moves forward, and the more they stake a claim to a space of their own, the more they leave the past behind. However, in their early work, Segarra was a fierce champion of the songs that inspired them.
Alongside their own compositions, plenty of covers turned up on the stage and in studio recordings of old traditional folk songs and ballads, but also including a wonderful frenetic take on Bruce Springsteen’s timeless ‘Dancing in the Dark’ (and let’s face it, who hasn’t covered that one?), Fred Neil’s ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ and ‘Time is On My Side’. There were even one-off covers of Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your Land’ and Dylan’s ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’.
In fact, the fourth Hurray for the Riff Raff album, My Dearest Darker Neighbour – originally released as part of a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to cover the work they put into their previous album, Look Out Mama – was entirely made up of covers, and featured a haunting rendition of George Harrison’s joyous, spiritual outpouring ‘My Sweet Lord’, as well as takes on Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Delta Momma Blues’, Billie Holiday’s ‘Fine and Mellow’, Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’, ‘I’m Going Away’ by pioneering guitarist Elizabeth Cotten and Hank Williams’ heartbreaking ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’.
But it was a number that Segarra had been singing for longer than almost any other, and which clearly means so much to them, that inspired their greatest performance of someone else’s song. Back when they were only playing on small stages to small but dedicated crowds, Hurray for the Riff Raff would close their shows with a wonderful, joyous outpouring of The Ronettes’ timeless ‘Be My Baby’.
With the unmistakable beating heart drumline opening, simplistic yet endlessly endearing lyrics and life-affirming melody, the song is one of the most universally adored pieces of music in history and fills your heart with every listen. Segarra would always take great pleasure in singing Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich’s lyrics, and although no one will ever embody the song in the same way that The Ronettes did, Segarra has such a powerful, warming, soulful, inviting and exciting voice, and so does the song as well as anybody could.
And in 2017, the same year they released their best albumThe Navigator, Hurray for the Riff Raff took their version of ‘Be My Baby’ into the studio, too. Where their earlier live covers had been recreations with only guitars, bass and drums, they now had access to a full brass section, backing singers and plenty of percussionists to work with in order to create the trademark Phil Spector Wall of Sound production style, which is such a key part of the original recording. Alynda Lee Segarra even paid a fitting tribute to The Ronettes in the black and white music video for the recording. Wearing their hair up in the famous Ronettes’ beehive hairstyle, the clip pays tribute to the legendary girl groups 1965 appearance singing the song on the television show Shindig!.
