View CNN’s Fast Facts on Phil Spector, the Grammy Award-winning songwriter and convicted murderer.
Personal Birth date: December 26,1939 (some sources say 1940) Death date: January 16,2021 Birth place: Bronx, New York Birth name: Harvey Phillip Spector Father: Benjamin Spector, an ironworker Mother: Bertha Spector Marriages: Rachelle Short (2006-2018, divorced); Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Bennett (1968-1974, divorced); Annette Merar (1959-1967, divorced) Children: Adopted with Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Bennett: Gary, Louis and Donte; mother’s name unavailable publicly: Nicole (deceased) Other Facts Songwriter, producer and creator of the Sixties « Wall of Sound » style. Produced for such groups as: the Crystals, the Beatles, Ike and Tina Turner, the Righteous Brothers, Cher and the Ramones. His father committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning when Spector was a child. His mother moved Spector and his older sister, Shirley, to Los Angeles when he was 12. Worked as a court stenographer to help pay tuition at UCLA. Considered going to work at the United Nations as an interpreter. Lived mostly in seclusion in his California mansion from the late 1970s until 2003. During the Lana Clarkson trial, at least four women testified that Spector threatened them with a gun. Timeline 1958 – While still in high school, he forms the Teddy Bears and records his first and the group’s only hit record, « To Know Him is to Love Him. » The record goes gold and the group appears on « American Bandstand. » 1960 – Moves to New York and works as a producer and a session musician.
