Until Linda Ronstadt came along, “chick singer” was a purely derogatory term. With a few exceptions like Janis Joplin, most were thought of by both rock music fans and musicians alike as lesser members—more eye candy than artist. Suddenly, however, in the early 70′s there appeared a beautiful Mexican-American woman with monster vocal talent. Raised in Tucson and moulded in Los Angeles, Ronstadt was a powerhouse who had very definitive ideas about the kind of artist she wanted to be. Her vocals ranged from soprano to contralto, often in the same tune! She ran the band. She could rock out. Her gift for using her voice and heart to tease the sadness out of ballads was exquisite. Finally, she was lucky enough to be singing and making records in Southern California at exactly the right moment, when songwriting energies from the likes of Jackson Browne, Lowell George, Randy Newman and Warren Zevon and others were bubbling over.
She then met British musician and former director of A&R at Apple Records, Peter Asher, who, as a genuine collaborator, created clarity rather than confusion, steadying her career and enabling a string of great, archetypal SoCal rock records from Don’t Cry Now (1973) to Winter Light (1993). While too slick for some tastes, these albums remain a repository of incredible songwriting as well as the work of one the finest vocalists in all of pop music history.
Ronstadt retired from music in 2011, robbed of her singing voice by Parkinson’s disease, but these tracks show the incredible breadth and stylistic range of her career—from an early Ash Grove-influenced folksiness, through her genuine devotion to classic country music, and on to her rock star days and three schmaltzy big band records with Nelson Riddle. Ultimately, Ronstadt could truly sing in any style she desired. The key, as it is with all great singers, lay in finding an arrangement and complementary setting for that unforgettable voice.
“Silver Threads and Golden Needles” from Hand Sown…Home Grown
Re-recorded several years later for Don’t Cry Now, this earlier version is the sound of a hugely powerful voice beginning to find itself in pop music. Having grown out of the extended vibrato lines that came with being a 60′s folky, here she sorts through the conventions of Nashville country music, adding the pieces that work to her emerging original style.
“I Fall to Pieces” from Linda Ronstadt
Braving any unfavourable comparisons with the original, Ronstadt gives a brawnier, higher-pitched version of the Hank Cochran/Harlan Howard country standard that became one of Patsy Cline’s most famous calling cards.
“Desperado” from Don’t Cry Now
Although Glenn Frey and Don Henley had released the song earlier in 1973 as part of the Eagles’ Desperado, Henley’s vocals pale in comparison to Ronstadt’s slow, utterly masterful caress of this bittersweet ode to an old cowpoke. Few singers, in any genre and era, have ever plumbed the depths of ballads like this. Ronstadt can do sad.
“Heat Wave” from Prisoner in Disguise
Of all the radio hits, this one always had the most soul. Again fearlessly tackling a Holland/Dozier/Holland gem whose penultimate version to this point had always been the 1962 hit by Martha and The Vandellas, Ronstadt, brimming with confidence, enthusiastically drives this Motown classic with impeccable enunciation and perfectly placed phrasing. Her raw-edged growl in “Yeah Yeah, Yeah Yeah” is where it sails over the top.
“Lose Again” from Hasten Down the Wind
Ronstadt’s relationships with Southern California songwriters is the key to the greatest successes of her career and though most were men, Karla Bonoff, who contributed three songs to Hasten Down the Wind was a notable exception. A rare few vocalists have ever been able to make a pretty song into a gleaming beauty the way Ronstadt could and here her voice sonically embodies the emotion of yearning.
“Tumbling Dice” and “I Will Never Marry” from Simple Dreams
This pairing—on a single album—shows Ronstadt’s awesome stylistic range. Effective at the grit and growl needed for the Exile-era Stones hit, she then dials it back and shows yet again, in Dolly Parton’s feminist anthem, what a truly great singer she is by lingering over details with ingenious, ethereal vocal control. There’s an old saying in bluegrass about the space created by acoustic instruments leaving nowhere to hide and here in the middle of her rock star period, she answers all questions about the difference between screamers and singers.
“Am I Blue” from For Sentimental Reasons
While the novelty of Ronstadt as a big band singer had worn off by the time this album as released, this amalgam of an undeniably lovely melody, her polished vocals and Riddle’s brassy easy-going arrangement are a superb match. With her big band albums, she brought much needed attention and fresh energies to the Great American Songbook.
“For A Dancer” from Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions
Another SoCal songwriter that whom Ronstadt’s career is inextricably linked with is Jackson Browne. Here in league with longtime friend Emmylou Harris who provides the feathery high soprano harmonies above Ronstadt’s larger bore instrument, Linda, recording in her hometown, again shows her wondrous gift for making a song her own. Throughout the 70s, Ronstadt’s covers of SoCal rock tunes were definitive; again and again bringing out feelings and flavors not found in the versions recorded by the original songwriter.
“La Charreada” from Canciones de mi Padre
Clearly heartfelt and filled with some of her best singing ever, this tune from her pair of Mariachi albums of Mexican brass music is joyous in the extreme. Nowhere in her catalog has the power inherent in her voice ever been displayed with this much volume and muscle.
“Anyone Who Had a Heart” from Winter Light
It seems inevitable and yet it took 20 years of making music before Ronstadt finally got around to exploring the marvelous song catalog of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. This was again the sound of Ronstadt pushing into new, more “adult” territory. As always, she steps up, negotiates all Bacharach’s notoriously difficult phrasing challenges and gives another bravura performance.
“Back in the USA” from the film soundtrack of Hail! Hail! Rock ‘N’ Roll
While her studio albums were often groomed to a shimmering gloss, Ronstadt live was something else. Here as the only woman in the climactic concert of Taylor Hackford’s acclaimed rock doc celebrating rock and roll’s irascible creator, Chuck Berry, Ronstadt—clearly into the spirit of the occasion—shimmies, shakes, grabs the microphone and cuts loose. Listening to her belt out the line, “Everything you want, we got it right here in the USA!” says it all.
“Poor Poor Pitiful Me” from Live in Hollywood
Warren Zevon’s music was always part of Ronstadt’s albums and live sets and here that experience shows as she and an ace band kick up the tempos just a tick and tear through one of her favorite Zevon classics for a 1980 HBO special. Proof that SoCal mainstays like Russ Kunkel and Danny Kortchmar could play live and were not just studio toadstools, this is also a rare example of live music taken from a television production that sounds like it was not recorded with tin cans.
