Dec 14

Linda Ronstadt

Greatly Appreciated

LINDA RONSTADT
 
 
Linda Ronstadt  (born July 15, 1946 in Tucson, Arizona) is an American popular music singer.  Ronstadt has lent her voice to over 120 albums and has sold more than 100 million records, making her one of the world’s best-selling artists of all time.  Christopher Loudon of Jazz Times noted in 2004, Ronstadt is “Blessed with arguably the most sterling set of pipes of her generation . . . rarest of rarities – a chameleon who can blend into any background yet remain boldly distinctive . . .  It’s an exceptional gift; one shared by few others.”  Ronstadt charted 38 Billboard Hot 100 singles, with 21 reaching the top 40, 10 in the top 10, three at #2, and “You’re No Good” at #1.  In addition, she has charted 36 albums, 10 top-10 albums and three #1 albums on the Billboard Pop Album Chart.  Her autobiography, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir was released in September 2013 and debuted in the Top 10 on The New York Times Best Sellers List.  On July 28, 2014, she was awarded one of the twelve 2013 National Medals of Arts and Humanities.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Barbara Sullivan’s connections at Capitol Records didn’t pan out either.  Nik Venet was the point man at Capitol for folk-rock music and would have been a natural to work with Jim Sullivan.  He had produced albums for Fred Neil – to whom Sullivan is often compared – Lothar and the Hand People, and Linda Ronstadt’s first band the Stone Poneys, plus more mainstream acts like the Kingston Trio and the Beach Boys.  But Venet turned him down. 
 
(October 2011)
  
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I saw Linda Ronstadt perform in Raleigh, North Carolina during her Mad Love Tour in 1980, and Wendy Waldman was on-stage with her the whole time.  She was not exactly the opening act for Linda; but about halfway through, Wendy Waldman performed several songs of her own.  Linda introduced her as “one of my dearest friends”.
 
Mad Love is Linda Ronstadt’s new-wave album that featured several songs by Elvis Costello. 
 
(January 2012)
 
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Linda Ronstadt is another singer where I determined to get all of her albums; besides her regular studio albums, I picked up numerous compilation albums of various kinds.  Not all of them are terrific, and I am mostly lukewarm about her country period; but I became a big fan of all three Stone Poneys albums.  They were all tough finds throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, particularly the original release of the first album before they had their hit with “Different Drum”; even the post-Heart Like a Wheel reissue in 1975 wasn’t that easy to find.  Ronstadt albums have remained available for years and years; her 1980 new-wave album Mad Love went out of print just last year. 
 
(April 2012)
 
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Linda Ronstadt was quoted at the height of her hit-making period in the 1970’s as saying that Judy Collins has the kind of career that she would like to have; and to a large extent, this has become the case:  Both women have made albums in a variety of styles and on their own terms, and each has an established fan base that has also changed considerably over the decades. 
 
(May 2012)
 
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But for sheer “what-were-they-thinking” wonderment, it is hard to top the name the Cretones; who knows how much more success they could have had with a less cringe-worthy name.  They got a recording contract with Planet Records and released a very good debut album, Thin Red Line in 1980.  Linda Ronstadt was so impressed with the album that she covered three of their songs:  the title cut “Mad Love” for her 1980 new-wave album, Mad Love plus “Justine” and “Cost of Love”.  Mark Goldenberg of the Cretones was the guitarist on several songs on the album as well.  
 
(July 2012)
 
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The debut 1968 album by Blood, Sweat and Tears, Child Is Father to the Man includes among the cover songs Tim Buckley’s “Morning Glory”.  The Stone Poneys also recorded the latter song, though with the title “Hobo” instead; it is my favorite Poneys song (even beating “Different Drum”) and one of my very favorite Linda Ronstadt songs.  
 
(September 2012)
 
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For their second album, Trillion went back to the drawing board.  To produce the album, the band even lined up John Boylan, the producer of Boston’s debut album (which had inspired the formation of Trillion in the first place) as well as one of Linda Ronstadt’s albums (Linda Ronstadt) and a few tracks on a second (Don’t Cry Now).   
 
(October 2012)
 
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I should point out that I mostly collect the music, whereas other collectors might specialize in everything that has ever been issued by bands like the Beatles or KISS, or try to get the most valuable covers or hidden disc differences.  I have done some specializing myself now and then:  I have purchased dozens of Bob Dylan bootleg albums plus nearly all of his regular releases; and several years ago, I was buying up every Linda Ronstadt compilation album I could find, even though I already had virtually all of the music. 
 
The 1970’s was the heyday of vinyl record albums, and there are still thousands and thousands of them out there; so as the demand for vinyl has tailed off, prices even for scarce 1970’s albums have come down.  For instance, the three Stone Poneys albums that I got for $12 to $30 back in the day are now priced not that much higher than the other Linda Ronstadt albums. 
 
(November 2012)
 
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Several of the performers that had appeared at the original Woodstock Music & Art Fair in 1969 were in attendance at the Vietnam Veterans Benefit Concert near Washington, D.C., on July 4, 1987:  Richie Havens, Country Joe, John Sebastian, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (at least individually, with Stephen Stills and Neil Young appearing in a reformed Buffalo Springfield).  Other musicians at the Vietnam Veterans Benefit Concert included James Brown, Stevie Wonder, the Byrds, Bonnie Raitt, Kris Kristofferson, Linda Ronstadt, Frankie Valli, and the Four Tops; and there were also speeches by John Ritter, Louis Gossett, Jr., Whoopi Goldberg, Oliver Stone, and Ed Asner. 
 
(January 2013)
 
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Other Canadian rockers include Bryan Adams, k.d. lang, Rush, Loverboy, Klaatu, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and so many more.  Anna McGarrigle wrote the title song “Heart Like a Wheel” on Linda Ronstadt’s 1974 breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel that was later used as the name of a 1983 film also called Heart Like a Wheel about drag racer Shirley Muldowney; while Kate McGarrigle was married to Chapel Hill-born singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III whose union resulted in the birth of two more musicians, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright.  I have a CD somewhere that features the whole family if I remember right. 

 

(April 2013)

 
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The name of the Greg Shaw magazine called Who Put the Bomp is taken from “Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)”, a Top-40 hit by Barry Mann.  This was basically a one-hit wonder, but Mann always concentrated mostly on his songwriting, and he is well known for numerous songs that were co-written with his wife Cynthia Weil.  Others that he co-wrote with others include two hit duets by Linda Ronstadt, “Don’t Know Much” (with Aaron Neville) and “Somewhere out There” (with James Ingram); “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’” by the Righteous Brothers and also Daryl Hall and John Oates; and “On Broadway” by the Drifters and later by George Benson.  Barry Mann’s songwriting credits include an astounding 635 songs. 

 

(May 2013)

 

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Thus, I was beginning to tire of Wikipedia, but not before I put together another greatly expanded article on Linda Ronstadt’s first band the Stone Poneys (as well as their three albums).  The Stone Poneys had a big hit with “Different Drum”, written by Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, but all three of their albums are just wonderful and have become some of my very favorite Linda Ronstadt music.  I heard just this week that Linda Ronstadt has Parkinson’s Disease, and that the disease has progressed to the point where she can no longer sing – so sad.  Here is the Stone Poneys article:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Poneys .  

 

(September 2013)

 

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Janis Ian’s biggest hit song “At Seventeen” (1975) and the accompanying album, Between the Lines both reached #1 on the Adult Contemporary Singles and Hot 100 Albums Billboard charts, respectively, with much less drama than had befallen “Society’s Child”.  What’s more, Janis Ian won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance – Female that year, beating out Linda Ronstadt (whose breakthrough album Heart Like a Wheel had been nominated), as well as Olivia Newton-John and Helen Reddy. 

 

(January 2014)

 
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Mike Curb became a major recording industry professional that can be dated to his founding of Sidewalk Records in 1964 (a subsidiary of Capitol Records).  Among other achievements, in this period he recorded the very first tracks by Linda Ronstadt, specifically her first band, the Stone Poneys.  Mike Curb was even Lt. Governor of California in 1979-1983 under Governor Jerry Brown – the ageless Brown is also the current Governor of California.  

 

(December 2014)

 

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As an example, on Linda Ronstadt’s 1978 remake of one of the King’s signature songs, “Love Me Tender”, Elvis Presley is credited as the only songwriter on the lyric sheet.  On the labels, however, and on his own 45, Elvis Presley and Vera Matson are given as the songwriters of “Love Me Tender”. 

 

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I used to hear the Elvis Presley recording of “Love Me Tender” and the Linda Ronstadt recording of “Love Me Tender” played together on the radio as though they were singing a duet of the song, and the result is simply gorgeous.  Thankfully, disc jockeys have freedom in their job that others in the music industry do not, since I understood that is the only way the faux duet could be heard; because there were too many obstacles to releasing the combination as a single recording (i.e., for purchase).  I did locate a photo of a disk on the Internet that does have the duet on it though; perhaps that was intended to be strictly for use by disc jockeys. 

 

(April 2015/1)

 

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When Linda Ronstadt released her version of the Rolling Stones song “Tumbling Dice” (she and Mick Jagger dated for a while), I was reminded again of how masterful the Jagger/Richards team was at crafting song lyrics.  The song is included on her 1977 album Simple Dreams; Linda had to noticeably slow the tempo in order to get all of those words out of her mouth but still turns in a fine performance.  The Ronstadt concert that forms the focal point of the 1978 film FM also features “Tumbling Dice”.  But there was no need to look up the words that time; Linda Ronstadt included the lyrics on most of her albums, so they were right there on the album sleeve. 

 

Linda Ronstadt isn’t the only woman to cover a song by the Rolling Stones; Bette Midler recorded “Beast of Burden” in 1984 – her music video for the song includes a cameo by Mick Jagger playing a somewhat exaggerated version of himself (if that’s possible). 

 

(May 2015)

 

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While attracting little attention initially, the James Taylor song “Carolina in My Mind” was covered frequently not long after its release. North Carolina country music recording artist George Hamilton IV had some success with his version of “Carolina in My Mind” in 1969. Probably the best known version of the song other than Taylor’s is that of Melanie, who included “Carolina in My Mind” on her classic 1970 album, Candles in the Rain. Other recordings of the song have been made by the Everly Brothers, Evie Sands, John Denver, and Dawn (later known as Tony Orlando and Dawn). Glen Campbell and Linda Ronstadt performed a duet of the song on his TV show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour; the song was ultimately released in the 2007 video Good Times Again.
 
(August 2015)
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For some reason, over the years the 1970’s have gotten a reputation as a poor decade for music. (So do the 1950’s, for that matter, even though that is where rock and roll came from). It certainly cannot be because everything sounded the same. Most of the British Invasion bands were still active. The top American acts were still going strong as well – Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, the Beach Boys, the Band, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, etc. – and major stars who arrived in the 1970’s include Elton John, Michael Jackson, Queen, ABBA, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Prince, James Taylor, and Tom Petty. Anyone who says they are a music fan has to be able to find someone, and probably several someones on that list that they like a lot.
(December 2016)
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Dogs from the Hare that Bit Us opens with a cover of a song by the Weirdos called “Solitary Confinement”, and follows that with inimitable covers by the Dickies of a variety of other numbers:  “Easy Livin’” (Uriah Heep), “There’s a Place” (the Beatles), “Nobody but Me” (the Human Beinz), “Can’t Let Go” (the Hollies, and also Linda Ronstadt), “Epistle to Dippy” (Donovan), and others. 
 
(March 2017)
 
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Greg Shaw and the Bomp! Records crew even came up with a cool term for the kind of music that they like: “Bomp-Worthy”. Sadly, in the 12+ years since Shaw’s untimely death in 2004, this term has largely dropped out of sight on the Internet. I remember one “thread” (in the pre-blog era) talking about Linda Ronstadt’s Bomp-Worthy music that was still findable not so long ago, and I wish I could remember more about it. It was one of the references for the Wikipedia article that I wrote on the Stone Poneys. Now, there are only 20 results on Google for “Bomp-Worthy”. 
(June 2017)
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Over the next several years, I wrote up numerous articles for Wikipedia, mostly on other 1960’s garage rock and psychedelic rock bands and nearly all of the albums in the Pebbles series.  In all, I started over 100 articles and made contributions to Wikipedia that number more than 2,500.  Most of these rock bands are quite obscure to most people, but some are not:  The Outsiders had a major hit with “Time Won’t Let Me” that still gets a lot of radio play.  The same is true of Stone Poneys, Linda Ronstadt’s first rock band who scored with “Different Drum”.  Both of these bands had only a few sentences – what is called a “stub” on Wikipedia – so I fleshed out their stories and also wrote up an article on all of their albums. 

 

(Year 5 Review)

 

Last edited: March 22, 2021