Linda Ronstadt is known as the Queen of Country Rock. She has won Grammy Awards with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris for their work in The Trio, is celebrated for her Spanish albums, and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Today, July 15, is her birthday. Ronstadt is 79.
“I don’t think anybody has tried more different styles and nailed it like Linda has,” Bonnie Raitt told CBS This Morning.
Ronstadt sold more than 100 million albums and leaped between genres and languages.
While known as intensely self-critical, Ronstadt built one of the most uniquely diverse and successful careers in music history. The Kennedy Center called her “the defining voice of a generation.” And she dominated pop music in the 1970s.
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Linda Ronstadt is the “Defining Voice of a Generation”
Trisha Yearwood, who paid tribute to Ronstadt at the Kennedy Center Honors, called her her hero.
“She’s the person who made me want to be a singer,” Yearwood said.
“I’ve never seen an artist who did things solely based on what she wanted to do,” Garth Brooks added. “She never cared if it was commercial. She never cared if it was successful. Funny though, in the past, everything she did was hugely successful.”
Ronstadt’s music reflected the diversity in her background.
Ronstadt grew up in Tucson, Arizona, listening to a diverse range of music, including folk, rock and roll, country, opera, pop standards, and, in a nod to her father’s heritage, Mexican ballads. She launched her career in the mid-’60s. Glenn Frey and Don Henley met while playing for her and founded The Eagles.
The Queen of Country Rock Made Mariachi Albums
She spent decades performing and experimenting with various artists across multiple genres. In addition to Parton and Harris, Ronstadt also worked with Aaron Neville, James Taylor, J.D. Souther, Frank Zappa, and Bette Midler.
In the 1970s, Ronstadt was nicknamed the Queen of Country Rock for her hit songs, including “When Will I Be Loved,” “You’re No Good,” “Blue Bayou,” and “It’s So Easy.” Notably, she wasn’t a songwriter.
Later in her career, she embraced her Mexican heritage with albums of Spanish-language music. In 1987, she released Canciones de Mi Padre, her first album of traditional Mexican mariachi and ranchera songs. Canciones de Mi Padre is Spanish for “Songs of My Father.” She followed up with two additional Spanish albums, Mas Canciones (1991), meaning “more songs,” and Frenesi (1992), meaning “frenzy.”
Linda Ronstadt Retires
Ronstadt was the first female artist to have four consecutive albums go platinum. She was nominated for 27 Grammy Awards and won 11 of them. The Recording Academy also bestowed her with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She won an Emmy Award and played Mabel in the Broadway, television, and film versions of “Pirates of Penzance.”
Ronstadt announced her retirement from music in 2011 and revealed Parkinson’s disease robbed her of her voice in 2013. She later learned Parkinson’s was a misdiagnosis. Instead, Ronstadt suffers from a Parkinson’s-like disorder called progressive supranuclear palsy. According to the Mayo Clinic, PSP is a rare condition caused by the deterioration of brain cells that control thinking, movement, and coordination. It’s progressive and mimics Parkinson’s and dementia.
In 2014, Ronstadt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“The only thing I can say about my career is that I wasn’t very good when I started out. But I got a little better,” Ronstadt told CBS This Morning.
(Photo by Steve Joester/Shutterstock)
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