Linda Ronstadt Songs Of My Father
Jeremias Resendez
The album was released in late 1987[3] and immediately became a global smash hit. At 2 million US sales, it stands as the biggest selling non-English language album in American record history. This album has been RIAA certified double-platinum (for over 2 million US copies sold) and also won Ronstadt the Grammy Award for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album at the 31st Grammy Awards.
These canciones were a big part of Ronstadt's family tradition and musical roots. The title Canciones de Mi Padre refers to a booklet that the University of Arizona published in 1946 for Ronstadt's deceased aunt, Luisa Espinel, who had been an international singer in the 1920s.[4] The songs come from Sonora and Ronstadt included her favorites on the album. Also, Ronstadt has credited the late Mexican singer Lola Beltrn as an influence in her own singing style, and she recalls how a frequent guest to the Ronstadt home, Eduardo "Lalo" Guerrero, father of Chicano music, would often serenade her as child with these songs.[5]
In the accompanying printed material, each song's Spanish lyrics were paired with an English translation and a discussion of the song's background or its significance for Ronstadt (omitted on the CD). Rubn Fuentes served as musical director/bandleader. Follow-up albums include Mas Canciones, Frenes, and the Rhino Records compilation Mi Jardin Azul: Las Canciones Favoritas, which collects songs from the previous three Spanish-language albums.Las Canciones de mi Padre also is the only recording production in the world that used the 3 best Mariachi bands in the world: Mariachi Vargas, Mariachi Los Camperos and Mariachi Los Galleros de Pedro Rey. As of 2012, Canciones de Mi Padre had sold nearly 10 million copies worldwide.
Although sometimes referred to as Ronstadt's first Spanish-language recordings, in fact she had recorded several times in the language before, including "Lo Siento mi Vida", a song she co-wrote with her father for her 1976 album, Hasten Down the Wind, and "Lago Azul," a Spanish translation of "Blue Bayou", that was released as a single following her hit English version from her 1977 album, Simple Dreams.
Ronstadt has earned 11 Grammy Awards,[3] three American Music Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, and an ALMA Award. Many of her albums have been certified gold, platinum or multiplatinum in the United States and internationally. She has also earned nominations for a Tony Award and a Golden Globe award. She was awarded the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the Latin Recording Academy in 2011 and also awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the Recording Academy in 2016. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2014.[4] On July 28, 2014, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts and Humanities.[5][16] In 2019, she received a star jointly with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for their work as the group Trio.[17][18] Ronstadt was among five honorees who received the 2019 Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievements.
Ronstadt has released 24 studio albums and 15 compilation or greatest hits albums. She charted 38 US Billboard Hot 100 singles. Twenty-one of those singles reached the top 40, ten reached the top 10, and one reached number one ("You're No Good"). Ronstadt also charted in the UK as two of her duets, "Somewhere Out There" with James Ingram and "Don't Know Much" with Aaron Neville, peaked at numbers 8 and 2 respectively and the single "Blue Bayou" reached number 35 on the UK Singles Chart.[19][20] She has charted 36 albums, ten top-10 albums, and three number one albums on the US Billboard albums chart.[citation needed] Ronstadt has lent her voice to over 120 albums, collaborating with artists in many genres, including Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Bette Midler, Billy Eckstine,[21] Frank Zappa, Carla Bley (Escalator Over the Hill), Rosemary Clooney, Flaco Jimnez, Philip Glass, Warren Zevon, Gram Parsons, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Earl Scruggs, Johnny Cash, and Nelson Riddle.[22] Christopher Loudon, of Jazz Times, wrote in 2004 that Ronstadt is "blessed with arguably the most sterling set of pipes of her generation."[23]
Ronstadt reduced her activity after 2000 when she felt her singing voice deteriorating.[24] She released her final solo album in 2004 and her final collaborative album in 2006 and performed her final live concert in 2009. She announced her retirement in 2011 and revealed shortly afterwards that she is no longer able to sing as a result of a degenerative condition initially diagnosed as Parkinson's disease but later determined to be progressive supranuclear palsy.[24][a] Since then, Ronstadt has continued to make public appearances, going on a number of public speaking tours in the 2010s. She published an autobiography, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir,[25] in September 2013. A documentary based on her memoirs, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, was released in 2019.
Ronstadt had a Roman Catholic upbringing[29] and was raised on the family's 10-acre (4 ha) ranch with her siblings Peter (who served as Tucson's chief of police from 1981 to 1991), Michael, and Gretchen. The family was featured in Family Circle magazine in 1953.[30]
Ronstadt's mother Ruth Mary, of German, English, and Dutch ancestry, was raised in Flint, Michigan. Ruth Mary's father, Lloyd Groff Copeman, a prolific inventor and holder of nearly 700 patents, invented an early form of the electric toaster, many refrigerator devices, the grease gun, the first electric stove, and an early form of the microwave oven.[37] His flexible rubber ice cube tray earned him millions of dollars in royalties.[38]
Everybody has their own level of doing their music. ... Mine just happened to resonate over the years, in one way and another, with a significant enough number of people so that I could do it professionally.
With the release of chart-topping albums such as Heart Like a Wheel, Simple Dreams, and Living in the USA, Ronstadt became the first female "arena class" rock star. She set records as one of the top-grossing concert artists of the decade.[40][41][42][43] Referred to as the "First Lady of Rock"[31][44] and the "Queen of Rock", Ronstadt was voted the Top Female Pop Singer of the 1970s.[31] Her rock-and-roll image was as famous as her music; she appeared six times on the cover of Rolling Stone and on the covers of Newsweek and Time.
In the 1980s, Ronstadt performed on Broadway and received a Tony nomination for her performance in The Pirates of Penzance,[45] teamed with the composer Philip Glass, recorded traditional music, and collaborated with the conductor Nelson Riddle, an event at that time viewed as an original and unorthodox move for a rock-and-roll artist. This venture paid off,[46] and Ronstadt remained one of the music industry's best-selling acts throughout the 1980s, with multi-platinum-selling albums such as Mad Love; What's New; Canciones de Mi Padre; and Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind. She continued to tour, collaborate, and record celebrated albums, such as Winter Light and Hummin' to Myself, until her retirement in 2011.[47]Most of Ronstadt's albums are certified gold, platinum, or multi-platinum.[48][49] Having sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide[50] and setting records as one of the top-grossing concert performers for over a decade, Ronstadt was the most successful female singer of the 1970s and stands as one of the most successful female recording artists in U.S. history. She opened many doors for women in rock and roll and other musical genres by championing songwriters and musicians, pioneering her chart success onto the concert circuit, and being in the vanguard of many musical movements.[40]
I don't record (any type of genre of music) that I didn't hear in my family's living room by the time I was 10. It just is my rule that I don't break because ... I can't do it authentically ... I really think that you're just hard-wiring (synapses) in your brain up until the age of maybe 12 or 10, and there are certain things you can't learn in an authentic way after that.
Ronstadt's early family life was filled with music and tradition, which influenced the stylistic and musical choices she later made in her career. Growing up, she listened to many types of music, including Mexican music, which was sung by her entire family and was a staple in her childhood.[52]
If I didn't hear it on the radio, or if my dad wasn't playing it on the piano, or if my brother wasn't playing it on the guitar or singing it in his boys' choir, or my mother and sister weren't practicing a Broadway tune or a Gilbert and Sullivan song, then I can't do it today. It's as simple as that. All of my influences and my authenticity are a direct result of the music played in that Tucson living room.[54]
Early on, her singing style had been influenced by singers such as Lola Beltrn and dith Piaf; she has called their singing and rhythms "more like Greek music ... It's sort of like 6/8 time signature ... very hard driving and very intense."[55] She also drew influence from country singer Hank Williams.
She has said that "all girl singers" eventually "have to curtsy to Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday".[31] Of Maria Callas, Ronstadt says, "There's no one in her league. That's it. Period. I learn more ... about singing rock n roll from listening to Maria Callas records than I ever would from listening to pop music for a month of Sundays. ... She's the greatest chick singer ever."[56] She admires Callas for her musicianship and her attempts to push 20th-century singing, particularly opera, back into the bel canto "natural style of singing".[57]
Still contractually obligated to Capitol Records, Ronstadt released her first solo album, Hand Sown ... Home Grown, in 1969. It has been called the first alternative country record by a female recording artist.[40] During this same period, she contributed to the Music from Free Creek "super session" project.
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