Linda Ronstadt - illness prevents singing

[Ligeti]

I only own "What's New", the first Riddle album. It's good, but as you say, wasn't really my thing. When I go back to Ronstadt now it's not something I reach for - mainly because, for me, it's an anomoly. It's the country/rock thing she did so well.

[JSngry]

The only real difference in any of her records is the setting. She's been incredibly technically consistent as a singer.

I still find her largely clueless as an interpreter, but I still like her (and those 70s records were hugely important in giving 70s L.A. rock its sonic identity).

Cluelessness is a fact of life, I embrace it when it's done well. But I don't love everything I embrace.

[king ubu]

I'm enjoying her early albums quite a lot, but don't really know much after the mid 70s.

Sad news indeed.

Yeah, EOTH is the only work of hers I've consciously listened to.

There's a fascinating Rolling Stone article about her South African sojourn. Let's just say it doesn't paint the greatest picture of her intelligence. Then again, it's accessible from her website.

"What's wrong with our bodies?"

just started reading - good fun!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

It's weird when you read that story about the trip to South Africa and realize that both Andrew Gold & Don Grolnick are both gone now. Too young for both of them. BTW, I think that's Grolnick with the big gut in your picture.

[king ubu]

Yes indeed, on all accounts ... don't know Andrew Gold, but like those two Blue Note albums of Grolnick quite some!

The photo (with full annotation) is from here:

http://waddywachtelinfo.com/waddywachtelwithlindaronstadt.html

[AllenLowe]

the interview in Rolling Stone put me off of her music for life, I'm afraid; it wasn't just that she violated the boycott. But she had this coy, "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies" phony innocence in the whole thing, as in "little ol' me? What do I know about politics?" It was quite repulsive.

[7/4]

Different strokes, but though her voice is sumptuous, albeit in a fairly generic way IMO, I find Ronstadt's version of "When I Fall In Love" to be an annoyingly obtuse reading of the song -- as in, lots of candy-sweet voice, little understanding of what is or should be going on in the song dramatically:

Who's that guitar player on her version?

"[Ronstadt] wisely continued her relationship with arranger/orchestra leader Nelson Riddle whose experience and talent kept her and the project true to the sound and style of the material. For his part, Riddle recruited such musicians as guitarist Bob Mann (who'd go on to play for Rod Stewart in his forays into the same type of material), drummer John Guerin, bassist Bob Magnusson, and pianist Don Grolnick, all of whom were veterans of the big band and lounge scene, making them perfect for this project."

Thanks!

[mjzee]

I just looked at her Wikipedia entry (I thought I had read somewhere that she came from Mexico and was looking for confirmation; she didn't), and found this fascinating:

Her mother Ruth Mary, of German, English, and Dutch descent, was raised in the Flint, Michigan, area. She was the daughter of Lloyd Groff Copeman, a prolific inventor and holder of many patents. Lloyd, with nearly 700 patents to his name, invented an early form of the toaster, many refrigerator devices, the grease gun, the first electric stove, and an early form of the microwave oven. His flexible rubber ice cube tray earned him millions of dollars in royalties.

[JSngry]

Why was Don Grolnick's arm in a sling? Was that real or a joke?

[Ligeti]

the interview in Rolling Stone put me off of her music for life, I'm afraid; it wasn't just that she violated the boycott. But she had this coy, "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies" phony innocence in the whole thing, as in "little ol' me? What do I know about politics?" It was quite repulsive.

No offense, but you can't any more downmarket than Rolling Stone. That's a magazine that exists only to create proposterous "Top 100" lists and to sell perfume to teenage boys. Or fashion. It's truly horrible.

On another note - do you also hold other artists politcal beliefs, or actions, against them to this extent? If I was put off by crass things artists do, my life would be so much poorer....

Edited August 27, 2013 by Ligeti

[BFrank]

She lives (part-time, I think) here in SF and is somewhat of a regular at a restaurant across the street from me. I've only seen her once, a couple of months ago, as she was heading out the door.

[etherbored]

i don't know nothin' 'bout birthin no babies...

[jazzbo]

I checked and this is the only LP of hers I still own.

[mjzee]

She really started the whole "rock singers sing standards" thing with Riddle, didn't she? I remember being charmed by some of those efforts and impressed, at least, that she gave Riddle the work. I too am sorry to hear she's having so much trouble.

She was preceded by (at least) Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, & Carly Simon. Simon's Trust is actually a nice album if you can suspend disbelief about her vocals and just get into the accompaniment). Also, Motown had a thing about getting their bigger acts to do "standards" as part of the grooming for Vegas.

Ronstadt has never struck me as a particularly bright person (but who am I to judge?) or singer (and although she got what was probably Riddle's most uninspired ever "high profile" work out of him and was by more than a few accounts more or less a total dolt about how to "get into" that material, hey, she had the desire and the money, and by god, she made it happen, so, good for her!)), but I always dug her for not letting that get in the way of her enthusiasm and curiosity (remember her doing "Pirates Of Penzance"?). I give a whole lot of the credit to her great run of great-sounding records in the 70s to Peter Asher (and yeah, the Greatest Hits thing is one of the fewer times where that's what I'd prefer over whole albums) but she had the chops to give him something to work with, right? Really, "harmlessly & pleasantly clueless" is perhaps the phrase that keeps coming to mind about her actual singing. She's always had, again, a good, at times great skill set to be clueless with.

All of which is just to say that as a "singer", eh...., but as a "voice", somebody you couldn't miss no matter what the context, she's been there since "Different Drummer" and stayed there for all of my adult life, and even if I can't really take her seriously as an "artist", I still like her a helluva lot, and yes, this is sad news.

I agree with this assessment of Ronstadt. I've always thought she was rock's version of Ella - nice singer, iconic, but brought little to an understanding of a song.

[clifford_thornton]

the interview in Rolling Stone put me off of her music for life, I'm afraid; it wasn't just that she violated the boycott. But she had this coy, "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies" phony innocence in the whole thing, as in "little ol' me? What do I know about politics?" It was quite repulsive.

No offense, but you can't any more downmarket than Rolling Stone. That's a magazine that exists only to create proposterous "Top 100" lists and to sell perfume to teenage boys. Or fashion. It's truly horrible.

On another note - do you also hold other artists politcal beliefs, or actions, against them to this extent? If I was put off by crass things artists do, my life would be so much poorer....

The RS article was thirty years old, and it was a somewhat different magazine then. They've still got some good writers in spite of themselves. Ronstadt comes across as shallow and moronic in the article, rather than having particular "beliefs."

[gmonahan]

She really started the whole "rock singers sing standards" thing with Riddle, didn't she? I remember being charmed by some of those efforts and impressed, at least, that she gave Riddle the work. I too am sorry to hear she's having so much trouble.

She was preceded by (at least) Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, & Carly Simon. Simon's Trust is actually a nice album if you can suspend disbelief about her vocals and just get into the accompaniment). Also, Motown had a thing about getting their bigger acts to do "standards" as part of the grooming for Vegas.

Ronstadt has never struck me as a particularly bright person (but who am I to judge?) or singer (and although she got what was probably Riddle's most uninspired ever "high profile" work out of him and was by more than a few accounts more or less a total dolt about how to "get into" that material, hey, she had the desire and the money, and by god, she made it happen, so, good for her!)), but I always dug her for not letting that get in the way of her enthusiasm and curiosity (remember her doing "Pirates Of Penzance"?). I give a whole lot of the credit to her great run of great-sounding records in the 70s to Peter Asher (and yeah, the Greatest Hits thing is one of the fewer times where that's what I'd prefer over whole albums) but she had the chops to give him something to work with, right? Really, "harmlessly & pleasantly clueless" is perhaps the phrase that keeps coming to mind about her actual singing. She's always had, again, a good, at times great skill set to be clueless with.

All of which is just to say that as a "singer", eh...., but as a "voice", somebody you couldn't miss no matter what the context, she's been there since "Different Drummer" and stayed there for all of my adult life, and even if I can't really take her seriously as an "artist", I still like her a helluva lot, and yes, this is sad news.

I agree with this assessment of Ronstadt. I've always thought she was rock's version of Ella - nice singer, iconic, but brought little to an understanding of a song.

Well, since Ella is the greatest pop/jazz singer of all time, I'm going to assume you're doing just a bit of trolling here.

gregmo

[JSngry]

Back in the day, Ella was often noted as being a less than stellar interpreter of lyrics, at least on a consistent basis.

[Larry Kart]

Back in the day, Ella was often noted as being a less than stellar interpreter of lyrics, at least on a consistent basis.

Yes, but later in her career, based on live performances I heard, her understanding of the dramatic content of the songs she sang deepened considerably.

[JSngry]

I'd not argue with that, nor would I argue with anybody who said that the more "pop" the setting, the more engaged she appeared to be in the lyrics.

[Larry Kart]

I'd not argue with that, nor would I argue with anybody who said that the more "pop" the setting, the more engaged she appeared to be in the lyrics.

The setting that I heard her in in later years that seemed to bring out previously uncommon depth was just her and Joe Pass.

[JSngry]

Yeah, well that's "later" later. I'm talking about her mid-50s-through 60s records. Seems like the "jazz" ones got all scatty and "jazzy", whereas the "pop" ones (including portions of the songbooks) seemed to relieve her of whatever need she had to do all that, and to free her up to "just" sing the song.

Other than the gorgeousness of her instrument, I'm still not that much of a fan of Ella Fitzgerald as a "jazz singer" up until the 70s. But geez, what an instrument, and when not trying to be jazz, I think she was more jazz than when she was trying to be jazz.

Of course, now that she's dead (and has been dead for a good while now), you can't really look at it like that, it's all ELLA FITZGERALD now, all one big Legend, so my view is an antiquated and obsolete one. But I'm not one of the lucky ones who only knows Ella Fitzgerald as Dead Icon Of Jazz, and I will have to carry that curse with me to my grave, perhaps in a yellow basket, just to show the Next World that I am aware of my error.

[Larry Kart]

Yeah, well that's "later" later. I'm talking about her mid-50s-through 60s records. Seems like the "jazz" ones got all scatty and "jazzy", whereas the "pop" ones (including portions of the songbooks) seemed to relieve her of whatever need she had to do all that, and to free her up to "just" sing the song.

Other than the gorgeousness of her instrument, I'm still not that much of a fan of Ella Fitzgerald as a "jazz singer" up until the 70s. But geez, what an instrument, and when not trying to be jazz, I think she was more jazz than when she was trying to be jazz.

Of course, now that she's dead (and has been dead for a good while now), you can't really look at it like that, it's all ELLA FITZGERALD now, all one big Legend, so my view is an antiquated and obsolete one. But I'm not one of the lucky ones who only knows Ella Fitzgerald as Dead Icon Of Jazz, and I will have to carry that curse with me to my grave, perhaps in a yellow basket, just to show the Next World that I am aware of my error.

I agree about Ella's vintage "pop" performances being more satisfying by and large than her "jazz"" jazz ones of that time. In that vein -- and I wish I could recall this more accurately -- I once was listening to one of her recordings of the first sort from a fairly abstract (can't think of better term) point of view, perhaps as though she were Benny Carter or even Don Byas stating and lightly embellishing a melody, and suddenly it was as though I saw and heard the whole picture, that Ella poured so much into (as in way inside) the interstices of the song, especially in terms of tone and timbre, that if one heard what she was doing and expressing there, one heard something very special. Haven't found that point of focus with Ella that often since then, but I sure did hear it. I would add, as the mentions of Carter and Byas suggest, that this aspect of her struck me as a '30s and early '40s thing, which was after all the era that Ella came up in.

[JSngry]

Yeah, I don't always need lyrical "depth" out of a singer, not if there's a substantial-enough "instrumental" quality of idea to replace it. And sometimes Ella could get there, for sure, especially at medium down tempos and slower.

[mjzee]

I like the Ella of the Songbooks. There, I like her for the sumptuousness of her voice - it's such a pretty thing. But even there, I think she strives to sing the songs accurately, not to give us her take on the songs. In that, I find her similar to Ronstadt. Other people seem to like her more; to each their own.

But that's Ella at her best. I also own this:

A 4-CD set on Pablo, it consists of selections from the following live albums: Montreux '75, Ella A Nice, Ella In London, JATP in Tokyo '53, Montreux '77, and Return To Happiness - Tokyo '83. You get the cute Ella, the crowd-pleasing Ella, the scatting Ella, the jamming-with-the-boys Ella, and most of it, to these ears, sounds conventional and not-very-interesting. I don't doubt or begrudge her status as a jazz icon, or as a pop-culture touchstone. Her audiences utterly loved her, as can be heard on these recordings. Perhaps Larry is right that she could bring emotional insight to a song (I haven't heard the Pass discs), but I don't hear it in this collection. Again, to each their own.

[Larry Kart]

I like the Ella of the Songbooks. There, I like her for the sumptuousness of her voice - it's such a pretty thing. But even there, I think she strives to sing the songs accurately, not to give us her take on the songs. In that, I find her similar to Ronstadt. Other people seem to like her more; to each their own.

But that's Ella at her best. I also own this:

A 4-CD set on Pablo, it consists of selections from the following live albums: Montreux '75, Ella A Nice, Ella In London, JATP in Tokyo '53, Montreux '77, and Return To Happiness - Tokyo '83. You get the cute Ella, the crowd-pleasing Ella, the scatting Ella, the jamming-with-the-boys Ella, and most of it, to these ears, sounds conventional and not-very-interesting. I don't doubt or begrudge her status as a jazz icon, or as a pop-culture touchstone. Her audiences utterly loved her, as can be heard on these recordings. Perhaps Larry is right that she could bring emotional insight to a song (I haven't heard the Pass discs), but I don't hear it in this collection. Again, to each their own.

Don't know the Pass-Ella CDs but heard the two of them in concert twice late in her career and was struck by the dramatic power of her singing.