Early influences 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. Ronstadt has remarked that all the styles she has recorded on her own recordsrock and roll, rhythm and blues, gospel, opera, country, choral, and mariachiare music she heard her family sing in their living room or heard played on the radio by the age of 10. She credits her mother for her appreciation of
Gilbert and Sullivan and her father for introducing her to the
traditional pop and
Great American Songbook repertoire that she would, in turn, help reintroduce to an entire generation. 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". 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". A self-described product of American radio of the 1950s and 1960s, Ronstadt is a fan of its eclectic and diverse music programming.
Beginning of professional career At age 14, Ronstadt formed a folk trio with her brother Peter and sister Gretchen. The group played coffeehouses, fraternity houses, and other small venues, billing themselves as "the Union City Ramblers" and "the Three Ronstadts", and they even recorded themselves at a Tucson studio under the name "the New Union Ramblers". But increasingly, Ronstadt wanted to make a union of folk music and rock 'n' roll, the 18-year-old decided to move to Los Angeles.
The Stone Poneys Ronstadt visited a friend from Tucson,
Bobby Kimmel, in Los Angeles during Easter break from college in 1964, and later that year, shortly before her eighteenth birthday,
Solo career 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. Ronstadt's second solo album,
Silk Purse, was released in March 1970. Recorded entirely in Nashville, it was produced by
Elliot Mazer, whom Ronstadt chose on the advice of
Janis Joplin, who had worked with her on the
Cheap Thrills album. The
Silk Purse album cover showed Ronstadt in a muddy pigpen, while the back and inside cover depicted her onstage wearing bright red. Ronstadt has stated that she was not pleased with the album, although it provided her with her first solo hit, the multi-format single "
Long Long Time", and earned her first Grammy nomination (for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance/Female).
Touring {{quote box Soon after she went solo in the late 1960s, one of her first backing bands was the pioneering country-rock band
Swampwater, which combined
Cajun and
swamp rock elements in their music. Its members included Cajun fiddler
Gib Guilbeau and
John Beland, who later joined
the Flying Burrito Brothers, as well as Stan Pratt, Thad Maxwell, and Eric White, brother of
Clarence White of
the Byrds. Swampwater went on to back Ronstadt during TV appearances on
The Johnny Cash Show and
The Mike Douglas Show, and at the
Big Sur Folk Festival. Another backing band included
Don Henley,
Glenn Frey,
Bernie Leadon, and
Randy Meisner, who went on to form the
Eagles. They toured with her for a short period in 1971 and played on
Linda Ronstadt, her eponymous third album, from which a failed single, Ronstadt's version of
Jackson Browne's "
Rock Me on the Water", was drawn. At this stage, Ronstadt began working with producer and boyfriend
John Boylan. She said, "As soon as I started working with John Boylan, I started co-producing myself. I was always a part of my productions. But I always needed a producer who would carry out my whims." In 1975, Ronstadt performed shows with Jackson Browne, the Eagles, and
Toots and the Maytals. In these shows she would sing lead vocal on numerous songs including the Eagles' "
Desperado" while singing background and playing tambourine and acoustic guitar on others. Several years before Ronstadt became what author Gerri Hirshey called the first "arena-class rock diva" with "hugely anticipated tours" In 1974 she told
Peter Knobler in
Crawdaddy, "People are always taking advantage of you; everybody that's interested in you has got an angle." There were few "girl singers" on the rock circuit at the time, and they were relegated to "groupie level when in a crowd of a bunch of rock and roll guys", a status Ronstadt avoided. Relating to men on a professional level as fellow musicians led to competition, insecurity, bad romances, and a series of boyfriend-managers. At the time, she admired singers like
Maria Muldaur for not sacrificing their femininity but says she felt enormous self-imposed pressure to compete with "the boys" at every level. She noted in a 1969 interview in
Fusion magazine that it was difficult being a single "chick singer" with an all-male backup band.
Collaborations with Peter Asher {{quote box Ronstadt began her fourth solo album, ''
Don't Cry Now'', in 1973, with Boylan (who had negotiated her contract with
Asylum Records) and
John David "JD" Souther producing most of the album's tracks. But needing someone willing to work with her as an equal, Ronstadt asked
Peter Asher, who came highly recommended to her by
James Taylor's sister
Kate Taylor, to help produce two of them: "Sail Away" and "I Believe in You". which soon occurred, resulting in frequent collaborations over the following years. Meanwhile, the album became Ronstadt's most successful up to that time, selling 300,000 copies by the end of 1974. Asher turned out to be more collaborative, and more on the same page with her musically, than any producer she had worked with previously. Ronstadt's professional relationship with Asher allowed her to take command and effectively delegate responsibilities in the recording studio. and remained in that role through the late 1980s. Asher attributed the long-term success of his working relationship with Ronstadt to the fact that he was the first person to manage and produce her with whom there was a solely professional relationship. "It must be a lot harder to have objective conversations about someone's career when it's someone you sleep with," he said.
Vocal styles {{quote box Ronstadt captured the sounds of
country music and the rhythms of
ranchera musicwhich she likened in 1968 to
"Mexican bluegrass"and redirected them into her rock 'n' roll and some of her pop music. Many of these rhythms and sounds were part of her
Southwestern roots. Likewise, a country sound and style, a fusion of country music and rock 'n' roll called
country rock, started to exert its influence on mainstream pop music around the late 1960s, and it became an emerging movement Ronstadt helped form and commercialize. However, as early as 1970, Ronstadt was being criticized by music "purists" for her "brand of music" which crossed many genres.
Country Western Stars magazine wrote in 1970 that "Rock people thought she was too gentle, folk people thought she was too pop, and pop people didn't quite understand where she was at, but Country people really loved Linda." She never categorized herself and stuck to her genre-crossing brand of music.
Interpretive singer Ronstadt is considered an "interpreter of her times", and has earned praise for her courage to put her "stamp" on many of her songs. Ronstadt herself has indicated that some of her 1970s hits were recorded under considerable pressure to create commercially successful recordings, and that she prefers many of her songs that were non-hit album tracks. {{quote box Others have argued that Ronstadt had the same generational effect with her Great American Songbook music, exposing a whole new generation to the music of the 1920s and 1930smusic which was pushed aside because of the advent of rock 'n' roll. When interpreting, Ronstadt said she "sticks to what the music demands", in terms of lyrics. Explaining that rock and roll music is part of her culture, she says that the songs she sang after her rock and roll hits were part of her soul. "The (Mariachi music) was my father's side of the soul," she was quoted as saying in a 1998 interview she gave at her Tucson home. "My mother's side of my soul was the Nelson Riddle stuff. And I had to do them both to reestablish who I was." In the 1974 book ''Rock 'N' Roll Woman'', author Katherine Orloff writes that Ronstadt's "own musical preferences run strongly to rhythm and blues, the type of music she most frequently chooses to listen to ... (and) her goal is to ... be soulful too. With this in mind, Ronstadt fuses country and rock into a special union." Signaling her wide popularity as a concert artist, outside of the singles charts and the recording studio,
Dirty Linen magazine describes her as the "first true woman rock 'n' roll superstar ... (selling) out stadiums with a string of mega-successful albums." as the top-selling female singer of the 1970s. By the end of the decade, the singer whom the
Chicago Sun Times described as the "Dean of the 1970s school of female rock singers" "Female" was the important qualifier, according to
Time magazine, which labeled her "a rarity ... to (have survived) ... in the shark-infested deeps of rock." Although Ronstadt had been a cult favorite on the music scene for several years, 1975 was "remembered in the music biz as the year when 29-year-old Linda Ronstadt
belatedly happened." With the release of
Heart Like a Wheelnamed after one of the album's songs, written by
Anna McGarrigleRonstadt reached number 1 on the
Billboard 200 chart; it was also the first of four number 1 Country Albums, and the disc was certified double-platinum (over two million copies sold in the U.S.). In many instances, her own interpretations were more successful than the original recordings, and many times new songwriters were discovered by a larger audience as a result of her interpretation and recording. Ronstadt had major success interpreting songs from a diverse spectrum of artists.
Heart Like a Wheels first single release, "
You're No Good"a rockified version of an R&B song written by
Clint Ballard, Jr. that Ronstadt had initially resisted because
Andrew Gold's guitar tracks sounded too much like a "Beatles song" to her The album's second single release, "
When Will I Be Loved"an uptempo country-rock version of a Top 10
Everly Brothers songhit number 1 in
Cashbox and number 2 in
Billboard. for
Best Country Vocal Performance/Female for "
I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)" which was originally a 1940s hit by
Hank Williams. Ronstadt's interpretation peaked at number 2 on the country chart. The album itself was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy.
Rolling Stone put Ronstadt on its cover in March 1975. It was the first of six
Rolling Stone covers shot by photographer
Annie Leibovitz. It included her as the featured artist with a full photo layout and an article by
Ben Fong-Torres, discussing Ronstadt's many struggling years in rock n roll, as well as her home life and what it was like to be a woman on tour in a decidedly all-male environment. In September 1975, Ronstadt's album
Prisoner in Disguise was released. It quickly climbed into the Top Five on the
Billboard Album Chart and sold over a million copies. displaced it, and held the number 1 position for five consecutive weeks on the
Billboard 200 chart. It sold over 3 million copies in less than a year in the U.S. alone – a record for a female artist.
Simple Dreams spawned a string of hit singles on numerous charts. Among them were the
RIAA platinum-certified single "
Blue Bayou", a country-rock interpretation of a
Roy Orbison song; "
It's So Easy"previously sung by Buddy Holly, a cover of The Rolling Stones' "
Tumbling Dice", and "
Poor Poor Pitiful Me", a song written by
Warren Zevon, an up-and-coming songwriter of the time. The album garnered several Grammy Award nominationsincluding Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance/Female for "Blue Bayou"and won its art director,
Kosh, a Grammy Award for Best Album Cover, the first of three Grammy Awards he would win for designing Ronstadt album covers. In late 1977, Ronstadt became the first female recording artist to have two songs in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten at the same time. "Blue Bayou" was at No. 3 while "It's So Easy" was at No. 5.
Simple Dreams became one of the singer's most successful albums internationally, reaching number 1 on the Australian and Canadian Pop and Country Albums charts.
Simple Dreams also made Ronstadt the most successful international female touring artist. The same year, she completed a concert tour around Europe. As
Country Music magazine wrote in October 1978,
Simple Dreams solidified Ronstadt's role as "easily the most successful female rock and roll
and country star at this time."
Time and "rock chick" image Ronstadt said she was "artificially encouraged to kinda cop a really tough attitude (and be tough) because rock and roll is kind of tough (business)". Her 1977 appearance on the cover
Time under the banner "Torchy Rock" was also upsetting to Ronstadt, considering what the image appeared to project about the most famous woman in rock. At a time in the industry when men still told women what to sing and what to wear, Ronstadt hated the image of her that was projected to the world on that cover, and stated that this image was not her because she did not sit like that. Asher noted, "Anyone who's met Linda for 10 seconds will know that I couldn't possibly have been her
Svengali. She's an extremely determined woman, in every area. To me, she was everything that feminism's about."
Living in the USA showed the singer on roller skates with a newly short, permed hairdo on the album cover. Ronstadt continued this theme on concert tour promotional posters with photos of her on roller skates in a dramatic pose with a large American flag in the background. By this stage of her career, she was using posters to promote every album Following the success of
Living in the USA, Ronstadt conducted album promotional tours and concerts. She made a guest appearance onstage with
the Rolling Stones at the Tucson Community Center on July 21, 1978, in her hometown of Tucson, where she and Jagger sang "Tumbling Dice". On singing with Jagger, Ronstadt later said, "I loved it. I didn't have a trace of stage fright. I'm scared to death all the way through my own shows. But it was too much fun to get scared. He's so silly onstage, he knocks you over. I mean you have to be on your toes or you wind up falling on your face." By the end of 1978, Ronstadt had solidified her role as one of rock and pop's most successful solo female acts, and owing to her consistent platinum album success, and her ability as the first woman to sell out concerts in arenas and stadiums hosting tens of thousands of fans, and in the same year her albums sales were reported to be 17 milliongrossing over $60 million (equivalent to $ in ).
Us Weekly reported in 1978 that Ronstadt,
Joni Mitchell,
Stevie Nicks, and
Carly Simon had become "The Queens of Rock" She also made the cover of
Rolling Stone for a record-setting sixth time.
Mad Love entered the
Billboard Album Chart in the Top Five its first week (a record at that time) and climbed to the number 3 position. The project continued her streak of Top 10 hits with "
How Do I Make You", originally recorded by
Billy Thermal, and "
Hurt So Bad", originally a Top 10 hit for
Little Anthony & the Imperials. The album earned Ronstadt a 1980
Grammy Award nomination for
Best Rock Vocal Performance/Female (although she lost to
Pat Benatar's
Crimes of Passion album). Benatar praised Ronstadt by stating, "There are a lot of good female singers around. How could I be the best? Ronstadt is still alive!" In the summer 1980, Ronstadt began rehearsals for the first of several leads in Broadway musicals.
Joseph Papp cast her as the lead in the
New York Shakespeare Festival production of
Gilbert and Sullivan's
The Pirates of Penzance, alongside
Kevin Kline. She said singing Gilbert and Sullivan was a natural choice for her, since her grandfather Fred Ronstadt was credited with having created
Tucson's first orchestra, the
Club Filarmonico Tucsonense, and had once created an arrangement of
The Pirates of Penzance.
Newsweek was effusive in its praise: "... she has not dodged the
coloratura demands of her role (and Mabel is one of the most demanding parts in the G&S canon): from her entrance trilling 'Poor Wand'ring One,' it is clear that she is prepared to scale whatever soprano peaks stand in her way." In 1982, Ronstadt released the album
Get Closer, a primarily rock album with some country and pop music as well. It remains her only album between 1975 and 1990 not to be officially certified platinum. It peaked at number 31 on the
Billboard Album Chart. The release continued her streak of Top 40 hits with "Get Closer" and "
I Knew You When"a 1965 hit by
Billy Joe Royalwhile the
Jimmy Webb song "Easy For You To Say" was a surprise Top 10 Adult Contemporary hit in the spring of 1983. "Sometimes You Just Can't Win" was picked up by country radio, and made it to number 27 on that listing. Ronstadt also filmed several music videos for this album which became popular on the fledgling MTV cable channel. The album earned Ronstadt two Grammy Award nominations: one for Best Rock Vocal Performance/Female for the title track and another for Best Pop Vocal Performance/Female for the album. The artwork won its art director, Kosh, his second Grammy Award for
Best Album Package. Along with the release of her
Get Closer album, Ronstadt embarked on a North American tour, remaining one of the top rock-concert draws that summer and fall. On November 25, 1982, her "Happy Thanksgiving Day" concert was held at the
Reunion Arena in Dallas and broadcast live via satellite to
NBC radio stations in the United States. In 1988, Ronstadt returned to Broadway for a limited-run engagement in the musical show adaptation of her album celebrating her Mexican heritage,
Canciones De Mi PadreA Romantic Evening in Old Mexico.
Artistic aspirations Ronstadt has remarked that in the beginning of her career she "was so focused on folk, rock and country" that she "got a bit bored and started to branch out, and ... [has] been doing that ever since." By 1983, her estimated worth was over $40 million mostly from records, concerts and merchandising. In the early 1980s, Ronstadt was criticized for accepting $500,000 to perform at the South African resort
Sun City, violating
the cultural boycott imposed against South Africa because of its policy of
apartheid. At the time, she stated, "the last place for a boycott is in the arts" and "I don't like being told I can't go somewhere".
Paul Simon was criticized for including her on his 1986 album
Graceland, recorded in South Africa, but defended her: "I know that her intention was never to support the government there ... She made a mistake. She's extremely liberal in her political thinking and unquestionably antiapartheid." Ronstadt eventually tired of playing arenas. She had ceased to feel that arenas, where people milled around smoking marijuana cigarettes and drinking beer, were "appropriate places for music". She wanted "angels in the architecture"a reference to a lyric in the Paul Simon song "
You Can Call Me Al" from
Graceland. (Ronstadt sang harmony with Simon on a different
Graceland track, "
Under African Skies". The second verse's lyrics pay tribute to Ronstadt: "Take this child, Lord, from Tucson, Arizona. ..."). Ronstadt has said she wants to sing in places similar to the
theatre of ancient Greece, where the attention is focused on the stage and the performer. Ronstadt's recording output in the 1980s proved to be just as commercially and critically successful as her 1970s recordings. Between 1983 and 1990, Ronstadt scored six additional platinum albums; two are triple platinum (each with over three million U.S. copies sold); one has been certified double platinum (over two million copies sold), and one has earned additional certification as a Gold (over 500,000 U.S. copies sold) double-disc album. But the appeal of the album's music had seduced Ronstadt, as she told
DownBeat in April 1985, crediting Wexler for encouraging her. Nonetheless, Ronstadt had to convince her reluctant record company,
Elektra, to approve this type of album under her contract. Ronstadt faced considerable pressure not to record ''What's New
or record with Riddle. According to jazz historian Peter Levinson, author of the book September in the Raina Biography on Nelson Riddle'', Joe Smith, president of Elektra Records, was terrified that the Riddle album would turn off Ronstadt's rock audience. Ronstadt did not completely turn her back on her rock and roll past, however; the video for the title track featured
Danny Kortchmar as the old beau that she bumped into during a rainstorm. ''What's New'' brought Riddle to a younger audience. According to Levinson, "the younger audience hated what Riddle had done with
Frank Sinatra, which in 1983 was considered 'Vintage Pop'". Working with Ronstadt, Riddle brought his career back into focus in the last three years of his life. ''What's New'' is the first album by a rock singer to have major commercial success in rehabilitating the
Great American Songbook. Luisa Espinel, Ronstadt's aunt, was an international singer in the 1920s and 1930s. Espinel's father was Fred Ronstadt, Linda Ronstadt's grandfather, and the songs she had learned, transcribed, and published were some of the ones he had brought with him from
Sonora. Ronstadt researched and extracted from the favorites she had learned from her father Gilbert and she called her album by the same name as her aunt's booklet and as a tribute to her father and his family. Though not fully bilingual, she has a fairly good command of the Spanish language, allowing her to sing Latin American songs with little discernible U.S. accent; Ronstadt has often identified herself as Mexican-American. Her formative years were spent with her father's side of the family. In fact, in 1976, Ronstadt had collaborated with her father to write and compose a traditional Mexican folk ballad,
"Lo siento mi vida"a song that she included on
Hasten Down the Wind. Ronstadt has also credited Mexican singer
Lola Beltrán as an influence on 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 a child.
Returning to the contemporary music scene By the late 1980s, while enjoying the success of her big band jazz collaborations with Riddle and her surprise hit mariachi recordings, Ronstadt elected to return to recording mainstream pop music once again. In 1987, she made a return to the top of the
Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with "
Somewhere Out There", which peaked at number 2 in March. Ronstadt included New Orleans soul singer Aaron Neville on several of the album's songs. Ronstadt incorporated the sounds of the
Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir,
Tower of Power horns, the Skywalker Symphony, and numerous musicians. It included the duets with Aaron Neville, "
Don't Know Much" (
Billboard Hot 100 number 2 hit, Christmas 1989 In December 1990, she participated in a concert held at the
Tokyo Dome to commemorate
John Lennon's 50th birthday, and to raise awareness of environmental issues. Other participants included
Miles Davis,
Lenny Kravitz,
Hall & Oates,
Natalie Cole,
Yoko Ono, and
Sean Lennon. An album resulted, titled
Happy Birthday, John.
Return to roots music Ronstadt released the highly acclaimed
Winter Light album at the end of 1993. It included New Age arrangements such as the lead single "
Heartbeats Accelerating" as well as the self-penned title track and featured the glass harmonica. It was her first commercial failure since 1972, and peaked at number 92 in Billboard, whereas 1995's
Feels Like Home was Ronstadt's much-heralded return to country-rock and included her version of
Tom Petty's classic hit "
The Waiting". The single's rollicking, fiddle-infused flip side, "Walk On", returned Ronstadt to the Country Singles chart for the first time since 1983. An album track entitled "The Blue Train" charted 10 weeks in
Billboards Adult Contemporary Top 40. This album fared slightly better than its predecessor, reaching number 75. Both albums were later deleted from the Elektra/Asylum catalog. Ronstadt was nominated for three
Lo Nuestro Awards in 1993: Female Regional Mexican Artist of the Year, Female Tropical/Salsa Artist of the Year, and her version of the song "Perfidia" was also listed for Tropical/Salsa Song of the Year. In 1996, Ronstadt produced
Dedicated to the One I Love, an album of classic rock and roll songs reinvented as lullabies. The album reached number 78 in
Billboard and won the
Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children. In 1998, Ronstadt released
We Ran, her first album in over two years. The album harkened back to Ronstadt's country-rock and folk-rock heyday. She returned to her rock 'n' roll roots with vivid interpretations of songs by
Bruce Springsteen,
Doc Pomus,
Bob Dylan, and
John Hiatt. The recording was produced by
Glyn Johns. A commercial failure, the album stood at 57,897 copies sold at the time of its deletion in 2008. It is the poorest-selling studio album in Ronstadt's Elektra/Asylum catalog.
We Ran did not chart any singles but it was well received by critics. Despite the lack of success of
We Ran, Ronstadt kept moving towards this adult rock exploration. In the summer of 1999, she released the album
Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions, a folk-rock-oriented project with Emmylou Harris. It earned a nomination for the Grammy Award for the Best Contemporary Folk Album and made the Top 10 of
Billboards Country Albums chart. Still in print as of December 2016, it has sold 223,255 copies per
Nielsen SoundScan. Also in 1999, Ronstadt went back to her concert roots when she performed with the Eagles and Jackson Browne at
Staples Center's 1999 New Year's Eve celebration kicking off the December 31 end-of-the-millennium festivities. As Staples Center Senior Vice President and general manager Bobby Goldwater said, "It was our goal to present a spectacular event as a sendoff to the 20th century", and "Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt are three of the most popular acts of the century. Their performances will constitute a singular and historic night of entertainment for New Year's Eve in Los Angeles." In 2000, Ronstadt completed her long contractual relationship with the
Elektra/Asylum label. The fulfillment of this contract commenced with the release of
A Merry Little Christmas, her first holiday collection, which includes rare choral works, the somber Joni Mitchell song "
River", and a rare recorded duet with the late
Rosemary Clooney on Clooney's signature song, "
White Christmas". Since leaving Warner Music, Ronstadt has gone on to release one album each under
Verve and
Vanguard Records. {{quote box In 2006, recording as the ZoZo Sisters, Ronstadt teamed with her new friend, musician and musical scholar
Ann Savoy, to record
Adieu False Heart. It was an album of roots music incorporating pop, Cajun, and early-20th-century music and released on the Vanguard Records label. But
Adieu False Heart was a commercial failure, peaking at number 146 in the U.S. despite her touring for the final time that year. It was the last time Linda Ronstadt would record an album, having begun to lose her singing ability as a result of a degenerative condition later determined to be progressive supranuclear palsy, but initially diagnosed as Parkinson's disease, in December 2012.
Adieu False Heart, recorded in
Louisiana, features a cast of local musicians, including Chas Justus, Eric Frey and Kevin Wimmer of
the Red Stick Ramblers, Sam Broussard of
the Mamou Playboys,
Dirk Powell, and
Joel Savoy, as well as an array of Nashville musicians: fiddler
Stuart Duncan, mandolinist
Sam Bush, and guitarist
Bryan Sutton. The recording earned two Grammy Award nominations:
Best Traditional Folk Album and
Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. In 2007, Ronstadt contributed to the compilation album
We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Songa tribute album to jazz music's all-time most heralded artiston the track "
Miss Otis Regrets". In August 2007, Ronstadt headlined the
Newport Folk Festival, making her debut at this event, where she incorporated jazz, rock, and folk music into her repertoire. It was one of her final concerts. In 2010, Ronstadt contributed the arrangement and lead vocal to "A La Orilla de un Palmar" on
the Chieftains' studio album
San Patricio (with
Ry Cooder). This remains her most recent commercially available recording as lead vocalist.
Retirement In 2011, Ronstadt was interviewed by the
Arizona Daily Star and announced her retirement. In August 2013, she revealed to
Alanna Nash, writing for
AARP, that she had
Parkinson's disease and could "no longer sing a note." Her diagnosis was subsequently re-evaluated as
progressive supranuclear palsy.
Selected career achievements On April 10, 2014, Ronstadt was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In July 2019, Ronstadt was selected as a
Kennedy Center Honoree. As of 2019, Ronstadt had earned three number-one pop albums, 10 top-ten pop albums, and 38 charting pop albums on the
Billboard Pop Album Charts. She has 15 albums on the
Billboard Top Country Albums chart, including four that hit number one. Ronstadt's singles have earned her a number-one hit and three number-two hits on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart, with 10 top-ten pop singles and 21 reaching the Top 40. She has also scored two number-one hits on the
Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, and two number-one hits on the
Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.
Rolling Stone wrote that a whole generation "but for her, might never have heard the work of
Buddy Holly,
Chuck Berry, or
Elvis Costello." The 2012 revision kept only the compilation, but raised it to the place once occupied by
Heart Like a Wheel. Ronstadt's album sales have not been certified since 2001. At that time, Ronstadt's U.S. album sales were certified by the Recording Industry Association of America at over 30 million albums sold; however, Peter Asher, her former producer and manager, placed her total U.S. album sales at over 45 million. Her RIAA certification (audits paid for by record companies or artists for promotion) tally as of 2001 totaled 19 Gold, 14 Platinum and 7 Multi-Platinum albums. She produced
Cristal – Glass Music Through the Ages, an album of classical music using glass instruments with
Dennis James, where she sang on several of the arrangements. In 1999, Ronstadt also produced the Grammy Award-winning
Trio II. She has received a total of 27 Grammy Award nominations in various fields that include rock, country, pop and
Tropical Latin, and has won 11
Grammy Awards in the categories of Pop, Country, Tropical Latin, Musical Album for Children and Mexican-American. In 2016, Ronstadt was again honored by the
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences with the Lifetime Achievement Grammy. She was the first female solo artist to have two Top 5 singles simultaneously on
Billboard magazine's Hot 100: "Blue Bayou" and "It's So Easy". By December of that year, both "Blue Bayou" and "It's So Easy" had climbed into
Billboards Top 5 and remained there for the month's last four weeks. In 1999, Ronstadt ranked number 21 in
VH1's
100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. Three years later, she ranked number 40 in
CMT's 40 Greatest Women in Country Music. In 2023,
Rolling Stone ranked Ronstadt at No. 47 on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. == Personal life ==