Linda Ronstadt – Live at Berkeley Community Theater – July 18, 1974 – KSAN-FM
Landing on Tuesday morning with the inimitable Linda Ronstadt, recorded live at Berkeley Community Theater on July 18th 1974.
Always one of the favorites and the personification of the laid-back California sound which seemed to be so prevalent in the early 1970s, particularly in America, especially in Southern California.
Establishing her professional career in the mid-1960s at the forefront of California’s emerging folk rock and country rock movements – genres which defined post-1960s rock music – Linda Ronstadt joined forces with Bobby Kimmel and Kenny Edwards and became the lead singer of a folk-rock trio, the Stone Poneys. Later, as a solo artist, she released Hand Sown … Home Grown in 1969, which has been described as the first alternative country record by a female recording artist. Although fame eluded her during these years, Ronstadt actively toured with the Doors, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, and others, appeared numerous times on television shows, and began to contribute her singing to albums by other artists.
Linda 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. An infrequent songwriter, Ronstadt co-composed only three songs over her long career.
Ronstadt’s natural vocal range spans several octaves from contralto to soprano, and occasionally she will showcase this entire range within a single work. Ronstadt was the first female artist in popular music history to accumulate four consecutive platinum albums (fourteen certified million selling, to date). As for the singles, Rolling Stone pointed out that a whole generation, “but for her, might never have heard the work of artists such as Buddy Holly, Elvis Costello, and Chuck Berry.”
If you’ve come to her music late, here’s a good place to start. If you need a reminder of the tremendous and special talent Linda Ronstadt has been all about, crank it up, relax and give a listen.
