Linda Ronstadt was plenty good. She had the voice of an angel and a face to match.
A brain disease took away that voice. She stopped performing in 2009, announced her retirement in 2011 and on August 23, 2013, in an interview with AARP, she revealed that she had Parkinson’s Disease.
A later diagnosis corrected the diagnosis as progressive supranuclear palsy, another degenerative brain disease. She said, in a 2019 award-winning documentary, “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice” that the only singing she can do is in her head.
Ronstadt had early success after moving to Los Angeles in the early 1960s. She had one hit with the Stone Ponys before she became a solo act.
Ronstadt was the queen of country rock in the 1970s. She wasn‘t a songwriter, but she had a gift for taking songs and making them her own. Rolling Stone magazine wrote, that if it wasn’t for her “a whole generation might never had heard the work of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry or Elvis Costello."
“Heart Like a Wheel,” her fifth album, made her a superstar in 1974. She dominated the charts through the rest of the decade; her concerts sold out; she was on magazine covers, but that wasn’t enough. She turned to opera, Broadway, country music, the Great American Songbook and Mexican music. She was successful in every genre.
Our Song of the Day, “You’re No Good,” was her only Billboard number one single. Clint Ballard Jr. wrote it, but versions by Dee Dee Warwick, Betty Everett and the British band the Swinging Blue Jeans barely dented the charts.
Ronstadt began ending her concerts with the song. She chose the song at the last minute for her “Heart Like A Wheel” album. It was the first single from the album, which also reached number one.
Song of the Day is created by Sheldon Zoldan, and produced by Pam James for WGCU. To receive the Song of the Day in your inbox every day, email shzoldan@comcast.net with the subject line ADD ME TO SOTD.
