 Linda Maria Ronstadt is an American popular music singer. She has earned 11 Grammy Awards, 3 American Music Awards, 2 Academy of Country Music Awards, an Emmy Award, and an Alma Award, and many of her albums have been certified gold, platinum or multi-platinum in the United States and internationally. She has also earned nominations for a Tony Award and a Golden Globe Award. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2014. On July 28, 2014, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts and Humanities.Some of the content of the lead section is supported by these news items Odle, she has released over 30 studio albums and 15 compilation or greatest hits albums. Ronstadt charted 38 Billboard Hot 100 singles, with 21 reaching the top 40, 10 in the top 10, 3 at number 2, and You're No Good at Number 1. This success did not translate to the UK, with only her single blew by reaching the UK top 40. Her duet with Erin Neville, Don't Know Much, peaked at number 2 in December 1989. In addition, she has charted 36 albums, 10 top 10 albums and 3 number 1 albums on the Billboard Pop album chart. Her autobiography, Simple Dreams, a Musical Memoir, was published in September 2013. It debuted in the top 10 on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Ronstadt has collaborated with artists in diverse genres, including Bette Midler, Billy Eckstein, Frank Zappa, Rosemary Clooney, Flaco Jimenez, Philip Glass, Warren Zeven, Emmy Lou Harris, Graham Parsons, Dolly Parton, Neil Young, Johnny Cash and Nelson Riddle. She has lent her voice to over 120 albums and has sold more than 100 million records, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. Christopher Loudon, of Jazz Times, wrote in 2004 that Ronstadt is blessed with arguably the most sterling set of pipes of her generation. After completing her last live concert in late 2009, Ronstadt retired in 2011. She was diagnosed as having Parkinson's disease in December 2012, which left her unable to sing. Early Life Linda Maria Ronstadt was born in 1946 in Tucson, Arizona, daughter to Gilbert Ronstadt, 1991-1995, a prosperous machinery merchant who ran the F. Ronstadt Co., and Ruth Mary, Copeman, Ronstadt, 1994-1982, a homemaker. Ronstadt was raised on the family's ranch with her siblings Peter, who served as Tucson's chief of police for 10 years, 1998-1991, Michael J., and Gretchen, Susie. The family was featured in Family Circle magazine in 1953. Linda's father came from a pioneering Arizona ranching familialand was of German, English and Mexican ancestry. The family's influence on and contributions to Arizona's history, including wagon making, commerce, pharmacies, and music, are chronicled in the library of the University of Arizona. Linda Ronstadt's great-grandfather, graduate engineer Friedrich August Ronstadt, who went by Federico Augusto Ronstadt, emigrated to the southwest, then a part of Mexico, in the 1840s from Hanover, Germany and married a Mexican citizen, eventually settling in Tucson. In 1991, the city of Tucson opened its central transit terminal on March 16 and dedicated it to Linda's grandfather, Federico José María Ronstadt, a local pioneer businessman, he was a wagon maker whose early contribution to the city's mobility included six mule-drawn streetcars delivered in 190304. Her mother Ruth Mary, of German, English, and Dutch ancestry, was raised in Flint, Michigan. She was a daughter of Lloyd Graf Kopman, a prolific inventor and holder of many patents. Kopman, 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. Career summary. Everybody has their own level of doing their music. Mine just happened to resonate over the years, in one way and another, with the significant enough number of people so that I could do it professionally quote by Linda Ronstadt. 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 Ronstadt joined forces with Bobby Kimmel and Kenny Edwards and became the lead singer of a folk rock trio, the Stone Ponies. Later, as a solo artist, she released Hans Sohn. Homegrown in 1969, which has been described as the first alternative country record by a female recording artist. Although fame alluded her during these years, Ronstadt actively toured with the doors, Neil Young, Jackson Brown and others, appeared numerous times on television shows, and began to contribute her singing to albums by other artists. 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.Referred to as the first lady of rock and the queen of rock, Ronstadt was voted the top female pop singer of the 1970s.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 went to Broadway and garnered a Tony nomination for her performance in The Pirates of Penzance, 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, and Ronstadt remained one of the music industry's best-selling acts throughout the 1980s, with multi-platinum selling albums such as Watt's New, Konsey Ones 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 Hum into Myself, until her retirement in 2011. Most of Ronstadt's albums are certified gold, platinum or multi-platinum. Having sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide 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 US history. A consummate American artist, Ronstadt 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 at the vanguard of many musical movements. Career overview 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 everything she has recorded on her own records rock and roll, jazz, rhythm and blues, gospel, opera, country, choral, and mariachi is all music she heard her family sing in their living room, or heard played on the radio, by the age of ten. 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. Early on, her singing style had been influenced by singers such as Lola Beltran and Edith Piaf, she has called their singing and rhythms more like Greek music. It's sort of like 68-time signature, very hard driving and very intense. 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.of Maria Callas, Ronstadt says, there's no one in her league. That's it. Period. I learn more, about singing rock and 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. 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 coffee houses, fraternity houses and other small venues, billing themselves as the Union City Ramblers and the three Ronstats, and they even recorded themselves at a Tucson studio under the name the New Union Ramblers.Their repertoire included the music they grew up on folk, country, bluegrass and Mexican. But increasingly, Ronstadt wanted to make a union of folk music and rock and roll and in 1964, after a semester at Arizona State University the 18-year-old decided to move to Los Angeles. The Stone Ponies 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 18th birthday decided to move there permanently to form a band with him.Kimmel had already begun CO-writing folk rock songs with guitarist-songwriter Kenny Edwards, and eventually the three of them were signed by Nick Vennett to Capitol in the summer of 1966 as the Stone Ponies. The trio released three albums in a 15-month period in 196,768, The Stone Ponies, Evergreen, Vol. 2 and Linda Ronstadt, Stone Ponies and Friends, Vol. 3. The band is best known for their hit single Different Drum, written by Michael Nesmith prior to his joining the Monkeys, which reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart as well as No. 12 in Cashbox magazine. Nearly 50 years later, the song remains one of Ronstadt's most popular recordings. In 2008 Australia's Raven Records released a compilation CD titled The Stone Ponies. The disc features all tracks from the first two Stone Ponies albums and four tracks from the third album. Solo career Still contractually obligated to Capitol Records, Ronstadt released her first solo album, Handsone. Homegrown, in 1969. It has been called the first alternative country record by a female recording artist.During this same period, she contributed to the music from Free Creek Super Session Project. Ronstadt provided the vocals for some commercials during this period, including one for Remington Electric Razors, in which a multi-tracked Ronstadt and Frank Zappa claimed that the electric razor cleans you, thrills you, may even keep you from getting busted. 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 Janice Joplin, who had worked with him on her cheap thrills album. The Silk Purse album cover showed Ronstadt in a muddy pigpen, while the back and inside cover depicted her on stage 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. Turing. In the autumn of 1975, Ronstadt performed shows with Jackson Brown, The Eagles and Toots and the Maidles. In a 1976 Rolling Stone interview with Cameron Crowe, Ronstadt explained that they haven't invented a word for that loneliness that everybody goes through on the road. The world is tearing by you, real fast, and all these people are looking at you. People see me in my girl singer suit. In 1974 she told Peter Nobler in Craw Daddy, people are always taking advantage of you, everybody that's interested in you has got an angle. Several years before Ronstadt became what author Jerry Hershey called the first arena-class rock diva, with hugely anticipated tours she began her solo career touring the North American Concert Circuit. But being on the road took its toll both emotionally and professionally. 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 Moldorfer 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.According to her, it was difficult to get a band of backing musicians because of their ego problem of being labeled side men for a female singer. Soon after she went solo in the late 1960s, one of her first backing bands was the pioneering country rock band Swampwater, famous for synthesizing Cajun and Swamprock elements into their music. Its members included Cajun Fiddler Gibb Gilbo 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 Birds. 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 featured players Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Bernie Leiden 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 self-titled third album, from which the failed single, Ronstadt's version of Brown'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. Also in 1971, Ronstadt began talking with David Jeffen about moving from capital records to Jeffen's asylum records label. Collaborations with Peter Asher The album featured Ronstadt's first country hit, Silver Threads and Golden Needles, which she had first recorded on Hands Zone. Homegrown this time hitting the country top 20. With the release of Don T Cry Now, Ronstadt took on her biggest gig to date as the opening act on Neil Young's Time Fades Away tour, playing for larger crowds than ever before. Backstage at a concert in Texas, Chris Hillman introduced her to Emmy Lou Harris, telling them, You too could be good friends, 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. Although hesitant at first to work with her because of her reputation for being a woman of strong opinions, who, knew what she wanted to do, with her career, he nonetheless agreed to become her full-time producer, 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. Asher executive produced a tribute 400 called Listen To Me, Buddy Holly, released September 6, 2011, on which Ronstadt's 1976 version of Buddy Holly's that'll be the day appears among newly recorded versions of Holly's songs by various artists. Vocal Styles Climbed to number one on both the Billboard and Cash box-pop singles charts. The album's second single release, When Will I Be Loved An Uptempo Country Rock version of a top 10 Everly Brothers song at number one in Cash box and number two in Billboard.The song was also Ronstadt's first number one country hit. The album showed a physically attractive Ronstadt on the cover but, more importantly, its critical and commercial success was due to a fine presentation of country and rock, with Hart like a wheel her first of many major commercial successes that would set her on the path to being one of the best-selling female artists of all time. Ronstadt won her first Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance Female 4 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 two on the country chart. The album itself was nominated for the album of the year Grammy. Rolling Stone magazine put Ronstadt on its cover in March 1975. It was the first of six Rolling Stone magazine 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 and 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.It became her second in a row to go platinum, a grand slam in the same year, Ronstadt would eventually become the first female artist in popular music history to have three consecutive platinum albums and would ultimately go on to have eight consecutive platinum albums, and then another six between 1983 and 1990. The disc's first single release was Love is a Rose. It was climbing the pop and country charts but Heatwave, a rock-feed version of the 1963 hit by Martha and the Vandellas, was receiving considerable airplay. Asylum polled though Love is a Rose single and issued Heatwave with Love is a Rose on the B-side. Heatwave hit the top five on Billboard's Hot 100 while Love is a Rose hit the top five on Billboard's country chart. In 1976, Ronstadt reached the top three of Billboard's album chart and won her second career Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for her third consecutive platinum album Hason Down the Wind. The album featured a sexy, revealing cover shot and showcased Ronstadt the singer-songwriter, who composed two of its songs, Try Me Again, See You Authored with Andrew Gold, and Lociento Mi Vita. It also included an interpretation of Willie Nelson's classic Crazy, which became a top ten country hit for Ronstadt in early 1977. At the end of 1977, Ronstadt surpassed the success of Heart Like a Wheel with her album Simple Dreams, which held the number one position for five consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200 chart. It sold over three one-half 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, and Poor Poor Pitiful Me, a song written by Warren Zeven, an up-and-coming songwriter of the time. The album garnered several Grammy Award nominations including 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. Simple Dreams became one of the singer's best-selling international-selling albums as well, reaching number one on the Australian and Canadian pop and country albums charts. Simple Dreams also made Ronstadt the most successful international female touring artist as well. 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. Also in 1977, she was asked by the Los Angeles Dodgers to sing the U.S. National Anthem at Game 3 of the World Series against the New York Yankees. TIME magazine and Ronstadt's rocked chick image. Ronstadt has remarked that she felt as though she was artificially encouraged to kind a cop a really tough attitude, and be tough, because rock and roll is kind of tough, business, which she felt wasn't worn quite authentically. Female rock artists like her and Janice Joplin, whom she described as lovely, shy and very literate in real life and the antithesis of the red-hot mama she was artificially encouraged to project, went through an identity crisis. By the mid-1970s, Ronstadt's image became just as famous as her music.In 1976 and 1977, she appeared on the covers of Rolling Stone and Time, respectively. The Rolling Stone cover story was accompanied by a series of photographs of Ronstadt in a skimpy red slip, taken by Annie Leibovitz. Ronstadt felt deceived by the photographer, not realizing that the photos would be so revealing. She says her manager Peter Asher kicked Leibovitz out of the house when she visited to show them the photographs prior to publication. Leibovitz had refused to let them veto any of the photos, which included one of Ronstadt's sprawled across a bed in her underpants.In a 1977 interview, Ronstadt explained, Annie Leibovitz saw that picture as an expose of my personality. She was right. But I wouldn't choose to show a picture like that to anybody who didn't know me personally, because only friends could get the other sides of me in balance. Her 1977 appearance on the cover of Time magazine 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 she noted recently how the photographer kept forcing her to wear a dress, which was an image she did not want to project.In 2004, she was interviewed for CBS This Morning 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 Svangali. She's an extremely determined woman, in every area. To me, she was everything that feminism's about. Qualities which, Asher has stated, were considered a negative, in a woman at that time, whereas in a man they were perceived as being masterful and bold. Since her solo career began, Ronstadt has fought hard to be recognized as a solo female singer in the world of rock, and her portrayal on the time cover did not appear to help the situation. In 1978, Rolling Stone magazine declared Ronstadt, by Far America's best known female rock singer. She scored a third number one album on the Billboard album chart at this point equaling the record set by Carol King in 1974 with Living in the USA. She achieved a major hit single with You Baby Baby, with her rendition hitting all four major singles charts, Pop, AC, Country, R&B. Living in the USA was the first album by any recording act in music history to ship Double Platinum, over 2 million advance copies, . the album eventually sold 3 million US copies. At the end of that year, Billboard magazine crowned Ronstadt with three number one awards for the year, Pop Female Singles Artist of the Year, Pop Female Album Artist of the Year, and Female Artist of the Year, overall. 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 Albu-M&D concert which at the time were recorded live on radio or television. Ronstadt was also featured in the 1978 film FM, where the plot involved disc jockeys attempting to broadcast a Ronstadt concert live, without a competing stations knowledge. The film also showed Ronstadt performing the songs Poor, Poor Pitiful Me, Love Me Tender, and Tumbling Dice. Ronstadt was persuaded to record Tumbling Dice after Mick Jagger came backstage when she was at a concert and said, You do too many ballads, you should do more rock and roll songs. Following the success of living in the USA, Ronstadt conducted album promotional tours and concerts. She made a guest appearance on stage 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 on stage, he knocks you over. I mean you have to be on your toes or you wind up falling on your face. Highest Paid Woman in Rock 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 ever woman to sell out concerts in arenas and stadiums hosting tens of thousands of fans Ronstadt became the highest paid woman in rock. She had six platinum certified albums, three of which were number one on the Billboard album chart, and numerous charted pop singles. In 1978 alone, she made over $12 million, equivalent to $44 million in 2016 dollars, and in the same year her album sales were reported to be $17 million grossing over $60 million, equivalent to a gross of over $220 million, in 2016 dollars. As Rolling Stone magazine dubbed her rock's Venus her record sales continued to multiply and set records themselves. By 1979, Ronstadt had collected eight gold, six platinum and four multi-platinum certifications for her albums, an unprecedented feat at the time. Her 1976 greatest hits album would sell consistently for the next 25 years and in 2001 was certified by the RIAA for seven times platinum, over 7 million US copies sold. In 1980, greatest hits, Vol. 2 was released and certified platinum. In 1979, Ronstadt went on an international tour, playing in arenas across Australia to Japan, including the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia and the Budokan in Tokyo. She also participated in a benefit concert for her friend Lowell George, held at the Forum, in Los Angeles. By the end of the decade, Ronstadt had outsold her female competition, no other female artist to date had five straight platinum LPs hastened down the wind and heart like a wheel among them. Use Weekly reported in 1978 that Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, and Carly Simon had become the queens of rock and rock is no longer exclusively male. There is a new royalty ruling today's record charts. She would go on to parley her mass commercial appeal with major success in interpreting the great American songbook made famous a generation before by Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and later the Mexican folk songs of her childhood. From rock to operetta. In 1980, Ronstadt released Mad Love, her seventh consecutive platinum selling album. It was a straightforward rock and roll album with post punk, new wave influences, including tracks by songwriters such as Elvis Costello, The Credence and musician Mark Goldenberg who played on the record himself. She also made the cover of Rolling Stone magazine 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 three position. The project continued her streak of top ten hits with How Do I Make You, originally recorded by Billy Thermal, and Hurt So Bad, originally a top ten hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials. The album earned Ronstadt a 1980 Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance Female, although she lost to Pat Beniter's Crimes of Passion album. Beniter 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 of 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 Klein. 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 filer Monaco Tuxenance, and had once created an arrangement of The Pirates of Penzance. The Pirates of Penzance opened for a limited engagement in New York City's Central Park, eventually moving its production to Broadway, where it became a hit, running from January 8, 1981, to November 28, 1982. 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 Gandas Canon from her entrance trilling Poor Wand Ring 1, it is clear that she is prepared to scale whatever soprano peaks stand in her way. Ronstadt C.O. starred with Klein and Angela Lansbury in the 1983 operetta's film version. Ronstadt received a Golden Globe nomination for the role in the film version. She garnered a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a leading actress in a musical and The Pirates of Penzance won several Tony Awards, including a Tony Award for Best Revival. As a child, Ronstadt had discovered the opera La Boheme through the silent film with Lillian Gisch and was determined to someday play the part of Mimi. When she met the opera superstar Beverly Sills, she was told, my dear, every soprano in the world wants to play Mimi. In 1984, Ronstadt was cast in the role at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre. However, the production was a critical and commercial disaster, closing after only a few nights. 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 Win a 1965 hit by Billy Joe Royal while 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 would return to Broadway for a limited-run engagement in the musical show adaptation of her album Celebrating Her Mexican Heritage, Concionesta Mi Padre a 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. 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 or reference to a lyric in the Paul Simon song You Can Call Me Al from the 1986 album 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 theater 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 3 million US copies sold, one has been certified double platinum, over 2 million copies sold, and one has earned additional certification as a gold, over 500,000 US copies sold, double disc album. By recording traditional pop, traditional country and traditional Latin roots Ronstadt resonated with a different fan base and diversified her appeal. Jazz Pop Trilogy In 1981, Ronstadt produced and recorded an album of jazz and pop standards, later marketed in bootleg form, titled Keeping Out of Mischief with the assistance of producer Jerry Wexler. However, Ronstadt's displeasure with the final result led her, with regrets, to scrap the project. Doing that killed me, she said in a Time magazine interview. But the appeal of the album's music had seduced Ronstadt, as she told Downbeat Magazine in April 1985, crediting Wexler for encouraging her. Nonetheless, Ronstadt had to somehow convince her reluctant record company, Elektra Records, to green light this type of album under her contract. By 1983, Ronstadt had enlisted the help of 62-year-old conductor and master of jazz traditional pop orchestration Nelson Riddle. The two embarked on an unorthodox and original approach to rehabilitating the great American songbook, recording a trilogy of jazz traditional pop albums, Watts New, 1983 US 3.7 million as of 2010, Lush Life, 1984 US 1.7 million as of 2010, and for sentimental reasons, 1986 US 1.3 million as of 2010. The three albums have had a combined sales total of nearly 7 million copies in the US alone. The album design for Watts New by designer Kosh was unlike any of her previous disc covers. It showed Ronstadt in a vintage dress lying on shimmering satin sheets with a Walkman headset. At the time, Ronstadt received some chiding for both the album cover and her venture into what was then considered elevator music by Cinex, but remained determined to record with Riddle, and Watts New became a hit. The album was released in September 1983 and spent 81 weeks on the Billboard album chart and held the number three position for a month and a half, held out of the top spot by Michael Jackson's thriller and Lionel Richie's Canty Slowdown, and the RIAA certified at Triple Platinum, over 3 million copies sold in the US alone. The album earned Ronstadt another Grammy nomination for best female pop vocal performance, and critical raves, with Time magazine calling it one of the gutsyest, most unorthodox and unexpected albums of the year. Ronstadt faced considerable pressure not to record Watts 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 Electra 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 bow that she bumped into during a rainstorm. Watts 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.Steven Holden of The New York Times wrote, Watts New isn't the first album by a rock singer to pay tribute to the golden age of the pop, but is, the best and most serious attempt to rehabilitate an idea of pop that Beatlemania and the mass marketing of rock LPS for teenagers undid in the mid-60s. In the decade prior to Beatlemania, most of the great band singers and crooners of the 40s and 50s codified a half-century of American pop standards on dozens of albums, many of them now long out of print. Watts New is the first album by a rock singer to have major commercial success in rehabilitating the great American songbook. In 1984, Ronstadt and Riddle performed these songs live, in concert halls throughout Australia, Japan and the United States, including multi-night performances at Historic Venues Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, and Pine Knob. In 2004, Ronstadt released Hum into Myself, her album for Verve Records. It was her first foray into traditional jazz since her sessions with Jerry Wexler and her records with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, but this time with an intimate jazz combo. The album was a quiet affair for Ronstadt, giving few interviews and making only one television performance as promotion. It reached number two on Billboard's top jazz albums chart but peaked at number 166 on the main Billboard album chart. Not having the mass distribution that Warner Music Group gave her, Hum into Myself had sold over 75,000 copies in the U.S. as of 2010. It also achieved some critical acclaim from the jazz connoisseur. Trio Recordings In 1978, Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, and Emmy Lou Harris, Friends and admirers of one another's work, Ronstadt had included a cover of Parton's I Will Always Love You on Prisoner in Disguise, attempted to collaborate on a trio album. Unfortunately, the attempt did not pan out. Ronstadt later remarked that not too many people were in control at the time and everyone was too involved with their own careers. Though the efforts to complete the album were abandoned, a number of the recordings were included on the singer's respective solo recordings over the next few years. This concept album was put on the back burner for almost ten years. In January 1986, the three eventually did make their way into the recording studio, where they spent the next several months working. The result, Trio, which they had conceived ten years earlier, was released in March 1987. It was a considerable hit, holding the number one position on Billboard's country albums chart for five weeks running and hitting the top ten on the pop side also. Selling over three million copies in the U.S. and winning the Magrame Award for Best Country Performance by a duo or group with vocal, it produced four top ten country singles including to know him is to love him which hit number one. The album was also a nominee for overall album of the year, in the company of Michael Jackson, U2, Prince, and Whitney Houston. In 1994, the three performers recorded a follow-up to Trio. As was the case with their aborted 1978 effort, conflicting schedules and competing priorities delayed the album's release indefinitely. Ronstat, who had already paid for studio time and owed her record company a finished album removed Parton's individual tracks at Parton's request, kept Harris's vocals, and produced a number of the recordings, which she subsequently released on her 1995 return to country rock, the album feels like home. However, in 1999, Ronstat, Parton, and Harris agreed to release the Trio 2 album, as was originally recorded in 1994. It included an ethereal cover of Neil Young's After the Gold Rush which became a popular music video. The effort was certified gold, over 500,000 copies sold, and won the Magrame Award for Best Country Collaboration with vocals for the track. Ronstat Cio produced the album with George Masenberg and the three ladies also received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Country Album. Conciones Songs of the Ronstat Family At the end of 1987, Ronstat released Conciones de Mi Padre, an album of traditional Mexican folk songs, or what she has described as world-class songs. Keeping with the Ronstat history theme, her cover art was dramatic, bold and colorful, it shows Ronstat in full Mexican regalia. Her musical arranger was Mariachi musician Ruben Fuentes. These Conciones were a big part of Ronstat's family tradition and musical roots. For example, the history of this album goes back half a century. In January 1946, the University of Arizona published a booklet by Luisa Espinel entitled Conciones de Mi Padre. Luisa Espinel, Ronstat's aunt, was herself an international singer in the 1920s and 1930s. Espinel's father was Fred Ronstat, Linda's grandfather and the songs she had learned, transcribed, and published were some of the ones he had brought with him from Sonora. Ronstat 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, Ronstat has often identified herself as Mexican American. Her formative years were spent with her father's side of the family. In fact, in 1976, Ronstat had collaborated with her father to write and compose a traditional Mexican folk ballad, Lo Ciento Mi Vida – a song that she included in her Grammy Award-winning album Hacen Down the Wind. Also, Ronstat has credited Mexican singer Lola Beltran as an influence in her own singing style, and she recalls how a frequent guest to the Ronstat home, Eduardo Lalo Guerrero, father of Chicano music, would often serenade her as a child. This album won Ronstat a Grammy Award for Best Mexican American Performance. The real achievement, however, is the disc's RIAA double platinum, over two million copies sold in the U.S., certification, making it the biggest selling non-English language album in U.S. music history. Another achievement is that the album and later theatrical stage show, served as a benchmark of Latin cultural renaissance in North America. Ronstat produced and performed a theatrical stage show in concert halls across the U.S. and Latin America to both Hispanic and non-Hispanic audiences, including on Broadway. She called the stage show by the same name Concio Nesta Mi Padre. These performances were released on DVD Ronstat elected to return to the Broadway stage, four years after she performed in La Bohemia, for a limited-run engagement. PBS's Great Performances aired the stage show during its annual fund drives and the show was a hit with audiences, earning Ronstat a Primetime Emmy Award for individual performance in a variety or music program. Ronstat later recorded two additional discs of Latin music in the early 1990s, their promotion, like most of her albums in the 1990s, was a quieter affair, where she appeared to do the Ibbair minimum to promote them. They were not nearly as successful as Concio Nesta Mi Padre, but were critically acclaimed in some circles. In 1991, she released Moss Concio Ness, a follow-up to the first Concio Ness. For this effort she won a Grammy Award for Best Mexican-Mexican American Album. The following year, she stepped outside of the Mariachi genre and decided to record well-known Afro-Cuban songs. This disc was titled Frenacy. Like her two previous Latin recordings ventures, this third Latin album won Ronstat another Grammy Award, this time the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album. In 1991, Ronstat acted in the lead role of Archangel San Miguel in La Pastorla, or A Shepherd's Tale, a musical filmed at San Juan Bautista. It was written and directed by Luis Valdez. The production was part of the PBS Great Performances series. 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, Ronstat 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 two in March.featured in the animated film An American Tale, the sentimental duet with James Ingram was nominated for several Grammy Awards, ultimately winning the Grammy Award for Song of the Year. The song also received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and achieved high sales, earning a million-selling gold single in the U.S. Point 1 of the last 45s ever to do so. It was also accompanied by a popular music video. On the heels of this success, Steven Spielberg asked Ronstat to record the theme song for the animated sequel titled An American Tale, Feeble Goes West, which was titled Dreams to Dream. Although Dreams to Dream failed to achieve the success of Somewhere Out There, the song did give Ronstat an adult contemporary hit in 1991. In 1989, Ronstat released a mainstream pop album and several popular singles. This effort, titled Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind, became one of the singer's most successful albums in terms of production, arrangements, chart sales and critical acclaim. It became Ronstat's 10th top 10 album on the Billboard chart, reaching number 7 and being certified triple platinum, over 3 million copies sold in the U.S. The album also garnered critical acclaim, receiving numerous Grammy Award nominations and being praised by Amazon.com as an album that defines virtually everything that is right about adult contemporary pop. Ronstat featured New Orleans soul singer Aaron Neville on several of the album's songs. Ronstat incorporated the sounds of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Tower of Power Horns, The Skywalker Symphony, and numerous musicians. It had the duets with Aaron Neville, Don't Know Much, Billboard Hot 100 No. 2 hit, Christmas 1989 and All My Life, Billboard Hot 100 No. 11 hit, both of which were long-running No. 1 adult contemporary hits. The duets earned several Grammy Award nominations. The duo won both the 1989 and 1990 Best Pop Vocal Performance by a duo or group with vocal awards. Ronstat's last known live Grammy Award appearance was in 1990 when she and Neville performed Don't Know Much together on the telecast, whenever I sing with a different artist, I can get things out of my voice that I can't do by myself, Ronstat reflected in 2007. I can do things with Aaron that I can't do alone. 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 and Oates, Natalie Cole, Yoko Ono, and Sean Lennon. An album resulted, titled Happy Birthday, John. A Return to Roots Music Continuing with her crafted approach to more mainstream-oriented material, Ronstat released the highly acclaimed Winter Light album at the end of 1993. It includes new age arrangements such as the lead single Heartbeats Accelerating as well as the self-penned title track and features the unique glass harmonica instrument. It was her first commercial failure since 1972, and peaked at number 92 in Billboard, whereas 1995's Feels Like Home was Ronstat'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 flipside, Walk On!, returned Ronstat to the country singles chart for the first time since 1983. An album track entitled The Blue Train charted 10 weeks in Billboard's Adult Contemporary Top 40. This album fared slightly better than its predecessor, reaching number 75. Both albums were later deleted from the Electra Asylum catalog. Ronstat was nominated for three Lone Wastro 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, Ronstat 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, Ronstat released We Ran!, her first album in over two years. The album harkened back to Ronstat's country rock and folk rock heyday. She returned to her rock and roll roots with vivid interpretations of songs by Bruce Springsteen, Doc Pomas, Bob Dylan and John Hyatt. The recording was produced by Glenn 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 Ronstat's Electra Asylum catalog. We Ran! did not chart any singles but it was well received by critics. Despite the lack of success of We Ran!, Ronstat 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 Emmy Lou Harris. It earned a nomination for the Grammy Award for the Best Contemporary Folk Album, and made the top 10 of Billboard's country albums chart. Still in print as of December, 2016, it has sold 223,255 copies per Nielsen sound scan. Also in 1999, Ronstat went back to her concert roots, when she performed with the Eagles and Jackson Brown at Staples Center's 1999 New Year's Eve celebration kicking off the December 31st end of the millennium festivities. As Staples Center's senior vice president and general manager Bobby Goldwater said, �It was our goal to present a spectacular event as a send-off to the 20th century, and Eagles, Jackson Brown and Linda Ronstat 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, Ronstat completed her long contractual relationship with the Electra 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, Ronstat has gone on to release one album each under Verve and Vanguard Records. In 2006, recording as the Zozo Sisters, Ronstat teamed with her new friend, musician and musical scholar Anne Savoy, to record a duet 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 a duet 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 Ronstat would record an album, having begun to lose her singing ability as the result of Parkinson's disease, diagnosed in December 2012. A duet False Heart, recorded in Louisiana, features a cast of local musicians, including Chaz Justice, Eric Frey and Kevin Wimmer of the Red Stick Ramblers, Sam Broussard of the Mamoo Playboys, Dirk Powell and Joel Savoy, as well as an array of Nashville musicians, Fiddler Stuart Duncan, mandolinist Sam Bush, and guitarist Brian Sutton. The recording earned two Grammy Award nominations, Best Traditional Folk Album and Best Engineered Album, non-classical. In 2007, Ronstat could be heard on the compilation album We All Love Ella, celebrating the first lady of song A tribute album to jazz music's all-time most heralded artist on the track Miss Otis Regrets. In the summer of 2007, Ronstat 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, Ronstat contributed the arrangement and lead vocal to a La Orilla de Un Palma on the Chieftain's studio album San Patricio, with Recouter. This remains her most recent commercially available recording as lead vocalist. Retirement In 2011, Ronstat was interviewed by the Arizona Daily Star and announced her retirement. In August 2013, she revealed to AARP that she has Parkinson's disease, and can no longer sing a note. Personal life Beginning in the mid-1970s, Ronstat's private life became increasingly public. It was fueled by a relationship with then-governor of California Jerry Brown, a Democratic presidential candidate. They shared a Newsweek magazine cover in April 1979. Use Weekly magazine put them on its cover. Ronstat and Brown took a trip to Africa which became fodder for the international press, and People magazine put them on its cover. In 1983 Linda Ronstat dated comedian Jim Carrey for eight months. In the mid-1980s, Ronstat was engaged to Star Wars director George Lucas. In the early 1980s, Ronstat was criticized by music critics for playing concerts in South Africa under apartheid. She was listed by the UN as supporting apartheid by performing there. 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.� In December 1990, she adopted an infant daughter, Mary Clementine. In 1994, she adopted a baby boy, Carlos Ronstat. Ronstat has never married. Speaking of finding an acceptable mate, in 1974 she told Peter Nobler in Craw Daddy, �He�s real kind but isn�t inspired musically, and then you meet somebody else that�s just so inspired musically that he just takes your breath away, but he�s such a moron, such a maniac that you can�t get along with him.� And then after that it�s the problem of finding someone that can stand you. After living in Los Angeles for 30 years, Ronstat moved to San Francisco because she said she never felt at home in Southern California. Los Angeles became too enclosing an environment, she says. �I couldn�t breathe the air, and I didn�t want to drive on the freeways to get to the studio. I also didn�t want to embrace the values that have been so completely embraced by that city. Are you glamorous? Are you rich? Are you important? Do you have clout? It�s just not me, and it never was me.� In 1997, Ronstat sold her home in San Francisco and moved back to her hometown of Tucson, Arizona, to raise her two children.In more recent years, Ronstat moved back to San Francisco while continuing to maintain her home in Tucson. In 2009, in honor of Ronstat, the Martin Guitar Company made a 0042 model Linda Ronstat Limited Edition acoustic guitar. Ronstat appointed the Land Institute as recipient of all proceeds from her signature guitar. In the summer of 2011, Simon and Schuster announced their publishing of Ronstat�s autobiography. Simple Dreams, A Musical Memoir, and the Spanish version Sueno Sencillo�s Memoria�s Musicals was released on September 17, 2013. In August 2013, Ronstat revealed she has Parkinson�s disease, leaving her unable to sing due to loss of muscle control, which is common to Parkinson�s patients. She was diagnosed eight months prior to the announcement and had initially attributed the symptoms she had been experiencing to the after-effects of shoulder surgery and a tick bite. Ronstat self-identifies as a spiritual atheist. Political Activism Ronstat�s politics received criticism and praise during and after her July 17, 2004, performance at the Aladdin Theater for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas. Toward the end of the show, as she had done across the country, Ronstat spoke to the audience, praising Fahrenheit 9-11 Michael Moore�s documentary film about the Iraq War, she dedicated the song Desperado to Moore. Accounts say the crowd�s initial reaction was mixed, with half the crowd heartily applauding her praise for Moore, and, the other half booing. Following the concert, news accounts reported that Ronstat was evicted from the hotel premises. Ronstat�s comments, as well as the reactions of some audience members and the hotel, became a topic of discussion nationwide. Aladdin Casino President Bill Timmons and Michael Moore each made public statements on the controversy. The incident prompted international headlines and debate on an entertainer�s right to express a political opinion from the stage, and made the editorial section of The New York Times. Following the incident, many friends of Ronstat�s, including the Eagles, immediately canceled their engagements at the Aladdin.Ronstat also received telegrams of support from her rock and roll friends around the world, such as the Rolling Stones, the Eagles and Elton John. Amid reports of mixed public response, Ronstat continued in her praise of Moore and his film throughout her 2004 and 2006 summer concerts across North America. At a 2006 concert in Canada, Ronstat told the Calgary Sun that she was embarrassed George Bush, was, from the United States. He�s an idiot. He�s enormously incompetent on both the domestic and international scenes. Now the fact that we were lied to about the reasons for entering into war against Iraq and thousands of people have died � it�s just as immoral as racism. Her remarks drew international headlines. In an August 14, 2007, interview, she commented on all her well-publicized, outspoken views, in particular the Aladdin incident, by noting, �If I had it to do over I would be much more gracious to everyone, you can be as outspoken as you want if you are very, very respectful. Show some grace. In August 2009, Ronstat, in a well-publicized interview to Plain Tout Inc. titled Linda Ronstat�s Gay Mission, championed gay rights and same-sex marriage and stated that homophobia is anti-family values. Period, end of story. On January 16, 2010, Ronstat converged with thousands of other activists in a national day of action. Ronstat stated that her dog in the fight as a native Arizonan and coming from a law enforcement family was the treatment of illegal aliens and Arizona�s enforcement of its illegal immigrant law, especially Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio�s immigration efforts. On April 29, 2010, Ronstat began a campaign, including joining a lawsuit, against Arizona�s new illegal immigration law SB 1070 calling it �a devastating blow to law enforcement, the police don�t protect us in a democracy with brute force, something she said she learned from her brother, Peter, who was chief of police in Tucson. Ronstat has also been outspoken on environmental and community issues. She is a major supporter and admirer of sustainable agriculture pioneer Wes Jackson, saying in 2000 that the work he�s doing right now is the most important work there is in the United States, and dedicating the rock anthem Desperado to him at an August 2007 concert in Kansas City, Kansas. In 2007, Ronstat resided in San Francisco while also maintaining her home in Tucson. That same year, she drew criticism and praise from Tuxanans for commenting that the local city council�s failings, developers strip-mall mentality, greed and growing dust problem had rendered the city unrecognizable and poorly developed. National Arts Advocate In 2008, Ronstat was appointed artistic director of the San Jose Mariachi and Mexican Heritage Festival. On March 31, 2009, in testimony that the Los Angeles Times viewed as remarkable, Ronstat spoke to the United States Congress House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, attempting to convince lawmakers to budget $200 million in the 2010 fiscal year for the national endowment of the arts. Ronstat has also been honored for her contribution to the American arts. On September 23, 2007, Ronstat was inducted into the Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame, along with Stevie Nicks, Buck Owens, and filmmaker Steven Spielberg. On August 17, 2008, Ronstat received a tribute by various artists including Bay Bay Winans and Winona Judd, when she was honored with the Trailblazer Award, presented to her by Placido Domingo at the 2008 Alma Awards, a ceremony later televised in the U.S. on ABC. In May 2009, Ronstat received an honorary doctorate of music degree from the Berkeley College of Music for her achievements and influence in music, and her contributions to American and international culture. Mix Magazine stated that Linda Ronstat, has, left her mark on more than the record business, her devotion to the craft of singing influenced many audio professionals. And is, intensely knowledgeable about the mechanics of singing and the cultural contexts of every genre she passes. In 2004, Ronstat wrote the foreword to the book The NPR Curious Listeners' Guide to American Folk Music, and in 2005, she wrote the introduction to the book Classic Farrington Guitars, about guitar maker and Luthier Danny Farrington and the custom guitars that he created for Ronstat and other musicians such as Elvis Costello, Rick Hooter, and Kurt Cobain.