Linda Ronstadt

Getting back to this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, I turn to Linda Ronstadt, who was the most successful female vocalist of the 1970s. It seems odd that she hasn't been elected before this, considering she has charted 38 singes in the top 100, 21 in the top 40, ten top 10 albums and three at number one.

I think the delay was due to the fact that Ronstadt was something of a throwback. By the time she hit it big, about 1975, the singer-songwriter era had completely taken hold. Before the rock era, and even into the early days, songs were written by songwriters and sung by singers, and rarely did the twain meet. Ronstadt did not write many songs. On the disc I've been listening to, her first two volumes of greatest hits, she didn't write one song. She was a vocal interpreter, and it's no surprise that she would later branch out with an album of American standards. My aged great-aunt, who wouldn't know a rock star from a barracuda, even listened to that album.

So Ronstadt was essentially a cover artist, singing songs first done by a whole range of performers, including Buddy Holly, the Eagles, Roy Orbison, The Everly Brothers, the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Martha and the Vandellas, and Warren Zevon. But she wasn't just a very good karaoke singer. She put her stamp on the songs, and in may cases made the songs her own. I think especially of the Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved," or Orbison's "Blue Bayou." I had to stop and think who first did those songs, because Ronstadt's versions have surpassed the originals.

Ronstadt, in addition to standards, later did Mexican Mariachi music, in tribute to her heritage. She also starred on Broadway and in film in The Pirates of Penzance. Her voice was incredibly flexible, at home in belting out rockers like "Tumbling Dice" to soft ballads like "Desperado." She could hit the high notes and growl like a tigress.

I must add, perhaps strangely, that she was incredibly good at enunciation, another throwback to the days of the crooners and chanteuses. I could understand every word she sang, a rarity in rock. Consider her first hit, "Different Drum" (written by a pre-Monkee Michael Nesmith) recorded when she was with the Stone Poneys. She wraps her voice around the words with such precision and delicacy it's  a pleasure, such as with the line, "We'll both live a lot longer, if you live without me." The -er in longer would be dropped by most singers, but she lowers her voice and captures it, giving it a smidgen of humor.

I also love her vocal on Zevon's "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," the way she hits the consonants in "pitiful" and how she gives a country inflection to the rhyming words "gender" and "blender." But my favorite vocal on the disc is the heart-rending "Long, Long Time." This is the kind of song you listen to when you're heartbroken, although it will only make you more depressed.

Ronstadt, sadly, has Parkinson's disease and can no longer sing, but I'm sure they'll be others to step up and belt out her hits when she's inducted. It's an honor long overdo.