Linda Ronstadt fought & won battle to release Mexican songs

[Holly]

How Linda Ronstadt fought — and won — a battle to release the Mexican 'songs of her father'

www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/music/2022/10/11/linda-ronstadt-canciones-de-mi-padre-album/8179675001/

Hopefully there is no pay wall. Sometimes clearing cookies may or may not work.  Same with trackers which is why I don't like officially joining forums and such.  My computer is old and slow already. Hope that is ok.

How Linda Ronstadt fought — and won — a battle to release the Mexican 'songs of her father'

[rick]

I tried accessing that link on my iPhone and it made my iPhone freak out.
Then I tried several ways on my desktop computer and couldn’t access it.

[MokyWI]

Couldn’t read it myself. Not without subscription.

[RobGNYC]

I was able to open it. I’ll paste the text if it lets me in again.

[Holly]

How Linda Ronstadt fought — and won — a battle to release the Mexican 'songs of her father'

Recording an album of Mexican folk songs in Spanish was something Linda Ronstadt dreamed of doing from the time she first left home in Tucson for Los Angeles at 18.



It just took some time to get to where she had the clout she needed in the industry to make it happen.



After breaking through with "Different Drum" in 1967, Ronstadt became one of the most successful pop stars of her generation, sending eight songs to the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, from 1974's "You're No Good" to 1980's "Hurt So Bad."



Along the way, she left Capitol Records to work with Elektra/Asylum.



In 1980, Ronstadt proved that she could go beyond her comfort zone of country, pop and folk-rock with a Tony-nominated role on Broadway in "The Pirates of Penzance."



By that point, her sales were undeniable.



And yet, the head of Elektra/Asylum tried to talk her out of doing 1983's "What's New," the first of three Ronstadt releases saluting the Great American Songbook with conductor Nelson Riddle.



"What's New" went triple-platinum. The other two went platinum.



Riding that wave, she pitched an album of Mexican folk songs sung in Spanish at a time when Asylum execs were probably hoping for another Buddy Holly cover.

Ronstadt's longtime manager John Boylan remembers their reaction well. "They said, 'OK, you got away with it once. Now what are you trying here? You're singing in a foreign language? What?!'"



'Different Drum.' How a pop song by one of the Monkees made Linda Ronstadt a star



Linda Ronstadt told her label: 'You owe me this'


But Ronstadt held her ground.



"Canciones de Mi Padre" was released in 1987, with Mariachi Vargas, Mariachi Los Camperos and Mariachi Los Galleros de Pedro Rey helping the star bring her vision to life with the authenticity required.


"The label didn't want it," Ronstadt tells The Arizona Republic. "But to their credit, they stepped up to promote it once it started doing well on its own."


She didn't think of it in terms of a hit record.


"I just thought of it as the record I wanted to make," she says.


"And I had made a lot of hit records for the company. So I said, 'You owe me this.' I didn't think about things like touring or what will we do to promote the record? I just wanted to get the music right and get the show right."


"Canciones de Mi Padre" didn't chart as high as some of Ronstadt's bigger pop releases. But it did become the biggest-selling non-English language album in U.S. history, going double platinum and earning a Grammy for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album.


'My Sonoran Desert': Linda Ronstadt on how Arizona borderlands culture shaped her


The Sonoran roots of 'Canciones'


The album's title means "Songs of My Father."


Gilbert Ronstadt was of Mexican descent and had what his daughter recalls as a beautiful voice.

"Very soulful," she says.


The singer has fond memories of her father serenading her for her third birthday with Lalo Guerrero, a family friend from Tucson often called the Father of Chicano Music.


Years before she convinced her label to sign off on "Canciones," Ronstadt recorded a mournful Spanish ballad she and former bandmate Kenny Edwards co-wrote, "Lo Siento Mi Vida."


"It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to call him and say 'Help us write these lyrics in Spanish,'" Ronstadt says.


How did he feel when the song was included on 1976's "Hasten Down the Wind," a platinum album.

"He was delighted," she says. "He got paid."


'Simple Dreams': Linda Ronstadt on her lifetime love affair with music


Beautiful Aunt Luisa's 'Canciones'


Another family member who shaped the recording of "Canciones" was her Aunt Luisa, who performed under the name Luisa Espinel and gave up a promising opera career to study the regional folk songs and dances of Spain.


"She was beautiful," Ronstadt says.


"And she was a scholar. She also collected music from northern Mexico and used both in her show. She was very well-reviewed."


The New York Times reported on a 1927 performance at the Edith Totten Theatre with "Señorita Espinel can congratulate herself on a genuine success."


She also played Paris and all over Europe.


"Then she came back and started setting her own roots," Ronstadt says.


In 1946, her aunt published a book called "Canciones de Mi Padre: Spanish Folk Songs from Southern Arizona."


That's where she got the title and the concept for her album and a second Spanish-language album she recorded and released in 1991, "Mas Canciones."


Playlist:Linda Ronstadt's 25 greatest songs of all time, ranked


What it was like taking 'Canciones de Mi Padre' on tour


In her 2022 memoir, "Feels Like Home," Ronstadt writes of performing those songs in traditional Mexican dress on tour: "It was a wonderful experience. Aunt Luisa beat me to it by about 50 years."


The tour did well, despite not selling many tickets in advance to opening night in San Antonio.


"Mexican audiences are walk-up audiences, apparently," Ronstadt says.


"I was using the same promoter I used for rock 'n' roll. And he was flipping out. But when we got out on stage, the place was just packed to the rafters with three generations of families and they all knew the songs."


Bringing generations together with song


Old songs have a habit of sticking around in Ronstadt's family. She recalls a recent family gathering where five generations of Ronstadt starting singing — the sort of thing that's bound to happen when they get together.


"And we were still singing the same songs," Ronstadt says with a laugh. "We should get some new material. But we all separately found our way to that music."


She and her relatives have always sung together.


"It used to be me, my older sister, my brother Peter and then my younger brother Mike came along but he was seven years younger than I am, so that made him 14 years younger than my sister," Ronstadt says.


"But he found his own groove. They say blood on blood sounds good. If you sing with somebody and you're genetically connected, it sounds better."


'I had loved the songs since I was little'


For Ronstadt, recording two albums of songs she had learned from her father was its own reward.


"I didn't think is was important, except I wanted to sing the songs," she says.


"That's what was important to me. I wasn't trying to make a social statement. I had loved the songs since I was little and always wanted to sing them."


As it turned out, Ronstadt says, they're really hard to sing.


"I had to some woodshedding," she says. "But the guys in the band, the mariachi, helped me. They were really cool about it. They could have been like, 'Who's she think she is?' But they treated me like a lady."



Why Linda Ronstadt prefers 'Mas Canciones'


As hard as Ronstadt fought to bring these albums to fruition, she's not one to shower her own work with words of praise.

"I hate all my records," she says.


"But the second Mexican record, 'Mas Canciones,' is much better than the first one. I had it onstage and had gotten much freer with the phrasing and stuff like that. I really understood the rhythms."

As to why she hates her records, Ronstadt says, "I always think 'Why did I sing that' or I 'shouldn't have done that.' I listen with a very critical ear. I know what I'm doing right. I made some records that were good. They weren't usually the ones with hits on them."


Asked if she's glad she had those hits, she laughs. "Of course. I like to eat."


Reach the reporter at [e-mail] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @edmasley.

[eddiejinnj]

Glad Linda plugged "Mas Canciones". It should, imo, be as big as CDMP. eddiejinfl

[PoP80]

It's safe to say that Linda had more "hits than misses" in her recording career. At least, she now acknowledges that some of them were good. She's becoming a bit kinder to herself these days, which is heartening.

[eddiejinnj]

I think she seems to like some of her 90's output and in Linda's case, 90's sales were less than the previous 2 decades. eddiejinfl

[erik]

Quote by eddiejinnj:

I think she seems to like some of her 90's output and in Linda's case, 90's sales were less than the previous 2 decades. eddiejinfl

Unfortunately, they were indeed less than in the previous decades--by a very wide margin.

[fabtastique]

I do wish Mas Canciones and in particular Frenesi got a little more love ... I'm glad that Linda is giving Mas Canciones a mention though

[erik]

Quote by fabtastique:

I do wish Mas Canciones and in particular Frenesi got a little more love ... I'm glad that Linda is giving Mas Canciones a mention though

It's instructive to remember that the folks at Asylum were extremely nervous about Linda even recording and wanting to release Canciones De Mi Padre in the first place, especially at that time. The only previous album close to being an example of what Linda was trying to do was Joan Baez's 1974 album Gracias A La Vida, and that didn't sell very well. Canciones was also an expensive album to do; and unless it was able to pull in more than just a Latino audience, it was going to flop, and certainly imperil, if not outright destroy, Linda's career, Rightly or wrongly, that was the fear of the label; and however much she may have fought and won her battle to release that album in the first place, even Linda has acknowledged that they showed courage in going along with her instincts, which tells me that deep down even she had some doubts.

That the other two didn't do as well was, however, something that was kind of predictable; indeed, from what I've read, a planned tour with the Ray Santos orchestra for Frenesi in late 1992 was nixed because that album, for lack of a better term, bombed commercially. One hates to say this, but, as the great Yogi Berra is reported to have said, "If they don't want to come, you can't stop 'em."

[Partridge]

I don't recall any advance notice of Mas Canciones. I just went into Turtle Records one day and there it was. It had the name Linda Ronstadt on it so of course I bought one.

I found this April 1992 issue of Stereo Review as I was going through the library. It has a review of Mas Canciones.

[erik]

Not exactly a "ringing" endorsement of Mas Canciones from Alannah Nash--but the one she gave for the first one wasn't exactly all that positive either. Still, she and Linda did become friends, so I guess "to each her own".

[eddiejinnj]

Maybe Linda didn't remember she reviewed those album or even knew. Maybe she just agreed with Alannah's opinions since she is relentlessly self-deprecating. Who knows? All I know, is that "El Crucifijo de Piedra" is one of the most remarkable recording I have ever heard. eddiejinnj

[Partridge]

I had forgotten about this review until I uncovered it as I was going through my stash. But I did remember the phrase "Get a grip girl there's a bunch of horny senors out there" although it made no sense to me then or now.

[MokyWI]

Jul 1, 2023 15:56:15 GMT -5 Partridge said:

I don't recall any advance notice of Mas Canciones. I just went into Turtle Records one day and there it was. It had the name Linda Ronstadt on it so of course I bought one.

I found this April 1992 issue of Stereo Review as I was going through the library. It has a review of Mas Canciones.

Same here Tony. I was driving back into Boston from being up in Maine and pulled into a record store off route 1 and walked in and there it was. Same thing happened driving back from Maine, stopped into same record store not knowing it had been released, and there was Frenesi! I probably was in that record store one other time and that was late summer 1993 before my move to Los Angeles. Right after I moved there I picked up a Rolling Stone on the stand and found out about Winter Light. Who knows, if I had not moved to L.A. when I did I might have had a third surprise with that record store on route 1 with Winter Light. It sure was wonderful being surprised by a Ronstadt release you had no idea was coming. It happened with Get Closer in 1982 in high school. The record store owner let me take it and pay him the following Friday when I got my paycheck from Burger King. I spent most of my money in his store and he knew it. At sixteen I could never make that paycheck I got from BK every two weeks stretch.

[eddiejinnj]

I thought that line, too, Boss was weird and tangential. eddiejinnj