Linda Ronstadt Fan - Not Country Music Fan....?

[alyn]

There used to be a BBC Radio Show called 'Does The Team Think..' which just threw discussions into a panel of experts... I felt like starting this thread with that expression.

Is it possible to be a Linda Ronstadt Fan without being a Country Music Fan?

Well the answer is Yes because that's what I am, but I think having studied and contributed to threads here for a couple of years now I could just about be on my own.

The Linda Ronstadt music I love is primarily from the Hasten Down The Wind album to Mad Love, with selected tracks from albums before, after and inbetween, and live performances through those years.

I love the Nelson Riddle years as much. I am a massive Sinatra fan and find Linda's music in this period of her career compliments Franks versions and holds up against them, beautifully.

I really enjoy her 'Mexican' years for her outstanding voice complimenting the music although I'm not sure I would listen to any other similar music with a different singer.

I really can't listen to her early albuims as they are too Country for me, obviously her voice is strong but I find the music weak and the songs too corny for the most part.

I'm not a fan of Dolly Parton or Emmylou Harris at all, they do absolutely nothing for me, so despite trying the Trio albums, there is not enough Linda to make them even interesting for me.

Have I any interest in Country Music? Well, I loved The Eagles when they went into soft rock territory which still had remnants of Country, same with Poco. I bracket them with Jackson Browne, Ry Cooder, James Taylor - I am a massive fan of all those.

I like Gretchen Peters very much, I guess you could call her Urban Country and she made a wonderful album with Tom Russell called One To The Heart, which was basically Cowboy Songs, bluesy country. That grabbed me in a big way.

Townes Van Zandt, very good.

I like some Alison Krauss, maybe 4 or 5 songs on a playlist along with single tracks by Michelle Wright, Miranda Lambert, LeAnn Rimes also on that Playlist.

I'm familiar with all the Country music giants and in the past really thought I should be enjoying this music, but I tried and really was left cold.

Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton are the ones that really have me mystified.

My background is in Rock Music, Progressive Rock, some Blues, Soul and Jazz influenced music through to Big Band and Classical.

I'm not putting this out for some one to 'Save Me' by suggesting music, I've tried enough to know.

It's just a Getting It Off My Chest moment I think :-)

Prepares myself for the worst :-)

[MokyWI]

I respect all you said. You were not disrespectful. We all have different tastes. I love country music up until about 1980, some after but not much. Don’t even get me started about today’s country…that I CAN’T STAND!

[Partridge]

A lot of fans have Linda genres that do not appeal to them. I think the majority of Linda's fans would not listen to Pirates of Penzance. And I know a few Linda fans who quit buying her records when she went into the Nelson Riddle years. But I first came to know of Linda as a country singer with Hand Sown... Home Grown, so I like that music, but I also like most of the music she has performed in other genres.

[erik]

Much of what passes as "country music", at least in the eyes of the corporate big-wigs in Music City, is indeed "mall crawler music", as Linda calls it. And she should know, having listened to the truly classic stuff growing up in Arizona, especially in the period between 1948 and 1961, roughly spanning the honky-tonk of Hank Williams, through the C&W-influenced rockabilly of the 1950's, the revival of mountain music in the folk music "scare", and the Nashville Sound of Patsy Cline.

At the same time, however, there is a fair amount of the form that's being done well, especially by the womenfolk who have taken the left-of-center approach that Linda took to the genre. Trisha Yearwood (whom I don't call "Mrs. Garth Brooks" [LOL]) is, of course, the most vocal of all the women in Nashville who started make an impact at the beginning of the 1990's when it comes to being influenced by Linda (she covered Linda's self-penned 1976 country-rock classic "Try Me Again", and considers Linda her spiritual role model). Martina McBride, even though she does tend to overdo it on some occasions, is another one.

I also have advocated a lot here for Tift Merritt, a brilliant, not to mention painfully underrated, singer/songwriter of the Americana genre who is also a big fan of the Linda/Emmylou "old school" approach, and whom one of our members on the forum, cymru56, turned me on to back in 2002. With albums like Bramble Rose. Tambourine, and her most recent one, 2017's Stitch In The World, she is, to my mind, the best female artist to come down the pike in this century.

Caitlin Rose is another one. Her mom is Liz Rose, one of Nashville's heavyweight songwriters (having written for, among others, one Taylor Swift), but Caitlin takes a quirky approach to Linda's classic country-rock style on such songs as "Golden Boy", "Waitin'", and "Dallas" on her 2013 album The Stand-In.

Margo Price, although her voice may not be for everyone necessarily, is another hard-hitting artist worthy of consideration. She is now famous for responding to Nashville "focus group" consultant Keith Hill's infamous 2015 comment about women being the "tomatoes" of a country music salad in which the "boys" are the lettuce with a T-shirt that says, and I quote, "YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY F**K YOU!". (Coming soon to a theatre near you, a Nashville version of the infamous 1978 cult horror comedy film Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes. You have been warned! [LOL]).

Courtney Marie Andrews is another one that cymru56 recommended several years ago, and she is also quite good, more Americana than mainstream country.

There are others out there. But you have to be willing to sift through the morass that is Mall Crawler Music, and do your own research.

[MokyWI]

Yes, Trisha Yearwood has always been an exception. I resisted her first album until after I heard the second one, Hearts In Armor released the next year in 1992, and I bought all her studio album since. Several others female country artists from the 1990’s caught my ear. Bought Tift’s first three CD’s but like you said Erik, she is Americana more than country. Most of my favorite artist would fall under Americana category.

[eddiejinnj]

It seems, Alyn, me mate, that you were more into the singer-songwriter artists of the era vs true country artists. I am a fan of some country music. Some of the 60's-70's stuff seemed sugary and/or exaggerated if you know what I mean. My mom liked Eddy Arnold a lot and I did like some of his stuff as a kid. He was a classy guy to me. She also liked Hank Williams. Hard not to find some of Williams material quite catchy so I thought he was pretty cool.
I never really thought of Linda as a "country artist". I put her in the singer-songwriter category in my mind as far as style/influence. Since I first became a fan , she has gone almost everywhere on the music map. Like we have discussed before, Linda would be a great music teacher because of her vast knowledge of music. eddiejinnj

[cymru56]

Thanks erik for crediting me and I remember fondly our duels in some of the games on the old Women Of Country site.
I've been a fan of LA country rock of the 1970s and through Gram Parsons early and mid career Emmylou . This led me to other country artists, with few exceptions almost always female,notably Patty Loveless, Kelly Willis, Joy Lynn White and the Dixie Chicks. As such I don't believe I could call myself a Country fan more a fan of women singers many of whom happen to sing in a Country or Americana style. Erik has mentioned many of my likes and to these I'd add Dori Freeman and Molly Tuttle both of whom are on the folk/bluegrass side of the country spectrum.

[erik]

There's also Alice Wallace, another singer/songwriter of the Americana genre, who released a very good album in 2019 called Into The Blue; and in the weeks before everything shut down in early 2020, she put out her own acoustic version of "Long Long Time" in honor of Linda.