Monday 7/12/21 12pm ET: Artist Countdown – Linda Ronstadt Top 30 Hits

Linda Ronstadt, an American rock, pop and country artist (who also recorded in other genres, such as light opera and traditional Mexican music), consists of 24 solo studio albums, one live album, numerous compilation albums, and 63 singles. After recording three albums with her folk rock band, The Stone Poneys, Ronstadt debuted on Capitol Records as a solo artist with 1969’s Hand Sown … Home Grown. Her final album was released in 2006. Ronstadt has sold over 30 million records in the United States according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

1	Blue Bayou	1977
2	Don’t Know Much (with Aaron Neville)	1989
3	You’re No Good	1975
4	When Will I Be Loved	1975
5	The Tracks of My Tears	1975
6	That’ll Be the Day	1976
7	It’s So Easy	1977
8	Back in the U.S.A.	1978
9	Somewhere Out There (with James Ingram)	1986
10	Poor Poor Pitiful Me	1977
11	All My Life (with Aaron Neville)	1989
12	Tumbling Dice	1978
13	Ooh Baby Baby	1978
14	Hurt So Bad	1980
15	Just One Look	1979
16	I Knew You When	1982
17	Heat Wave	1975
18	How Do I Make You	1980
19	When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (with Aaron Neville)	1990
20	Love Has No Pride	1973
21	Get Closer	1982
22	Telling Me Lies (Emmylou Harris & Dolly Parton)	1987
23	Someone to Lay Down Beside Me	1976
24	Adios	1990
25	Long, Long Time	1970
26	To Know Him Is To Love Him (Emmylou Harris & Dolly Parton)	1987
27	Silver Threads and Golden Needles	1974
28	Easy for You to Say	1983
29	Blue Train	1995
30	Love Is a Rose	1975

Thursday 2/11/2021 12am ET: Feature LP: Linda Ronstadt – Mad Love (1980)

Mad Love is the tenth studio album by singer, songwriter and producer Linda Ronstadt, released February 1980. It debuted at #5 on the Billboard album chart, a record at the time and a first for any female artist, and quickly became her seventh consecutive album to sell over one million copies. It was certified Platinum and nominated for a Grammy.

The album reflects the advent in the later 1970s of the Punk Rock and New Wave music. Defining their work as a programmatic return of rock music to its original principles, Punk and New Wave bands rejected the emphasis on virtuosity and high production values favored by the megastars of the decade, ridiculed the claims of anti-establishment claims of lavishly-paid, jet-setting performers and deplored the increasing corporatization and homogenization of rock music. Taken aback by charges of hypocrisy and irrelevance, many veteran acts, including Fleetwood Mac, Heart, Queen, and James Taylor, made sincere (and often successful) efforts to revitalize their sound by adopting aspects of the stripped-down, unpretentious D.I.Y. Punk and New Wave aesthetic.

Linda Ronstadt retooled her successful formula of pop covers, ballads and singer-songwriter compositions to produce what was perhaps the most thorough-going New Wave crossover record, Mad Love. The album contains no less than three songs by Elvis Costello (“Party Girl”, “Girls Talk” and “Talking in the Dark”) and as well as three tracks from The Cretones’ first album, Thin Red Line (1980). Although Ronstadt had regularly recorded edgy material by non-mainstream songwriters, including Elvis Costello’s “Alison,” she hired Cretones‘ guitarist Mark Goldenberg to provide arrangements, play guitar and lend authenticity to the project. The cover art’s brash, hot pink and black ransom-note graphics and the singer’s new spiky, short-cropped hairstyle reinforced Mad Love’s claim to New Wave statsus.

The carefully-calculated production of promotion of Mad Love reflected the considerable professional risk undertaken by Ronstadt after a succession of multi-platinum hits. Mad Love. As the Queen of ‘70s easy-going pop, Ronstadt was unlikely to gain impress Punk and New Wave’s skeptical critics and puritanical audiences. At the same time, her embrace of a highly-ironic, frenetic, radically-unelaborated style had the potential to alienate Ronstadt’s huge mainstream audience eager for the latest iteration of the Heart Like a Wheel formula. The inclusion of new material by established superstars who had embraced aspects of Punk Rock like Neil Young (“Look Out for My Love”) provided some continuity with Ronstadt’s previous releases.

The record-buying public proved to be more adventurous than anticipated, making Ronstadt’s risk paid off richly. The album‘s singles—the manic, Blondie-esque rocker “How Do I Make You” and the dark, breathless remake of the 1965 ballad “Hurt So Bad,” climbed to the #10 and #8 positions on the Billboard charts in mid 1980, while other tracks like “I Can’t Let Go” received heavy rotation on classic rock FM stations. Mad Love reach #5 on the album charts and sold over one million copies, making it Ronstadt’s seventh consecutive platinum record. For the fourth time, Ronstadt was named Billboard’s #1 Female Artist of the Year. “How Do I Make You” earned her a Grammy Award nomination in the Best Rock Vocal Performance Female single category.

Ronstadt leveraged the success of Mad Love to compel Asylum Records to greenlight two non-pop/rock projects—a collection of torch standards backed by the Nelson Riddle Orchestra and a collection of classical Mariachi music sung in Spanish. Previously deemed commercially unviable by the label, both projects were commercial successes on the scale of Ronstadt’s pop albums.

In 2011, after 31 years, Mad Love was taken out of print. The album was reissued in 2012 as part of Warner/Rhino’s “Original Album Series,” a boxed set comprising five classic albums, but this series was also discontinued. Given the album’s popularity, its absence from Ronstadt’s back catalogue is puzzling.

1. “Mad Love” 3:40
2. “Party Girl” 3:22
3. “How Do I Make You” 2:25
4. “I Can’t Let Go” 2:44
5. “Hurt So Bad” 3:17
6. “Look Out for My Love” 3:29
7. “Cost of Love” 2:38
8. “Justine” 4:00
9. “Girls Talk” 3:22
10. “Talking in the Dark” 2:12

Linda Ronstadt – lead vocals, backing vocals (4, 6)
Bill Payne – keyboards
Michael Boddicker – synthesizers (10)
Dan Dugmore – electric guitar (1-6, 8, 9, 10), electric guitar solo (1, 6)
Mark Goldenberg – electric guitar (1-4, 7-10), backing vocals (1, 3, 7), electric guitar solo (3, 4)
Danny Kortchmar – electric guitar (5), electric guitar solo (5)
Mike Auldridge – dobro (6)
Peter Bernstein – acoustic guitar (9)
Bob Glaub – bass guitar
Russ Kunkel – drums
Peter Asher – tambourine (4), percussion (9)
Steve Forman – percussion (9)
Waddy Wachtel – backing vocals (1, 7)
Nicolette Larson – backing vocals (3, 4, 9)
Rosemary Butler – backing vocals (4, 9)
Kenny Edwards – backing vocals (8)
Andrew Gold – backing vocals (8)

Wednesday 7/15/2020 12pm ET: Feature Artist – Linda Ronstadt

Linda Maria Ronstadt (born July 15, 1946) is a retired American singer who performed and recorded in diverse genres including rock, country, light opera, and Latin. She has earned 10 Grammy Awards, three American Music Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, and an ALMA Award. Many of her albums have been certified gold, platinum or multiplatinum in the United States and internationally. She has also earned nominations for a Tony Award and a Golden Globe award. She was awarded the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the Latin Recording Academy in 2011 and also awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the Recording Academy in 2016. 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. In 2019, she received a star jointly with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for their work as the group Trio. Ronstadt was among the five honorees who received the 2019 Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievements at the annual event on December 8, 2019, in Washington, D.C., at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Ronstadt has released 24 studio albums and 15 compilation or greatest hits albums. She charted 38 US Billboard Hot 100 singles. Twenty-one of those singles reached the top 40, ten reached the top 10, and one reached number one (“You’re No Good”). Her success did not translate to the UK, with only the single “Blue Bayou” reaching the UK Top 40. Ronstadt’s duet with Aaron Neville, “Don’t Know Much”, peaked at number 2 in December 1989. She has charted 36 albums, ten top-10 albums, and three number 1 albums on the US Billboard Pop Album Chart.

Ronstadt has collaborated with artists in diverse genres, including Bette Midler, Billy Eckstine, Frank Zappa, Carla Bley (Escalator Over the Hill), Rosemary Clooney, Flaco Jiménez, Philip Glass, Warren Zevon, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Dolly Parton, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Earl Scruggs, 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.”

Ronstadt reduced her activity after 2000 when she felt her singing voice deteriorating, releasing her last full-length album in 2004 and performing her last live concert in 2009. She announced her retirement in 2011 and revealed shortly afterwards that she is no longer able to sing as a result of a degenerative condition later determined to be progressive supranuclear palsy. Since then, Ronstadt has continued to make public appearances, going on a number of public speaking tours in the 2010s. She published an autobiography, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, in September 2013. A documentary based on her memoirs, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, was released in 2019.

Wednesday 2pm: Sounds of The 70s

This week on the Sounds of The 70’s:  Paul McCartney & Wings, Neil Sedaka, Elton John, Pilot, Dire Straits, Bee Gees, Dawn, Linda Ronstadt, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Joe Cocker, Doobie Brothers and more . . .

Tuesday 10pm: Top 100 Albums of The 70’s – #91 – Linda Ronstadt – Simple Dreams (1977)

Simple Dreams is the eighth studio album by the American rock singer-songwriter Linda Ronstadt, released September 6,1977 by Asylum Records.

The album was such a success that Ronstadt became the first female artist—and the first act overall since The Beatles—to have two singles in the top five at the same time: the Platinum-certified “Blue Bayou” (#3 Pop, #3 Adult Contemporary, and #2 Country) and “It’s So Easy” (#5 Pop). “Blue Bayou” was nominated for the Record of the Year Grammy award in early 1978. It also earned Ronstadt a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance Female, alongside Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Carly Simon and Debby Boone. “It’s So Easy” was originally recorded by Buddy Holly and The Crickets in 1958 but had failed to chart in its original version. It was Ronstadt’s second cover of a Holly song to become a hit in as many years; she had taken a rousing cover of “That’ll Be the Day” to #11 Pop in 1976, using a similar arrangement.

1. “It’s So Easy” 2:27
2. “Carmelita” 3:07
3. “Simple Man, Simple Dream” 3:12
4. “Sorrow Lives Here” 2:57
5. “I Never Will Marry” 3:12

1. “Blue Bayou” 3:57
2. “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” 3:42
3. “Maybe I’m Right” 3:05
4. “Tumbling Dice” 3:05
5. “Old Paint” 3:05

Thursday 6pm: History of Rock and Roll

Featured – Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Linda Ronstadt.

Wednesday 6pm: Great Soul Performances 2: The 80’s with Bobby Jay

Coming up shortly on “Great Soul Performances 2: The 80s” will be: David Ruffin & Eddie Kendricks, Gloria Gaynor, Robert Winter & Fall, Process & the Doo Rags, Richard “Dimples” Fields, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Linda Ronstadt, Major Harris, U2, the Ad-Libs and more. Join me at 6PM ET, 5PM CT, 4PM MT & 3PM PT for “Great Soul Performances 2: The 80s” on RadioMaxMusic.Com.

Wednesday 6pm: Great Soul Performances 2: The 80’s with Bobby Jay

“Great Soul Performances 2: The 80s” comes your way this evening, where you’ll hear music by: Barry White, Kim Carnes, the Isley Brothers, Olivia Newton-John, Major Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Brooklyn Dreams, Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine, Mirage, Process & the Doo Rags, “Sweet” James Epps and more. Drop by at 6PM ET, 5PM CT, 4PM MT and 3PM PT. Check us out this evening. “Great Soul Performances 2: The 80s” on RadioMaxMusic.Com.

Great Soul Performances with Bobby Jay 7pm ET

This evening on “Great Soul Performances” it’s time once again for “Motown Remakes.” Those are the fantastic songs that came out of Motown in Detroit and were covered and remade by the top Soul and R&B artists, the top Pop artists and were also passed around in-house, and were remade by other Motown artists as well. We always hear versions we never knew existed, and that’s always a lot of fun. So, on tap we’ve got: Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Jackie Wilson, the Isley Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, the Monitors, Margie Joseph, Michael McDonald, David Ruffin, Luther Vandross, the Marvelettes, Marv Johnson, the Elgins, the Miracles and many others. It kicks off at 7PM ET, 6PM CT, 5PM MT, & 4PM PT. I can’t wait. I hope you’ll join me for “Motown Remakes” on “Great Soul Performances” here at the home of the hits, RadioMaxMusic.Com.

Great Soul Performances with Bobby Jay “300th Episode” Blue Eyed Soul Special

Last December we saluted our “Blue-Eyed” soul brothers and sisters on “Great Soul Performances.” This evening we’ll do it again. You’ll hear the likes of: Tom Jones, Linda Ronstadt, Michael McDonald, the Average White Band, Dusty Springfield, Bobby Cauldwell, KC & the Sunshine Band, Joss Stone, Larry Chance & the Earls, the Blues Brothers; Dan Aykroyd & John Belushi, a new track from my youngest surrogate son Kid Kyle and two “live” concert segments with Kenny Vance & the Planotones featuring Phoebe Snow and one with my buddy Billy Vera & the Beaters. 

 

 

Artist Countdown: Linda Ronstadt Top 50 Hits 12pm ET

Linda Maria Ronstadt (born July 15, 1946) is an American popular music singer. She has earned 11 Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, and numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums. She has also earned nominations for a Tony Award and a Golden Globe award.

Ronstadt has collaborated with artists from a diverse spectrum of genres including Bette Midler, Billy Eckstine, Frank Zappa, Rosemary Clooney, Flaco Jiménez, Philip Glass, Carla Bley, The Chieftains, Warren Zevon, Emmylou Harris, Gram 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 noted in 2004, Ronstadt is “Blessed with arguably the most sterling set of pipes of her generation … rarest of rarities – a chameleon who can blend into any background yet remain boldly distinctive … It’s an exceptional gift; one shared by few others.”

In total, 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, three at #2, and “You’re No Good” at #1. This success did not translate to the UK, with only her single “Blue Bayou” reaching the UK Top 40. Her duet with Aaron Neville, “Don’t Know Much”, peaked at #2 in December 1989. In addition, she has charted 36 albums, 10 top-10 albums and three #1 albums on the Billboard Pop Album Chart.

In a 2011 interview with the Arizona Daily Star she said, “I am 100 percent retired and I’m not doing anything any more”. It was announced publicly in August 2013 that Linda had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in December 2012, which left her unable to sing.

Her autobiography, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, was released in September 2013. It debuted in the Top 10 on The New York Times Best Sellers List.

Linda Ronstadt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April, 2014. – Wikipedia

1	Blue Bayou
2	Don’t Know Much (with Aaron Neville)
3	When Will I Be Loved
4	You’re No Good
5	Somewhere Out There (with James Ingram)
6	That’ll Be the Day
7	Tracks of My Tears
8	It’s So Easy
9	Back in the U.S.A.
10	Poor Poor Pitiful Me
11	All My Life (with Aaron Neville)
12	Ooh Baby Baby
13	Hurt So Bad
14	Heat Wave
15	I Never Will Marry
16	It Doesn’t Matter Anymore
17	Just One Look
18	When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (with Aaron Neville)
19	Love Has No Pride
20	I Knew You When
21	Telling Me Lies
22	Someone to Lay Down Beside Me
23	Heartbeats Accelerating
24	Adios
25	How Do I Make You
26	What’s New
27	Long, Long Time
28	To Know Him Is To Love Him (Emmylou Harris & Dolly Parton)
29	Silver Threads and Golden Needles
30	Easy for You to Say
31	Blue Train
32	Love Is a Rose
33	Tumbling Dice
34	Get Closer
35	I Can’t Let Go
36	Skylark
37	Those Memories of You
38	I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)
39	I’ve Got a Crush on You
40	Crazy
41	The Long Way Around
42	Wildflowers
43	Lose Again
44	Rambler Gambler
45	Alison
46	Walk On
47	The Sweetest Gift (with Emmylou Harris)
48	When I Fall in Love
49	Rock Me on the Water
50	A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

Artist Countdown: Glenn Frey Top 20 Hits 6pm ET @GlennFrey

Glenn Lewis Frey (born November 6, 1948) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and actor, best known as a founding member of the Eagles. Frey formed the Eagles after he met drummer Don Henley in 1970 and the two eventually joined Linda Ronstadt‘s backup band for her summer tour. The Eagles formed in 1971 and released their debut album in 1972. Glenn Frey played guitar with the Eagles as well as piano and keyboards, and shared lead vocals with Don Henley. The Eagles broke up in 1980 after becoming one of the most successful bands of all time. Frey sang lead vocals on many Eagles hits such as “Take It Easy”, “Peaceful Easy Feeling“, “Tequila Sunrise”, “Already Gone”, “Lyin’ Eyes“, “New Kid in Town“, and “Heartache Tonight“. After the breakup of the Eagles in 1980, Frey embarked on a successful solo career. He released his debut album in 1982 and went on to record Top 40 hits “The One You Love”, “Smuggler’s Blues”, “Sexy Girl”, “The Heat Is On”, and “You Belong to the City“. As a member of the Eagles, Frey has won six Grammys, and five American Music Awards. The Eagles have sold over 120 million albums worldwide and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. As a solo artist and with the Eagles combined, Frey has released 24 Top 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100.  (Source: Wikipedia)

1	You Belong to the City
2	The Heat Is On
3	True Love
4	Part of Me, Part of You
5	The One You Love
6	Sexy Girl
7	Smuggler’s Blues
8	I Found Somebody
9	River of Dreams
10	I’ve Got Mine
11	All Those Lies
12	Livin’ Right
13	Partytown
14	Soul Searchin’
15	Don’t Give Up
16	The Allnighter
17	This Way to Happiness
18	Love in the 21st Century
19	Lovers Moon
20	Strange Weather

 

Artist Countdown: Emmylou Harris Top 30 Hits 7:30pm ET

Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She has released many chart-topping albums and singles over the course of her career, and has won 12 Grammys and numerous other awards.

Harris is from a career military family. Her father, Walter Harris, was a military officer and her mother Eugenia was a wartime military wife. Her father, a member of the Marine Corps, was reported missing in action in Korea in 1952 and spent ten months as a prisoner of war. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Harris spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, Virginia, where she graduated from Gar-Field Senior High School as class valedictorian. She won a drama scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she began to study music seriously, learning to play the songs of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on guitar. Leaving college to pursue her musical aspirations, she moved to New York, working as a waitress to support herself while performing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. She married fellow songwriter Tom Slocum in 1969 and recorded her first album, Gliding Bird. Harris and Slocum soon divorced, and Harris and her newborn daughter Hallie moved in with her parents in the Maryland suburbs on the edge of Washington, D.C.

In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers’ works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists including Gram Parsons, John Denver, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, The Band, Mark Knopfler, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Rodney Crowell, Little Feat, and Neil Young. -Wikipedia

1	Mister Sandman
2	That Lovin’ You Feeling Again (with Roy Orbison)
3	Wild Montana Skies (with John Denver)
4	(You Never Can Tell) C’est La Vie
5	Together Again
6	Here, There and Everywhere
7	Telling Me Lies (with Dolly Parton & Linda Ronstadt)
8	If I Could Only Win Your Love
9	To Know Him Is to Love Him (with Dolly Parton & Linda Ronstadt)
10	Making Believe
11	To Daddy
12	Sweet Dreams
13	Two More Bottles of Wine
14	Beneath Still Waters
15	If I Needed You (with Don Williams)
16	(Lost His Love) On Our Last Date
17	One of These Days
18	I’m Movin’ On
19	Wayfaring Stranger
20	Blue Kentucky Girl
21	Born to Run
22	Tennessee Rose
23	Wildflowers (with Dolly Parton & Linda Ronstadt)
24	In My Dreams
25	Easy from Now On
26	Pledging My Love
27	White Line
28	The Boxer
29	Save the Last Dance for Me
30	Thing About You (with Southern Pacific)