album rating: ★★★★☆
Genre: Country rock / folk rock / soft rock. Linda Ronstadt is the third studio album by Linda Ronstadt (born Tucson, Arizona, 1946), released on 17 January 1972 by Capitol Records. It is the album that, despite modest chart performance, set the stage for her emergence as the dominant female vocalist in American popular music throughout the mid-to-late 1970s. Ronstadt had released two earlier solo albums — Hand Sown... Home Grown (1969) and Silk Purse (1970) — and while the latter had earned her a Grammy nomination, she had not yet found a consistent commercial direction. Linda Ronstadt represented a decisive move: away from pure Nashville country and toward the California country-rock sound she had been developing on the road, working with a band that included all four future members of the Eagles — Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. Portions of the album were recorded live at the Troubadour in Hollywood (March 1971), capturing the immediacy of her road sound. The repertoire draws on then-emerging singer-songwriters: Neil Young's 'Birds', Jackson Browne's 'Rock Me on the Water', Eric Kaz's 'Love Has No Pride', along with covers of Patsy Cline's 'I Fall to Pieces' and Johnny Cash's 'I Still Miss Someone'. The album contains ten tracks and was produced by John Boylan.
Label: Capitol Records (USA), released 17 January 1972.
Producer: John Boylan.
Recording studios: Quadrafonic Sound Studios, Nashville, Tennessee; Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Sheffield, Alabama; United Western Recorders, Hollywood, California; and live at The Troubadour, Hollywood, California (March 1971).
Critical reception: Linda Ronstadt was not a major critical event on release, but has been consistently reassessed as a pivotal transitional record. uDiscover Music described it as the album that 'primed the 25-year-old singer for superstardom to come', noting how it introduced 'rock to her country sound, just as country music was starting to sound tired.' Jackson Browne, recalling hearing Ronstadt perform 'Different Drum' earlier, described it as hearing 'a fully developed vocal stylist.' Glenn Frey, inducting Ronstadt into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, recalled: 'From the first rehearsal, I felt we were working on a style of music none of us had ever heard before. Two years later, people called it country-rock.'
Commercial success: The album reached number 35 on the Billboard Country Albums chart and number 163 on the Billboard 200 pop chart — a commercial disappointment that led to Ronstadt's departure from Capitol Records. It was the last album she recorded for the label. Her move to the artist-friendly Asylum Records (founded by David Geffen) and her next album Don't Cry Now (1973) began the climb toward her breakthrough with Heart Like a Wheel (1974), which topped the Billboard 200. The four musicians who backed her on this album formed the Eagles one month after its release.
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