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Post by the Scribe on Dec 1, 2020 19:59:11 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 1, 2020 20:07:37 GMT
#129: Lovely Linda
Posted on July 12, 2013 by stolf
relatedhowagain.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/129-lovely-linda/
129.7 Dear Stolf: On an oldies station I listen to, a DJ said Jimmy Webb wrote “MacArthur Park” about his girlfriend, Linda Ronstadt’s cousin. Is this true? …Wichita Linebacker, Topanga Canyon
129.8 Dear WL: In a word, no…with an explanation. Mind you, once I give you the explanation, the answer is still no, but at least you’ll know why you sometimes hear what you heard. Jimmy Webb was born and raised in Oklahoma…his family moved to the Los Angeles area when he was a teenager. He graduated from Colton, CA High School class of 1965…oddly enough, one year after Jim Messina. But while still in high school, he met and fell head over heels for an aspiring singer, a classmate named Suzy Horton.
129.9 That summer, he helped her and three friends form a singing group called the Contessas. They recorded an album on Motown, with songs written by you-know-who, and appeared on several TV shows, including Shivaree (see it here.)
The Contessas on Shivaree
Suzy’s day job was with an insurance agency, and she would meet Jimmy for lunch in MacArthur Park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. She also inspired “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Where’s the Playground Suzie,” and probably others. But the group’s career fizzled, as did the budding romance…and the Contessas soon went their separate ways. Suzy Horton continued working as a singer and dancer, and is still active in the music business today.
129.10 In the early 1990s she met and married Bobby Ronstadt, Linda’s 1st cousin, son of Linda’s father Gilbert’s younger brother Edward. Today she is indeed known as Suzy Ronstadt, but her relation to Linda is cousin-in-law at best, and at any rate, she was decades away from being a Ronstadt when she knew Jimmy. Informally, your cousin’s wife can be your cousin…just as your father’s uncle can be your uncle, as we saw last week with Anna Boiardi…but not really…sorry.
129.11 Now in Chart 449, I’ve included far more Ronstadt relatives than are relevant to the case at hand, but once you get going, its kind of hard to stop, you know? And as long as your tree is intelligible, feel free try different things, as I have here. I generally color males blue and females red, but here I have grouped siblings together as gray. Also, with Gilbert’s uncles and aunts, I positioned their spouses and their children horizontally rather than vertically, as space required…I did want to include that Grampa Frederick and his brother Pepe married sisters.
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