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Duets
Feb 4, 2022 9:45:32 GMT
Post by the Scribe on Feb 4, 2022 9:45:32 GMT
Silenced songbird Linda Ronstadt still calling the shots www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/silenced-songbird-linda-ronstadt-still-calling-the-shots-20140410-36dw3.html
By Peter Vincent April 12, 2014 — 3.00am
I'm on the phone with Linda Ronstadt, first known to Australians as the cherubic 1970s solo singer with powerful country-pop songs such as You're No Good, When Will I Be Loved and Poor Poor Pitiful Me.
Yesterday, Australian time, Ronstadt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Brooklyn, although she opted not to attend the ceremony. Ronstadt, who was last year diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, told USA Today this month she'd rather save her strength for seeing the ballet than attending an awards ceremony: ''I just don't think about music in that way, I never have and I'm not going to start now.''
Warm and unpretentious: Linda Ronstadt.CREDIT:AP
Ronstadt's take on the induction shouldn't be confused with the bitter dismissal of such things by someone who considers awards uncool, mainly because they haven't won any. She won 10 Grammys in her 40-year career, the first of which she has admitted to leaving in a rental car.
I'm eager to talk with Ronstadt about her Parkinson's diagnosis, which has left her unable to sing. Officially though, my time with her is to talk about her new release, Duets, a collection of collaborations dating back to the mid-1970s. This is the music writer's unspoken contract with the artist: be serious about what's for sale now and your questions will be answered. Mostly.
Linda Ronstadt during an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald in 1979 (evidently the photographer was far sighted)
Ronstadt, now 67, is warm, funny, unpretentious and talks quickly. Ideas tumble out of her mouth and it takes work to keep up. She is keen to chat on subjects outside of music. She last came here in the early 1980s with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra and remembers Australia as ''the dream that was promised by southern California that was never delivered … it's like delivering pizza, they delivered it to the wrong address!''
Ronstadt describes herself as a ''screaming liberal'', and when I suggest that dream might be souring for Australians of a liberal persuasion, she is fascinated, especially when it comes to our government's policies on asylum seekers. A Mexican-American raised in Tucson, almost 100 kilometres north of the border with Mexico, Ronstadt has plenty to say on the subject.
''[Immigrants] are the best people because they've come the farthest and they've come through the worst adversity,'' she says, exasperated. ''You don't want people who have never had to deal with adversity, you want people who have been able to deal successfully with adversity. That's what adds to society. Those are going to be the hardest-working, best people.''
I steer our conversation back to her album Duets. How did it come together? ''It was the record company's idea … I said, 'Great, I'll scrape them up for you'.''
Who chose the songs, the order? ''I chose everything. I always choose everything, for better or for worse.''
Who was the most talented singer she ever worked with? ''I never looked at music as a horse race. How do you compare a Smokey Robinson with an Aaron Neville or a Frank Sinatra?
''I've been lucky in my life to work with people who I consider master singers. Sinatra being one and Aaron certainly being one and Smokey Robinson too.''
She has a particular fondness for Neville, who plays Sydney later this month and with whom she has two songs on the album: Don't Know Much and All My Life, both of which were big hits.
You don't forget you have Parkinson's disease, believe me.
''I just love him, I learned so much about singing and so much about a lot of things from Aaron.
''He looks so tough, but next time you see him ask him to show you a picture of his dog.''
Neville and Ronstadt's collaborations are classic cheesy 1980s power pop ballads, but look past the heartachey lyrics, and the reasons those songs were successful is clear: Neville and Ronstadt share a tremendous empathetic quality in their voices that is irresistible. Ronstadt has herself been praised as something of a master singer, but she shares the humility of Leo Kottke, who once said his own voice sounded ''like goose farts on a muggy day''.
''I never thought much about [mine]. I'm just trying to sing,'' Ronstadt says. A 1970s Time magazine profile once oddly described her voice as ''strong and solid as God's garage floor''. It's somehow apt.
Ronstadt has talked frankly and at length about her Parkinson's diagnosis to press in the United States. But when our conversation turns to it, the vivaciousness is replaced by short and clipped answers.
Ronstadt received her diagnosis in mid-2013, but says she knew something was badly amiss with her health before then. ''It showed up in my voice first in a way that is not just like ageing,'' she says. ''I had lost a whole section of it, not just in pitch but in terms of colour and texture and I didn't have any way to steer pitch.
''I had a galvanised voice, I could sing through a 105 fever or a flu, or a root canal or anything that you could throw at me.''
It is a task beyond most of our ken, to imagine what it must be like to lose the ability to do the one thing that defined your life, at least in a public sense. ''What can I say? I didn't have a choice,'' Ronstadt says. ''I never loved performing that much, but I did love singing. I miss singing,'' she says, her voice trailing off.
''It's something I did every day since I was two. But there are things you just have to accept and I've accepted it.''
Does she ever wake up and try to sing, as a reflex, in the shower perhaps? ''No. I know that I can't. You don't forget you have Parkinson's disease, believe me, especially in the shower. If you are not paying attention you fall down.''
When I ask what happens if she tries to sing, Ronstadt grows impatient: ''Nothing. I don't sing. I can't sing. I can't do it any more.''
But just this month, Ronstadt surprised USA Today journalist Marco della Cava by singing the start of Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come. Della Cava described her voice as ''high pitched and a little wobbly, but beautiful''.
Ronstadt tells me people say her voice sounds fine. ''But it didn't sound fine. When it was time to get off the stage, I got off the stage. I wasn't going to stand up on stage and struggle like that. It's a waste of people's money and it's a waste of my time.''
In any case, it seems she is tired of talking about it. ''My God!'' she says, ''Don't you want to hear about the record?''
The record is a powerful reminder of how important Ronstadt was to contemporary popular music. Athough she's probably best known here for a handful of solo hits in the 1970s and duets in the 1980s, Ronstadt's career was much more than that.
She made more than 29 studio albums and was one of the finest interpretive singers of her generation, successfully switching between pop, country, folk, jazz standards and Spanish-language music.
According to Christopher Loudon of Jazz Times, she was ''a chameleon who can blend into any background yet remain boldly distinctive''. Her legacy is that she helped open the door for women to become solo pop stars on the strength of their vocal talents alone.
Ronstadt was herself influenced by 1950s and '60s Mexican ranchera singer Lola Beltran. ''She stood for Mexico the way Edith Piaf stands for France. I listened to her a lot when I was growing up and I think she affected my singing style more than any other singer.''
She says too that she has always loved opera ''ever since I was little''.
Is that because it's an escape from the modern world? ''Great art is never an escape,'' she tuts. ''Great art is a way of entering into your life in a way that gives you a magnified view of whatever your sorrows and your joys are, in a way that you sometimes didn't suspect you knew. That's its job, not to [help us] escape.''
I ask where her thoughts went after the initial shock of being told about her illness. Her first reaction, she says, was ''Oh, shit!''
''I remembered I had read research about Parkinson's patients,'' she says. ''That [they] couldn't walk, but they could dance. Music takes a different neurological pathway through the brain and at least I have that well developed, so that might be helpful.''
When news broke of her illness, she was contacted by the celebrated Seattle ballet choreographer, Mark Morris. He established the touring arm of Mikhail Baryshnikov's dance foundation in 1990, the White Oak Dance Project, but in recent years has worked to bring dance to local communities.
''He wrote to me and said that he had developed a set of dance moves that are specifically for Parkinson's patients. I just got the email about a week ago, I found out where the class is and I'm going to try it.
''Parkinson's is a movement disorder, so when you get up and walk across the room you're pretty grateful, but it's getting hard to do that, it's pretty hard to brush my teeth. I don't think I'm going to become a ballet dancer, and I don't think I'm going to be jumping for joy, but it will be nice to get a little exercise without falling down.''
It may allow her to continue to express herself through art.
''Among other things,'' she says, ''The role of art is to help us … to transcend, it's to put you in a transcendent state so you can get over the things that you can't bear otherwise.''
Linda Ronstadt's Duets is out now.
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Duets
Sept 4, 2022 7:07:18 GMT
Post by the Scribe on Sept 4, 2022 7:07:18 GMT
Linda Ronstadt: 'I Miss Singing Tremendously' parade.com/280407/walterscott/linda-ronstadt-i-miss-singing-tremendously/ WALTER SCOTT APR 19, 2014
Neal Preston/Corbis
The Grammy-winning icon, 67, has a new CD, Duets, a compilation of previously recorded favorite tracks.
Last year you revealed that Parkinson’s has left you unable to sing.
It’s a movement disorder, and singing is a series of delicate, highly complex movements in your vocal cords. It’s hard to brush my teeth, so you can imagine how hard it would be to sing.
Do you miss it?
I miss singing tremendously. It was something I could do since I was 2.
You sang “Moonlight in Vermont” with Frank Sinatra in 1993.
His voice was in decline and I did a lot of improvising. But I was astounded at how much story he could still deliver and how much color was there. As Rosemary Clooney used to say, “Darling, he’s still dangerous.”
Folks still love your team-up with Aaron Neville on "Don't Know Much," which along with your vocals together on "All My Life" is included in the Duets album.
He’s one of the dearest people ever to me. I talk to him a lot. He’s one of the great voices of pop music, I think. He's not an R&B singer, really. He's a Creole singer from New Orleans in every sense of the term.
You also paired with Bette Midler to do "Sisters," the Irving Berlin song.
That's a tribute to Rosemary Clooney [who sang it for the 1954 film White Christmas]. I wish Rosemary could have heard that, because I knew her really well. I always wanted to get the three of us together, but every time I’d go to L.A., one of the would be out of town. We never got to have that great dish on the sofa, which would’ve been more fun than anything. Anyway, Bette has such wicked humor in every line she sings. And she's good at delivering multilayered sentiment. It’s hard to do. I was also just astonished at the quality of Barry Manilow’s producing on that track, as well. He’s an excellent musician and a very good arranger. I love the bah-boom-ba, bah-boom-ba kind of stripper rhythm that he coupled that song with.
What kind of music do you listen to most these days?
A lot of opera. I’ve listened many times to Anna Netrebko singing La Traviata, and the cool thing about YouTube is that I can compare it to how Teresa Stratas sang it, and Maria Callas. And I like Estrella Morente, who is the current flamenco goddess in Spain. She’s been over here a little bit, but people [in the U.S.] haven’t heard of her so much. She’s a great singer—absolutely brilliant.
What do you think your legacy will be musically?
I think that what made me different was that I did an unusually wide range of material.And I always looked back to what I heard growing up. That’s why it’s so important to expose children to art and music just right out of the womb. They’ve got to hear it, you know?
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Duets
Oct 12, 2023 19:32:46 GMT
Post by the Scribe on Oct 12, 2023 19:32:46 GMT
www.soundbard.com/soundbard/sound-quality-dreams-linda-ronstadt-on-her-unyielding-passion-for-true-high-fidelity/
Sound Quality Dreams: Linda Ronstadt on Her Unyielding Passion for True High Fidelity BY MIKE METTLER — MARCH 28, 2016
0 R
“We were united for the best sound we could get, and that was it. That was what we were chasing.” Is Linda Ronstadt revealing her high-end hopes for Hasten Down the Wind? Actually, that’s her assessment of the main goal she had for the 15 songs that comprise her recent compilation CD, Duets (Rhino). The ace song interpreter simply soars on songs like the tender but tough “I Never Will Marry” with Dolly Parton, the special intuitive blend she gets with James Taylor on “I Think It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” and the complementary vocal halo she sets for Frank Sinatra on “Moonlight in Vermont.” www.amazon.com/Duets-Linda-Ronstadt/dp/B00IIT0CHG/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1458921964&sr=1-1&keywords=linda+ronstadt+duets
Ronstadt has since retired from singing (in 2013, she revealed she has Parkinson’s disease), but that hasn’t stopped her from appreciating the sound of a good mix or a stellar vocal — or gently trilling a few lines of her favorite songs while we talk. Here, Ronstadt, 69, and I discuss her hi-fi proclivities, how the right vocal texture tells the right tale every time, coming to terms with not being able to sing, and working her vocal magic with collaborators like Sinatra, Neil Young, and Paul Simon.
Mike Mettler: Superior recording quality is evident across the board on Duets. John Boylan, your mixer/engineer, did a great job with level-matching recordings done some decades apart.
LINDA RONSTADT - CRY LIKE A RAINSTOWN HOWL LIKE THE WIND _ COVER
Linda Ronstadt: That makes me seriously happy to hear, because a lot of what I recorded was intended for the audiophile, especially Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind (1989). Cry Like a Rainstorm really was a hi-fi record. We went for a big, tall sound on purpose. We recorded it on a large scoring stage at Skywalker Sound [at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California]. You can hear the room on it, all over the place. The room just roared.
Mettler: What a nice way to describe it. You used vocal echo to great effect on many of these songs, but you backed off from using it as much in later years.
Ronstadt: After Cry Like a Rainstorm, I was driven to get in a good-sounding room and not have so much of that chamber echo on some of the later records I made, like Hummin’ to Myself (2004) and Adieu False Heart (2006). We dried up the echo and used as much natural room ambience as we could. I really liked that the best, because I hardly had any voice by then. I was working with a limited palette, so I had to limit myself. I’m only working with four colors, and now I’m down to three colors. What can you do with them? You better make them good. (chuckles)
People make different choices as to how much they load up on echo, just like you make choices when you load up your paint on a brush and decide how hard to push on the bristles, how many different colors to mix, and whether to make a wide swipe or a skinny line. There are a myriad of choices, and you mostly do it on a non-conscious level.
LINDA RONSTADT - SIMPLE DREAMS _ BOOK COVER
Mettler: One of the most important passages in your 2013 autobiography, Simple Dreams, was where you talked about having a “passion for true high fidelity sound” [page 185]. How important is the sound quality of the Duets recordings to you? www.amazon.com/Simple-Dreams-Musical-Linda-Ronstadt/dp/1451668724/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1458922272&sr=1-1
Ronstadt: Oh, it’s essential. The thing is, the recording process itself is the other artist in the room. The board is an instrument, and the mixer is an artist. It’s essential to have what the artists originally intended to have on the recording, because that’s how they’re trying to tell a story. For my voice, there’s a certain frequency range that carries the story. That range has the vocal detail, the little grind at the top of your voice with the shifting textures and colors. And when you can’t hear that, you lose the story.
Mettler: Whom do you consider to be among the best sound mixers you’ve worked with over the years?
Ronstadt: Good sound mixers are more born than made, I think. Well, they’re both, but good sound mixers are rare. They’re worth their weight in gold. I think George Massenburg is terrific, very original. And I also like the guy who’s done a lot of mixing for Neil Young, Niko Bolas. I love his mixes. And I love Gary Paczosa, who engineered and mixed Adieu False Heart. He’s a really talented mixer. He’s done a lot of Alison Krauss records too, and he gets a very beautiful sound with her voice.
LINDA RONSTADT - WHAT'S NEW _ DVD-AUDIO COVER
Mettler: Speaking of George Massenburg, he did the surround mix for What’s New when that came out on the DVD-Audio format back in 2002. Did you have any input on that mix?
Ronstadt: No. He mixed that, but I heard it and I thought he did a really great job. He played that mix for me when I was in the studio. I was in San Francisco when he was doing that mix in Nashville. But when I went there to do some recording, I went in and listened to it. Nobody has ever touched any mix without me being there.
Mettler: One of the things I particularly liked reading in your book right out of the gate was when you talked about trying to get the “Boeing B-29 Sound” in your string arrangements [page 5]. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Ronstadt: Oh yeah! When B-29s take off and land, they’re in the interval of a fourth, and when they get up in the air, they’re in the interval of a fifth. I didn’t know that when I was a kid, but I knew I liked the fifths, the hollow fifths. Not the third there, just the fifths. And I can write very simple string arrangements — not very well, but I know what I want. Whenever I’d work with a strings writer, I’d always sing stuff, or do it myself and sing it for him and get him to write it all down. But often I would make those kinds of suggestions, and often they were those hollow fifths. I used to just write “thunder under,” and I’d say it was like the grind of a B-29, the grind between a cello and a double bass.
After [songwriter and longtime Ronstadt collaborator] JD Souther read my book, he went on YouTube to see a B-29 flying, and damned if it wasn’t the fourth taking off, and the fifth when it was in the air. When it would come over my house, it would just be on its way to land. And I heard one after another after another for years, coming home from the war, because the B-29s flew into Tuscon to the Davis-Monthan Air Field base.
[SoundBard aside: You can read JD’s take on which planes he thought those overhead sounds actually came from in my interview with him here. www.soundbard.com/soundbard/jd-souther-hastens-down-the-wind-of-high-res-with-his-new-solo-album-reissue-series/ ]
Mettler: So you literally heard it in your sleep. What albums would have examples of that arrangement idea?
LINDA RONSTADT - FEELS LIKE HOME _ COVER
Ronstadt: Oh, it’s all over Cry Like a Rainstorm, I’m sure, and probably on Winter Light (1993) — all over there too. I don’t re-listen to my records once I’m done with them. Winter Light and Feels Like Home (1995) have a lot of that, because I did a lot of “string interfering” (laughs) on those records — the poor arranger! It was string interfering, not string arranging, because I’m not so musically literate. (both laugh)
Mettler: What were some of your favorite records to listen to when you were growing up?
Ronstadt: In the ’50s and ’60s, I enjoyed listening to golden-era Mexican mariachi records, Frank Sinatra records, and a lot of the great jazz records on high fidelity speakers — records by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday. Peggy Lee made a great record called Beauty and the Beat! (1959, with the George Shearing Quintet) that was great in hi-fi. They were monaural, and they sounded fabulous. Recording with tube mikes — it was a whole different way or approaching it. It was way more organic-sounding.
But I loved it when I got my first stereo set. It was with the little speakers you’d pull out on the side and the demonstration model with the train going by — I thought, “Wow, this is totally cool!” I went and got a few Miles Davis records and put them right on: Kind of Blue (1959), and Someday My Prince Will Come (1961). Those were the first two stereo records I ever bought. And I’ll never forget the first time I heard Kind of Blue. Man, that was something — the sounds he made. I went, “Oh my God, this man has something to say.” I was only 14 or 15, I think. I was blown away.
LINDA RONSTADT _ DUETS COVER ART
Mettler: Let’s talk some more about Duets. You’ve said you sometimes prefer singing with groups than by yourself.
Ronstadt: Oh yes, I love to sing duets especially.
Mettler: Did you made all of the selections yourself for this collection?
Ronstadt: I selected them. I looked at them with an eye toward, “These are the hits, and I have to include them.” That’s not to say I don’t like those hits, it’s just to say that there are some things I would have loved to have had on. For instance, I used “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love With You)” with Emmylou Harris instead of some of the other ones I did with her because it was such a big hit [it reached #2 on the U.S. Country singles chart in 1974], rather than some other ones that were so good. I wish they had been on there, especially some of the other Emmy ones. There wasn’t anything in Spanish on there, and that really vexed me.
It was hard. The sequencing was so difficult, and I really struggled with it because there’s such a wide range of material. (laughs) What I did with the sequence was to start with the most traditional first, and the stuff that was the most basically arranged, leading all the way up to Frank Sinatra with the orchestra [on the final track, “Moonlight in Vermont”].
Mettler: I was wondering about those sequencing choices, considering you were dealing with recordings made in different eras. You and John Boylan [who complied and mastered Duets] must have had to make certain level-matching choices while you were putting it together.
Ronstadt: Oh, that was just craziness, you know, because they were all so differently recorded, and the tracks all sound different from each other. But most everybody’s going to listen to them as MP3s, so I wondered if I should have bothered, anyway. (laughs)
Mettler: No, no, I —
Ronstadt: Oh no, we’re not going to say MP3s sound like shit? They sound like shit. (laughs)
Mettler: Well, we can absolutely say that.
Ronstadt: Oh good; OK.
Mettler: What I was going to say is that we prefer to listen to your music in the best ways possible — like, say, on vinyl, or hi-res download.
Ronstadt: Well, even on CD or DVD is OK, as long as you have a decent system to play it on, but nobody seems to have those anymore.
Mettler: Well, some of us still do, at least! Is vinyl still the preferred listening medium, in your mind?
Ronstadt: I gave all my vinyl away many years ago… but yes. I would give anything to have my old McIntosh amplifier and big JBL speakers. It was just heaven. We would put on a record, sit down, and really listen. The speakers would be at arm’s length from your ears, and it was just fabulous. I’ll never forget how those songs sounded. That was my going to college for music. That was my higher education for music — spending all of those hours in front of those speakers. [SoundBard aside: In our interview, JD Souther says he still has and listens to the same JBL 4310s that Linda refers to here.] www.soundbard.com/soundbard/jd-souther-hastens-down-the-wind-of-high-res-with-his-new-solo-album-reissue-series/
Mettler: What were some of your favorite albums to listen to?
Ronstadt: Well, I loved that Frank Sinatra record, Sings for Only the Lonely (1958). We listened to cuts more than albums, but the Only the Lonely record was one of the few records you could put on that I remember would set a mood the whole way through. I loved Otis Redding. And I remember there was a live album of Ray Charles at Newport [Jazz Festival] singing “Drown in My Own Tears” (1960); we listened to that a lot.
LORRAINE ELLISON - STAY WITH ME _ COVER
What else did we listen to? Donny Hathaway, “Jealous Guy” (1972); that was awfully good. (pauses) I mean, just a ton of stuff. “Stay With Me (Baby),” Lorraine Ellison (1966) — that was just a huge 45 that had a huge orchestra. [It was a 46-piece orchestra from a canceled Sinatra session; the track was produced by Jerry Ragavoy and engineered by one of Linda’s future producers, Phil Ramone.] It was made to be a 45, and had a sort of 45 kind of mix. It was just an amazing piece of material. Oh my God, what an amazing record that was. Those are just what I remember off the top of my head, but I listened to everything, obviously. But the hi-fi, I really miss a lot.
Mettler: I can’t blame you. I do like that the three songs with Ann Savoy kick off Duets, because I think you set a nice tone that way.
Ronstadt: Well, you know, they were genuine duets. At the end of things, it’s hard to find true duets — duets where people are participating equally. But with Ann, it was that, truly — on “Adieu False Heart,” and also “Walk Away Renee,” where we traded off singing, where Ann sang the lead verse on the end. I felt that was a true exploration of what our two voices did. In the living room, in our pajamas. (laughs heartily) That was how we sang together — sisters who were united through our love of those truly great, truthful songs.
LINDA RONSTADT & ANN SAVOY - ADIEU FALSE HEART _ COVER
Mettler: How did you make the choice of who sings what line in “Renee”?
Ronstadt: It’s surprisingly obvious how it is, when you get down to it. “That one should sing that, and that one should sing this.” We always go for what sounds best, and we always know what sounds best.
And even with the Trio [with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris], there was no competition for who got to sing lead. It was more like one of us trying to get the other one to sing it, you know. Dolly would be trying to get me to sing something (laughs), and I’d be trying to get them to sing something. www.amazon.com/Complete-Trio-Collection-Deluxe-3CD/dp/B016TV9IOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1459314878&sr=1-1&keywords=trio+parton+harris+ronstadt
Mettler: It was good democracy, you could say.
Ronstadt: We were united for the best sound we could get, and that was it. That was what we were chasing.
Mettler: As to other great artists, I know you love Jackson Browne and Tom Petty.
Ronstadt: Oh, those are my favorites. I love Tom Petty. The Heartbreakers is, bar nothing, my favorite rock & roll band. They came along later and absorbed all the influences of everybody else, so it’s like you get everybody: You get The Rolling Stones, you get The Byrds, you get Bob Dylan, you get Jackson Browne. You get everybody when you get Tom Petty. I love him as a singer.
And he makes the best-sounding records. He mixes them before he records them. They figure out the arrangements, so their mix is really in their arrangements so much, they don’t get in the way of their arrangements when they record it.
Mettler: I went out to Southern California to interview Tom when they were working on the Mojo record a few years ago [in 2010]. They essentially cut everything live in their rehearsal space. They do it all together, and their producer/engineer, Ryan Ulyate, is so good at capturing exactly how they sound. www.soundandvision.com/content/exclusive-interview-tom-petty-recording-mojo
Ronstadt: Oh man, they’re a great band. I love those guys.
TOM PETTY - THE WAITING _ 45 SLEEVE
Mettler: You had a pretty great analysis of “The Waiting” in Simple Dreams [page 25], because you were talking about how you analyze singers to find where their influences come through, and how you figured out where he was coming from.
Ronstadt: That song was just an intricate musical journey. I just kept going, “Oh, you got that from Mick Jagger.” “Oh, you got that from Bob Dylan.” “Oh, you got that from The Beatles.” “Oh, there’s some Jackson Browne.” He got a lot of that stuff from Roger McGuinn — those hard r’s. (Sings:) “The waaaaaiting is the harrrrrdest part…” That’s Roger McGuinn, a California accent coming from Brian Wilson. (chuckles)
Mettler: You don’t hear anyone sing like Tom. Even the way he sings a word like “me” and how he wraps into that syllable.
Ronstadt: Yeah, or “you.” (Sings:) “I want to get to yaaouuuuuuu.” (laughs) Have you ever listened to his song “Southern Accents” (1985)? God, what a beautiful song that is. What a great song that is, so beautifully done.
TOM PETTY - SOUTHERN ACCENTS _ COVER
Mettler: Would you add that one to your “Songs I Didn’t Sing” list that was in your book?
Ronstadt: No, because I’m not from the South. But I see what he’s saying exactly. I love that line about “there’s a dream I keep having where my mama comes to me/And kneels down over by the window and says a prayer for me.” It set a beautiful portrait of somebody just living there at the lower bottom, or maybe the upper bottom. A working stiff just getting through. Not special, never got any breaks. And he’s just himself, and he defines himself by his region. I just thought it was the most touching, completely non-patronizing, unflinching portrait of a kind of a poor working-class American. He’s a Southern guy, you know? “That drunk tank in Atlanta’s just a motel room to me.” Bloody hell, that’s fabulous. “Think I might go work Orlando/If them orange groves don’t freeze.” It’s just so great. Like being an itinerant worker.
Mettler: And like you said, that band, The Heartbreakers, are so great. Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench —
Ronstadt: He’s such a great keyboard player! And I’ve worked with Mike [on We Ran, in 1998]. He’s just an incredible guitar player. I just love him and his playing.
Mettler: Mike should get more recognition. He’s in that underrated camp for some reason, but he shouldn’t be.
Ronstadt: All the musicians know. And ultimately, who cares, when you’re up there playing that beautiful, elegant stuff that he plays. He just needs that, to be able to play it. I’d love to trade places with him any day of the week. (laughs) I would totally do that. What a real master he is.
PAUL SIMON - GRACELAND _ COVER 2
Mettler: One song that probably wasn’t available for you to use here — and is it even technically a duet? — is “Under African Skies,” with Paul Simon, on Graceland (1986).
Ronstadt: Well, not really. If it had been on one of my records, I would have counted it as such, and I would have included it. I was incredibly proud that I got to even stand in the same room while he was recording. I do consider him one of the truly great masters of recording. I just think he’s incredible. I think that recent record of his, So Beautiful or So What (2011), is a masterpiece. It sounds to me like every single thing he ever learned and thought about recording went into making that record and just getting incredibly exquisite sound — not too much, not too little. In fact, I would have called that record Not Too Much, Not Too Little. (laughs) He used just exactly the right amount of echo, and got an incredible sound on his voice. And he sings like a banshee — like a banshee truly, because he sings so much about death; an unflinching look at death.
I admire that record. It took a lot of guts to do that record. And I love the title. It’s just shattering. Every time I do listen to it, I listen to it really carefully all the way through and go, “Oh my God, that’s really something.” (chuckles)
Mettler: I like that there’s a group of songwriters who haven’t stopped creating. They continue to push boundaries even this far into their careers.
Ronstadt: He’s riding at the top of his talent! There are only a few people who are doing that. Leonard Cohen is doing that, Paul Simon is, Neil Young. Neil knows exactly what he wants to do while he’s experimenting with stuff. He has certain things in mind. Oh gosh, his stuff is soooo good! So good. I love the way he mixes. I like the way he thinks about sound. He’s so good.
Mettler: Tell me more about your performance on “Under African Skies,” which, I have to say, is one of my favorites of your performances on someone else’s record.
PAULSIMON - IN SOUTH AFRICA 1987
Ronstadt: Paul called me up one day and said, “I’m having a hard time on this work; I’m stuck. Give me an idea, something I can see.” I happened to be in Tucson when he called. “Give me something you saw or thought of when you were growing up.” Immediately, I thought of visiting the San Xavier del Bac Mission, where we used to spend a lot of time. It was built in the 1600s, just south of Tucson, founded by Father Kino. [San Xavier was founded as a Catholic mission by Father Eusebio Kino in 1692.] It’s just meant to be one of the most beautiful missions in North America. Just gorgeous. It was built on a sacred spot, one of the Indians’ sacred mountains. So it feels like a holy spot, regardless of what religion you subscribe to, or even if you’re like me and don’t subscribe to any religion. It feels like a really resident, amazing place. So I told Paul about that, and he put that in there, and then we all sang harmonies all the time when I was a kid growing up. The whole family sang. We all sang in harmony, everybody knew how to sing harmony. So that’s how he wound up with those lyrics.
Mettler: How great that you grew up in a house where everybody sang all the time: your folks, your grandparents —
Ronstadt: Yeah, we did! And we didn’t do it because we wanted to get onstage; we sang it because we wanted to sing. (laughs) That’s probably the best reason to do it! And that’s what we did!
Mettler: And then you got out the 78s, and —
Ronstadt: Yeah, and they sounded great! 78 monarual; sounded pretty good! (laughs heartily)
LINDA RONSTADT & PETER ASHER _ BACK IN THE DAY
Mad Recorded Love: Ronstadt & Asher, back in the day.
Mettler: Tell me about working all those years with Peter Asher. You guys got amazingly in sync. [Peter Asher produced most of Linda’s recorded output in the ’70s and ’80s.]
Ronstadt: Peter is a very, very highly skilled producer. People don’t really know what a producer does, a lot of the time — including me, when I first started working with him. Often I didn’t even know what he was achieving, right in front of my face. But a lot of it is knowing what’s going to fit later on, so that you’re constructing the right kind of foundation for what you’re going to add later — you’re troubleshooting. He’s incredibly good at that. He was able to sort out arrangement ideas without imposing his ideas on it by letting the musicians, the artists in our case, be the ones who evolved those arrangement ideas. And Peter prevented things from degenerating into a muddle, which they could do pretty fast if he wasn’t around. It’s a subtle thing, just to listen and make thoughtful corrections, or no corrections at all, as often might be the case. And he knew the difference.
Mettler: And how nice that, in the ’80s, you were able to transition to your personal passion for doing standards.
Ronstadt: Peter had never even listened to a lot of that stuff! He started listening, and then realized what kind of quality there were in the songs.
LINDA RONSTADT 2004 PIC 3 _ PHOTO BY ROCKY SCHENCK
Adieu Linda, circa 2004. Photo by Rocky Schenck.
Mettler: You make a great point. There was this incredible standard of songwriting at the beginning of the 20th century that needed to be revisited.
Ronstadt: It was so ridiculous. Everybody wanted to posture — that rock & roll posture. They thought it was cool because it was sort of off-putting and it gave you power, and gave you big face. They really wanted to jump on all that, and it was so silly. There were so many different things you could do.
I mean, what do you do with a guy like Paul Simon if only hard rock & roll, like The Rolling Stones, is the definition of what’s “right”? What are you gonna do with a guy like Jimmy Webb, or Leonard Cohen, or Randy Newman? Are they just supposed to stand by the side and hum their tunes to themselves? It’s just ridiculous.
Mettler: If Randy Newman wants to sit at a piano for 2 hours and play songs like “Sail Away,” why not?
Ronstadt: It’s all influenced by rock & roll. Look at that guy from New Orleans, Fats Domino — you can certainly hear it in his voice. He certainly knows how to play rock & roll, from the fundamentals on out. But he’s clearly done something else with it.
Or you have somebody like The McGarrigle Sisters. Where are you going to put them? I hate that kind of thing where pop music has to be defined by x, y, and z. It should be a free-for-all in there.
Mettler: Artists should do what they want to do. And whatever you, the artist, decided to do is what I, the listener, should be interested in hearing.
Ronstadt: It’s on them, the artists, to make you want to listen. They have to do it, they have to do something that demands that you listen. If they don’t, then they’re shit out of luck! (chuckles) They’ll have to go live in the closet. But if they do, then they’re entitled to it, regardless of what their style is.
Mettler: Didn’t somebody say that in a book of hers…?
Ronstadt: Art is there to help you process your feelings, to help you transcend moments that are too unbearable to deal with.
FRANK SINATRA -DUETS II _ COVER
Mettler: For your duet with Frank Sinatra, “Moonlight in Vermont” [originally released on his Duets II album in 1994], you and Frank didn’t actually sing together in the same room, right?
Ronstadt: They sent me a track with his vocal on it, so that I could put on the harmony and sing some solo parts myself. He was having a lot of trouble with his voice by then — he was older, but I knew his voice really well and had great respect for it. As Rosemary Clooney would say, “He was still dangerous. There’s still plenty of story there, and there’s plenty of color and texture to work with.”
What I really wanted to do was to set up a sound halo around him so that I could complement what I thought were the little pieces that were missing; the little holes in his voice here and there. And try to deal with where his pitch had settled, because he was a guy who had incredibly good pitch his entire life, and it was mostly still there. But there were some places where his voice had gotten weak and the pitching wayward, and there wasn’t any way to correct it electronically without turning it into something robot-sounding, so I just had to learn to dial up that pitch myself and roll with it so that it wouldn’t sound out of tune. That was hard, and took a lot of finesse. I had to do a lot of ad-libbing around him.
Mettler: Right, those were the only “ooh-oohs” I remember hearing from you on the entire Duets record.
Ronstadt: I remember [conductor/composer] Nelson Riddle telling me his job was to support the singer and flesh out the stuff that might be lacking and support the strong stuff that was there, but not ever get in the way of it. And that’s how I felt about that vocal.
Mettler: Had you ever met Frank Sinatra in person?
Ronstadt: I’m trying to remember if I ever met him — I don’t think I did. I got a letter from his producer [Phil Ramone] that when he got the tracks the two of us did, he was outside of his house, and he put it on the system he had there that went inside and outside and all over the house, and he put it on repeat and played it all day. He really liked it. Mind you, he was walking around back and forth. (laughs) But his producer told me he really, really liked it, and that’s what he did.
LAURIE LEWIS Bird Songstress: Laurie Lewis.
Mettler: The previously unreleased track on Duets, “Pretty Bird,” is just you and Laurie Lewis singing together. Where did you unearth that one?
Ronstadt: It was originally intended to be a tribute record to Hazel Dickens , which was a project that never got off the ground, but in the meantime, Laurie and I had recorded that. And it was just languishing. I remembered that we had done it and I asked Laurie if she could get it back, and she did. I love the song. I think the song is just beautiful. Laurie found it. I love her; she’s just a wonderful person. A good musician.
Mettler: Do you feel comfortable with the overall scope of the Duets collection, as in, “Hey, this is me” and not just, “Well, I’ve got to do these certain things for the times”?
Ronstadt: Well, I think it’s an evolution, following a bit of the journey I went on. (laughs) I don’t know where it started and where it ended, but – for instance, the song I did with James Ingram [“Somewhere Out There,” from An American Tail, 1986] was never on any of my records. It wasn’t exactly my style in terms of recording and its approach, but I thought the song was nice and he sang so beautifully. I loved singing with him.
Mettler: And also having “Sisters” with Bette Midler under the same roof —
Ronstadt: I loved having “Sisters” [from Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Sony Songbook, 2003]. I loved singing with Bette Midler, I loved it! I loved that song. I’m such a huge fan of Rosemary Clooney. I was a good friend of hers and I loved being able to do it. I love my sisters, and we used to sing that song together.
And Bette is such a good interpreter. She really is a good singer, especially for stuff like that. Her voice really shines on standards, I think.
Mettler: The “uh huh!” moment you guys had there was one of my favorites.
Ronstadt: (squeals) Oh, I love that! (chuckles) She’s got such a wicked little sound in her — a wicked little twinkle in her eyes, and a wicked little twinkle in her notes, too.
Mettler: Since there was a Duets II for Mr. Sinatra that you were a part of, I think you may have to do a Duets II yourself. It’s only fair.
Ronstadt: It depends on the record companies. I don’t have any power to put out stuff like that on my own — I don’t think. Maybe I do.
Mettler: Yeah you do! Sure you do!
Ronstadt: Maybe I do. (laughs) I never think of it. I never listen to the records once I’m finished with them — but I remember moments that I really like. I should look, maybe. I doubt there’d be a market for it, but who knows…
NEIL YOUNG - HARVEST _ DVD-AUDIO COVER
Mettler: What can you tell me about working with Neil Young and James Taylor on Harvest (1972), on the songs “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man”? What made that so special?
Ronstadt: It was just a long, long, long, long night, but it didn’t matter how tired you got — there was no discomfort, even though I was exhausted. And there was no pain in my knees, even though I had been kneeling with them on the floor for hours at a time. My voice was just ragged, just shredded, but I didn’t care. It was just pure joy to do that song.
James had come into the studio [Quadrafonic Studios in Nashville, in 1971] and there was this banjo with six strings on it, tuned like a guitar. He picked it up and started fooling around with it. I don’t know who it belonged to; it might have belonged to Elliot Roberts [Neil’s manager]. And that’s how “Old Man” wound up with that banjo sound, though it was really a guitar. But I liked the kind of sound it settled into. And Kenny Buttrey was playing the drums, I remember. [The Harvest band was known as the Stray Gators.]
Who else was there — well, I remember there was this beautiful snowstorm afterward. We just did it over and over and it took a looooooong time to do those two tracks. But we didn’t start until around midnight. We’d already worked all day long on the TV show [The Johnny Cash Show, recorded at the Ryman Auditorium]. I mean, why people thought they could go and record after a long day doing a TV show, I don’t know. But it never occurred to us that we couldn’t. We were young and we were in the groove, so we kept playing! (laughs)
NEIL YOUNG - HARVEST MOON _ COVEER
Mettler: And now you have an indelible record — and a pretty nice sequel, Harvest Moon (1992), as well.
Ronstadt: It was so fun to record that! Nicolette Larson — I had Nicky on that, right! [They both sang backing vocals together on “War of Man.”] I loved singing with her, we had so much fun. We spent more time giggling and laughing than singing. We had so much fun.
Mettler: And you got “Lotta Love” going for her, isn’t that right?
Ronstadt: Yeah, I suggested that. Neil had sent it to me on a tape of a bunch of songs of his, and I said to her, “Oh, you should sing this.” That was a hit for her. [Nicolette’s Larson’s version of Neil Young’s “Lotta Love” reached #8 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart in February 1979.]
And I introduced them, too. Nicky and Neil were an item for a while; they were very cute together. She was madly in love with him.
Mettler: Ah, so it’s all you…
Ronstadt: Well, not all me! (laughs) I think Nicky and Neil had something to do with it. They were great together. And Nicky and Neil sounded real wonderful together when they sang, I thought. A really good blend.
Mettler: You’re not singing anymore; you’re retired, as you’ve said. Any songs that got away, any songs you would have liked to have done?
Ronstadt: Oh, you know… there are a lot of them. (chuckles) “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” by Warren Zevon, that’s the one I’ve been thinking about lately. I wish… (sings:) “tell my sister, tell my mother,”… “Tell My Sister,” a McGarrigle Sisters song. There are a lot of McGarrigle Sisters songs.
LOS LOBOS - La Pistola y El Corazon _ COVER
God, there are so many Mexican songs I wish I had done. And I wish I had been able to have recorded a duet album with David Hidalgo [of Los Lobos]. I love his singing, I love his songs. I wore out La Pistola y El Corazon (1988). And I did finally get to sing it with him. We did get to sing it together one night [at a benefit for the Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center in the San Francisco East Bay, 2008]. He said, “Let’s make a record together!” But my voice was gone by then. I couldn’t sing anymore.
Mettler: Does it feel any different now?
Ronstadt: No, there’s no signal from the brain to the muscle at this point. It’s a movement disorder. And it requires incredibly precise, complex movements to sing. There’s the number of vibrations per second you have to have to sing going up and down your vocal chords, and how you have to be able to turn the muscles so you have different planes you have to reflect off of. It’s impossible to do it when you have Parkinson’s Disease.
Mettler: Is that frustrating for you? Are you OK with it?
Ronstadt: Yeah, I’m fine with it. It’s only something I’ve been dealing with for the past number of years or so. There’s nothing I can do for it. Laurie Lewis came over to my house with three girls who could really sing — very talented, really original songs, wonderful harmonies. They sang a capella in my living room all afternoon. I was dying to sing with them (laughs), but I loved hearing them!
Mettler: It’s great you’re in such good spirits about it. Some people might feel a different way.
Ronstadt: Well, I’m not in good spirits; it’s just that I don’t have any other choice. I mean, you can’t drag around about something that’s inevitable. If you lose an arm, do you just stop? You use the other arm, because you have one. (laughs) Or you have somebody else do it for you.
Mettler: I think you can be the “accidental producer,” as you called it, or something like that…
Ronstadt: Well, I don’t know the market now, it’s so — I find it extremely moving, the music business. The things that I love, like the music that comes out of Northern Mexico, the norteno-corridos. I don’t like the drug business (laughs), but that’s what I listen to. When I listen to the radio, I put on the Mexican station.
Mettler: The music business seems to be comprised of compartmentalized niches across the board now. There’s really no mass market, per se, but I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But it’s like you were saying — the artist will put out what they’re going to put out, and the audience will find it. Whether it’s as big as it was in the ’70s, is irrelevant.
Ronstadt: Yeah, and there’s stuff that’s out there that’s on YouTube and the Internet. I found this group called the Comedian Harmonists, this German group from before World War II [circa the 1930s], four- and five-part harmonies, just absolutely brilliant. Brilliant craftsmen and incredibly good singers, incredibly good composers, just some of the best music groups I’d ever heard. I listened to them nonstop for a year. Then Carlo Gesualdo, the [Italian] madrigal composer from the 1600s. So many things you can find. Lately, I’ve been listening to Estrella Morente, the flamenco singer from Spain. One of the best singers I’ve ever heard from anywhere. She’s a huge star in Spain, but she’s not really that big here. Her voice is absolutely gorgeous.
Mettler: I guess that’s the one beauty of things being so readily available to us now as opposed to when we were growing up and could really only pick and choose what we could hear.
Ronstadt: Yeah. And there’s nobody sort of sorting things out for you, saying, “Here!” — unless you want to count things like Pandora, which I really don’t want to. I think it’s subversive for music. There’s nobody sorting things out. I’ve tried. I mean, I love pop music, but I’ve heard it… and I’ve heard it, you know? I’m looking for other things. I’m looking for the source of it all more than I am for pop music. I’m a ballad singer. I like to sing ballads. (chuckles) Ballads with a broader philosophical view — that’s what I like.
LINDA RONSTADT 2004 PIC 1 _ PHOTO BY ROCKY SCHENCK Desert Rose: Ronstadt, circa 2004. Photo by Rocky Schenck.
Mettler: Finally, how important is sound quality to you as both artist and listener?
Ronstadt: Oh, it’s essential. It’s essential. For instance, with my voice, there’s a certain frequency range that carries a story. That has the vocal detail, and the little grind at the top of your voice with the shifting textures and colors. And when you can’t hear that, you lose the story. It’s essential to have what the artist originally intended to have on the recording, because that’s how they’re trying to tell the story.
The recording process itself is the other artist in the room. The board is an instrument, and mixing is an artist, another musician. Without it, you edit the story almost to the point where it’s nonexistent.
Tags: 5.1, Adieu False Heart, Ann Savoy, Bette Midler, Blu-ray, CD, Comedian Harmonists, Cry Like a Rainstorm Howl Like the Wind, David Hidalgo, Dolly Parton, Duets, Duets II, Emmylou Harris, Estrella Morente, Feels Like Home, Frank Sinatra, Gary Paczosa, George Massenburg, Graceland, Harvest, Harvest Moon, Hazel Dickens, Heart of Gold, hi-res, Hummin to Myself, Jackson Browne, James Ingram, James Taylor, JBL, JD Souther, Kenny Buttrey, La Pistola y El Corazon, Laurie Lewis, Linda Ronstadt, Los Lobos, Lotta Love, LP, McGarrigle Sisters, Mike Campbell, Moonlight in Vermont, Neil Young, Nelson Riddle, Nicolette Larson, Old Man, Paul Simon, Peter Asher, Phil Ramone, Pretty Bird, Rosemary Clooney, Simple Dreams, Sisters, Skywalker Ranch, Somewhere Out There, Stray Gators, The Heartbreakers, The Waiting, Tom Petty, Under African Skies, vinyl, War of Man, Warren Zevon, We Ran, What's New, Winter Light
By Mike Mettler|March 28th, 2016|The SoundBard Interview|4 Comments www.soundbard.com/soundbard/author/MikeMettler/ www.soundbard.com/soundbard/category/qa-soundbard-artist-interviews/ www.soundbard.com/soundbard/sound-quality-dreams-linda-ronstadt-on-her-unyielding-passion-for-true-high-fidelity/#comments
About the Author: Mike Mettler
Founder / Editor-In-Chief of SoundBard.com. Inveterate audiophile, chasing higher fidelity. Vinyl fanatic. HRA proponent. Disc hoarder. Surviving paradoxes daily.
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Duets
Oct 21, 2023 20:42:32 GMT
Post by the Scribe on Oct 21, 2023 20:42:32 GMT
Duets: Singing down the walls of racism www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/13/1972987/-Duets-Singing-down-the-walls-of-racism Denise Oliver Velez, author by Denise Oliver Velez for Community Contributors Team Community Sunday, September 13, 2020 at 5:59:21a MST
Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt sing a duet at the 1990 Grammys.
I was listening to Patti Labelle and Gladys Knight sing “I Don’t Do Duets,” and I realized that in this #BlackMusicSunday series, I hadn’t explored famous duets between some of our greatest vocalists.
www.dailykos.com/tags/BlackMusicSunday
While making a list of famous duets in a variety of Black music genres, it hit me that some duo pairings across racial lines have helped break down barriers of racism and discrimination endemic in both the music industry and in our society.
Join me in a celebration of musicians making music together while pushing aside taboos, opening the ears and hearts of listeners and fans, and building bridges, not barriers.
Hard to believe (or maybe not so hard to fathom for those of you who are older) that a firestorm of outrage was ignited in April of 1968 when British pop singer Petula Clark touched the arm of folk singer Harry Belafonte on national television. www.petulaclark.net/pages/biography.html www.biography.com/musician/harry-belafonte
Yes, you read it right—she touched his arm.
Donald Liebenson reported the story in 2018 for Vanity Fair: Years Ago, a White Woman Touching a Black Man on TV Caused a National Commotion. www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/04/harry-belafonte-petula-clark-1968-civil-rights-arm-touch-national-commotion
On April 2, 1968, America watched as, for the first time, a white woman touched a black man’s arm on primetime television. The white woman was Petula Clark, the two-time Grammy-winning British singer with a slew of top 10 hits, including “Downtown” and “My Love;” at the time, she was a popular guest on variety series ranging from Shindig!, Hullabaloo, and Where the Action Is (for the kids) to The Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace (for the adults). The black man was Harry Belafonte, the Grammy-winning American singer and civil-rights advocate whose signature tune, “The Banana Boat Song,” brought calypso music to a mainstream audience. That fleeting moment was controversial enough to prompt an executive with the Chrysler Corporation, the program’s sponsor, to protest vehemently—turning what one critic would eventually call “a stylish, sophisticated musical hour” into an inter-racial cause célèbre.
To this day, Clark cannot believe that “the incident” caused such a “rumpus.” She didn’t invite Belafonte to appear on the special in order to make a cultural statement: “As far as I was concerned, he was just a great artist,” she says now. “I’m a very organic performer. There are no big statements. Things just happen.”…
Clark and Belafonte agreed to duet on “On the Path of Glory,” an anti-war song Clark had co-written. Binder’s original staging of the number had Belafonte downstage and Clark upstage, glimpsed over Belafonte’s shoulder. “It was great visually,” Binder says, “but it didn’t feel like they connected. After a few takes, I told Petula to try one where she walks downstage to Harry’s side. That’s when the magic happened; the emotion of the lyrics [resonated] in their voices and on their faces. All of a sudden, she reaches over and puts her hand over Harry’s forearm.“
This was the level of fear for the purity of white womanhood being tarnished by a Black male in a time not so very long ago or far away. When you realize it was only 52 years ago and we’re still embroiled in a morass of racism, it can be mind-boggling. However, it’s important to also see how musical pairings have changed the racial landscape.
The beauty of this 1989 duet between Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville, shown here live at the 1990 Grammy Awards, performing their award winning duet “Don’t Know Much,” can hardly be equaled. They not only sing a love song, they dance together slowly during a musical interlude, and after the last notes are sung, they kiss.
Ron Givens wrote in 1990: ew.com/article/1990/08/17/linda-rondstadt-and-aaron-neville/
Something magical happens when Ronstadt’s buttermilk soprano meets Neville’s creamy falsetto. ”We don’t sing the same style at all,” Ronstadt says, ”but when we sing up high together we just blend.”
Those sweet harmonies soared to unexpected heights last year. Ronstadt and Neville recorded four duets for her solo album Cry Like a Rainstorm — Howl Like the Wind and became the First Couple of pop music. In 10 months Cry has sold nearly two million copies, and three of the Ronstadt-Neville tunes have been chart hits: ”Don’t Know Much,” which peaked at No. 2 before winning a Grammy for the duo in February, ”All My Life,” and ”When Something Is Wrong With My Baby.”
Probably one of the most famous musical pairings reaching across racial divides—though it was two men and therefore less perilous—is implicit in its title, “Ebony and Ivory,” which linked Stevie Wonder with Paul McCartney. It alluded to not only piano keys, but to the potential for harmony between Blacks and whites.
Though it was bashed by cynical critics as being saccharine and unrealistic, that didn’t stop the listening public from buying enough records to make it No. 1 in 1982. The History Channel noted the date. www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/song/ebony-and-ivory/
“Ebony And Ivory” begins a seven-week run at #1 on the pop charts www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ebony-and-ivory-begins-a-seven-week-run-at-1-on-the-pop-charts
Paul McCartney crafted the biggest hit record of his post-Beatles career: “Ebony And Ivory.” Recorded as a duet with the great Stevie Wonder, “Ebony And Ivory” took the top spot in the Billboard Hot 100 on May 15, 1982 and didn’t relinquish it until seven weeks later.
McCartney had been a fan of Stevie Wonder’s for many years before they first met. He even included a Braille message for Stevie—”We love you”—on the back of his 1973 Wings album Red Rose Speedway. Wonder spent the 1970s recording a string of incredible albums that often included songs expressing a strong social consciousness. It’s not surprising, then, that McCartney thought of Stevie Wonder as a duet partner for “Ebony And Ivory.”
Stevie Wonder agreed, and his duet with Paul McCartney not only yielded a smash-hit record that topped the charts on this day in 1982, but it also continued a trend toward pop music power-couplings that was particularly prevalent in the early 1980s.
Probably because it was on McCartney’s album, it got played on MTV before they “erased” the color barrier with Michael Jackson and Prince in 1983. www.liveabout.com/when-mtv-first-aired-black-videos-2834657
McCartney and Wonder reprised their hit for President Obama in 2010.
Some duets crossed genres. R&B met country rock in this version of Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” by Al Green and Lyle Lovett, which garnered them a Grammy in 1995. (Since country is one of the music genres I am least familiar with, had it not been for this recording I may have never been introduced to Lovett.) The song was released on a 1994 album of duet collaborations, “Rhythm Country and Blues.” Orlando Sentinel music reviewer Parry Gettelman wrote: www.amazon.com/Rhythm-Country-Blues-Various-Artists/dp/B000002OR2 www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1994-03-04-9403021079-story.html
There are duets that also reflect friendships that extend beyond the music world. Patti LaBelle and Cyndi Lauper have bonds woven with love and music. Patti is the godmother to Cyndi’s son Declyn Wallace Thornton and sang at Lauper’s wedding. In 1985 LaBelle was the star of an NBC TV special, with guests Luther Vandross, Amy Grant, and Lauper. m.imdb.com/name/nm0861513/?ref_=m_nmtrv_nm
I fell in love with this duet of Lauper’s hit song, “Time After Time.” They also do a rousing version of “Lady Marmalade.” ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/time-after-time.html
As a former Astoria, Queens, New York resident, I can identify with Lauper’s attitude.
This is the face I make when I find out people are trying to talk smack about my friend #PattiLaBelle! Never think that I'm not from Queens for one second. 😤💪 pic.twitter.com/nBoH7wdEej twitter.com/hashtag/PattiLaBelle?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw t.co/nBoH7wdEej
— Cyndi Lauper (@cyndilauper) July 5, 2020
The chart-topping musical duet between these two songbirds of opposite colors, and from different worlds, was an unlikely pairing, and recorded during the disco era.
Tom Breihan, senior editor at Stereogum, gave background details about the match-up in The Number Ones: Barbra Streisand & Donna Summer’s “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” www.stereogum.com/2075197/the-number-ones-barbra-streisand-donna-summers-no-more-tears-enough-is-enough/franchises/columns/the-number-ones/
Streisand and Summer were a natural fit. They had both come from the world of musical theater, though they’d had wildly different levels of success there. Streisand was arguably the biggest star ever to come out of Broadway, while Summer had gotten her start singing in touring productions in Europe. But Streisand was new to disco, and Summer ruled that world. Streisand and Summer were both communicative singers with enormous rocket-launcher voices. The balance of power was just about equal. By most accounts, the two stars got competitive with each other during the “No More Tears” recording sessions. Neither wanted to be shown up, so both of them pushed their voices as hard as they could.
The song itself is a trifle, an excuse to get those two stars howling on a track together. It’s a song about getting sick of a lover. Streisand and Summer don’t really play different characters; they both just want the motherfucker out: “I always dreamed I’d find the perfect lover/ But he turned out to be like every other man.” Streisand was recording Wet, an aquatic-themed concept album, so she got the songwriters to add the “it’s raining, it’s pouring” intro, forcing it to fit the album’s motif. The intro is the only part of “No More Tears” that really sounds like a Barbra Streisand ballad. That intro is long, almost two minutes. It’s also terribly boring, almost by design. But after those two minutes, everything changes. “No More Tears” follows the “Last Dance” format — starting out sleepy and then suddenly lurching into dance-music overdrive. Once Streisand and Summer finish singing boringly about how their love lives are boring, the beat comes in, and everything builds. When “No More Tears” reaches full boil, producers Giorgio Moroder and Gary Klein throw all sorts of things at the two of them — wriggling synths, crashing strings, enormous drums. But the two singers are always the twin centers of attention.
As a singer, Donna Summer is the best thing that could’ve happened to Barbra Streisand. Streisand could act, obviously. She could do a forceful teary breakdown as well as anyone. But the real problem with most of Streisand’s hit songs is the sense of iron-fisted control. Streisand virtuosically bends notes, almost like she’s holding her own voice up to the light to admire it. But on “No More Tears,” Summer forces her to bring the drama. Summer herself alternates between flirty playfulness and fiery severity with effortless grace. She understands the peaks-and-valleys structure of a long disco track, and she brings Streisand along with her. In the song’s biggest and best moments, those two voices fuse together. The climactic screamed-together harmony notes hit like a CGI explosion.
White male, Black female duos were always less controversial than the reverse. One of the male music stars who had the singular honor to have performed and recorded with several of the world’s top divas was George Michael, who died on Christmas Day in 2016, leaving behind him an impressive list of hits and hookups. www.georgemichael.com/about/
At the age of 22 he was on stage at “Motown Returns to the Apollo,” singing “I Wanna Know What Love Is” with Diana Ross and other stars. He recorded “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” with Aretha Franklin in 1987, and in the same year recorded “Learn to Say No” with Jody Watley. “If I Told You That” with Whitney Houston was done in 2000; however, I’d like to share his pairing with Mary J. Blige singing Stevie Wonder’s 1976 hit “As” in 1999, which is my personal favorite.
www.maryjblige.com/bio
Of course there are duets like this from an earlier time period as well. One that always makes me smile is the 1959 interaction between Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald in “An Afternoon with Frank Sinatra” for The Frank Sinatra Timex Show, singing ”Can’t We Be Friends.” Sinatra teases Fitzgerald by mentioning a series of names of Black female vocalists; Pearl Bailey, Dinah Washington, Lena Horne, and Della Reese, who Ella then imitates. www.imdb.com/title/tt3735750/
I look forward to hearing some of your favorites in the comments section as we march toward an election starring a winning political duo: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
That’s my kind of music too, so get out the vote!www.villagevoice.com/qa-philip-glass-on-black-music-and-african-american-history/
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