The country Linda Ronstadt said owned her “soul”
Most people who had travelled across the country for a chance to become a part of the lively scene at the Troubadour had a long journey ahead in figuring out the kind of artist they wanted to be. Linda Ronstadt, on the other hand, already had a pretty good idea of who she was.
A personality trait that was as much her superpower as it was an artistic hindrance, Ronstadt’s upbringing meant that by the time she arrived at the place that would give her her name, she already felt a strong sense of belonging, especially when it came to her Mexican heritage, a connection she carried with her across most of the material she went on to create.
Back then, the most important thing to Ronstadt was remaining true to herself, which informed many of her choices, not just how much of her heritage she injected into her performances, but also which opportunities felt the most organic or appropriate at any given time. Most of the time, if something didn’t feel right, she didn’t do it, and if it didn’t reflect her own experiences in some way, it didn’t feel representative either.
In the early stages of Ronstadt’s career, she made this positioning crystal clear, even if it didn’t land among those she was talking to. In 1967, for instance, she told a magazine that her true calling was to become “a really good Mexican singer”, but no one listened at the time, mainly because they likely didn’t know what that meant, or why Ronstadt would be so prominent in her circles if that were the case.
However, that didn’t stop her from staying focused, even after she became a major star, when she continued to tell the press and her peers that her heritage was her main driving force. Later, this mainly emerged in the form of Ronstadt’s own influences, like Lola Beltrán, whom she discussed with Rolling Stone in the 1970s. However, they misspelt it “Laura Del Turone”, which, if for nothing else, told her everything she needed to know about where they stood on her Mexican heroes.
This would be something she faced for the rest of her career, not just through lazy misprints, but from journalists or television hosts who questioned her heritage or responded to her answers about Mexican music with hostility, most of whom couldn’t quite understand why it was something she cared about, even though it was a major part of her upbringing.
A big part of this was likely because, unless you truly knew Ronstadt, or listened to what she had to say, her heritage wasn’t something that you’d immediately be aware of. But even when she pushed to bring these interests into her music, her label always had something to say – like the fact that Joan Baez had already recorded a Spanish record for the label, so Ronstadt recording a version of a song called ‘La Negra’ would have been overkill.
Suffice it to say, then, that when Ronstadt eventually lived her dream and created an all-Mexican record, it didn’t just satisfy some deeper desire to do justice to all the cultural threads she’d been yearning to pull since entering the industry, it also proved that following her own path was always going to deliver the biggest pay-off, even if no one else understood it at the time.
After all, Canciones de mi padre won a Grammy and also became the biggest-selling non-English album in US history, all while allowing her to re-align with who she always knew she was as an artist, giving her a much-needed refresh after she’d become disillusioned with rock ‘n’ roll.
As she once put it, “It’s my soul. My soul’s there. But that’s my father’s side of the soul… You know, rock and roll is who my culture was that I was born into. But you’re not always matched with your culture.”
