Grease guns, electric stoves, and milking machines: Linda Ronstadt’s strange family history
Everyone knows that nepotism is rife in the music and entertainment industry at large, but a transcendental rock star being related to the inventor of the rubber ice cube tray is, admittedly, something of a surprising connection. Yet, in many ways, how could you expect anything less of Linda Ronstadt, whose eclectic musical mixture is ultimately rooted in her family’s pioneering spirits?
Since breaking into her career in the mid-1960s amid the burgeoning folk-rock scene in California, Ronstadt’s approach to music has been peripatetic, to say the least. Over the span of 24 albums, she has encompassed everything from her beloved rock to country to Latin—and has no less than 11 Grammys under her belt to prove it. But looking back over the singer’s ancestry, it soon becomes clear that this inventive vision is nothing new because it’s literally in her DNA.
Hailing from Arizona, the Ronstadts were a prominent ranching family who made a huge impact on their state’s industrial history. In particular, the singer’s maternal grandfather, Lloyd Copeland, was a prolific inventor with over 700 patents for different products credited to his name – from the rubber ice cube tray, the grease gun, the electric milking machine, and early forms of both the microwave and the electric toaster.
Leaning into her ancestry, Ronstadt previously told The Guardian that: “He [Copeland] invented a lot of stuff. He was brilliant and he was always working on something. He was so successful that he was judged to be third behind Thomas Edison in the number of useful patents he had developed.”
But it’s clear that as far as material resourcefulness goes, Copeland was not the only crafty member of the family. For the part of Ronstadt’s other grandfather, Federico José María Ronstadt, he was also a pioneering businessman who created one of Arizona’s earliest public transport systems through the idea for mule-drawn streetcars. It must be a tough crowd when you come from a family of wall-to-wall geniuses.
Ronstadt’s status as the ‘First Lady of Rock’ could merely be seen as a natural succession given the calibre of lineage she comes from. With so many stories of success already swirling in her head by the time she hit the California beat, it’s hardly surprising that the family jump from inventing to music was a deft one, making her a sure-fire hit that was never in doubt. While it’s not nepotism of the conventional kind, it’s absolutely certain that Ronstadt’s ethos of ingenuity was ingrained very early on, and she has an electric milking machine to thank for all of it.
So, the next time you’re pinging your dinner in the microwave or waiting on your toast in the morning, you can think of Linda Ronstadt and her line of inventing ancestry for gracing us with the novelty. Who would have thought that a blazing beacon of rock music and a rubber ice cube tray would be so directly connected? Every family has a backstory, but evidently, the Ronstadts have a more interesting one than most.
