The one singer Linda Ronstadt listens to the most: “Voice like cracked crystal”
For someone who lived and breathed vocal technique, you weren’t going to find a harsher critic of Linda Ronstadt’s music than Linda Ronstadt.
She had everything it took to be a pop star before she had even recorded her classics, but even when sharing the stage with everyone from the Eagles to The Rolling Stones, Ronstadt felt that the biggest Achilles heel of her songs was her voice whenever she walked out of the vocal booth. It was painful for her to go back and listen to anything that she did back in the day, but she could at least surround herself with some of her favourite artists along the way.
Then again, Ronstadt knew that the raw vocal performance didn’t matter as much as the song half the time. Neil Young was among her favourite singers ever, but you wouldn’t exactly call him one of the greatest voices in the world. He was singing from the heart every single time he performed, and as long as Ronstadt had tunes like that in her arsenal, she knew she would be able to sell anything.
That said, it’s not like Ronstadt was set to stay in one style for very long. She wasn’t exactly David Bowie by any stretch, but her time as one of the biggest country stars in the world wasn’t meant to last. She wanted the opportunity to stretch a little bit, and while many people would baulk at the idea of their favourite singer going on Broadway or trying their hand at singing old Big Band numbers, Ronstadt was never going to apologise for following her heart whenever she entered the studio.
Being a great artist was all that mattered to her, but there were always a few singers who kept her coming back to country music. She was always close friends with the Eagles when they were first getting their songs off the ground, but even in the era that brought us beautiful songs from Gram Parsons to Crosby, Stills, and Nash, no one seemed to have full control over their music quite like Emmylou Harris.
She may have refined her chops by working with people like Parsons back in the day, but her approach to country was a lot more subtle. There were a few high-energy numbers in her set, like a version of The Miracles’ ‘Shop Around’, but her delicate voice was absolutely perfect when Ronstadt first started listening to her.
And even when they joined forces with Dolly Parton to put together their Trio albums, Ronstadt maintained that Harris was one of the only singers that she always had time for, saying, “There’s just nobody that sings like Emmy. There’s nobody that sings like her. Her voice is like cracked crystal, it’s just this beautiful light airy beautiful translucent thing that all of a sudden has this grit in it. There’s nobody I like better to listen to. There’s people I like as much, which are my favorite singers, which are Maria Callas, mainly my favorite singer, and Lola Beltran. But she’s just a great singer.”
But beyond her vocal tone, Ronstadt and Harris always seemed to work better together because they saw music in the same way. They wanted to make sure that they could give performances that tugged on that one heartstring that people hadn’t thought of yet, and while that did lead to some disagreements with Parton on certain Trio songs, that didn’t mean they couldn’t still have a few duets together as well.
There’s a lot of people in the business that remind everyone why they shouldn’t meet their heroes, but Ronstadt and Harris might be the ultimate exception to that rule. Some are in it for the money and some are in it for the fame, but rarely are you going to find two singers that genuinely love playing music with each other as much as this.
