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The singer whose voice wowed the L.A. music industry at the Troubadour and Palomino clubs so long ago — one of the top selling female recording artists ever — now lives in San Francisco, raises two teenagers herself, and continues to promote the mariachi music of northern Mexico. Ronstadt is the consulting artistic and educational director of the 17th Annual International Mariachi and Latin Music Festival in San Jose, and will perform there next weekend with Lila Downs and Aida Cuevas. From the New York Times:
Ms. Ronstadt used her stardom to raise the profile of Mexican music. “Canciones de Mi Padre,” released in 1987 and her first album of traditional mariachi music, became the biggest selling non-English album in United States history at the time, with sales of more than two million copies. The next year it was adapted for a Broadway show, in which she appeared in full Mexican costume, complete with fake braids....“There’s a lot of homesickness in Mexican music, a profound yearning because of the need to migrate, which is why I relate to it so much,” Ms. Ronstadt said, sitting on her chintz sofa sipping tea, her drug of choice. “I left home when I was 17, and it was quite a wrench. I was homesick my whole life.”
To hear her talk about her girlhood memories — the smell of wool on the Navajo blanket she would lie on as she begged her parents to sing, her father on the guitar and her mother on the banjo — is almost to forget about Ms. Ronstadt’s other life. That’s the one with the platinums and Grammys, the much-publicized romances with George Lucas and Jerry Brown, the Annie Leibowitz photo of her flung across her bed in a harlot-red camisole that she now somewhat disdainfully calls the “sprawling picture.”
For Ms. Ronstadt being a rock star was something of an out-of-body experience, despite being one of her generation’s sexiest brunettes. She compares the Troubadour in West Hollywood, Calif., during the mid-’60s through the mid-’70s to the Weimar Republic in Germany, “when no one had a dowry, thus rendering virginity unimportant.” She continues: “Were we supposed to be earth mothers hoeing the garden and having babies, or be tough and knock back Southern Comforts like Janis Joplin? It was a hard thing to figure out.”
Los Angeles-based Telemundo anchor José Ronstadt is her cousin. By the way, Linda Ronstadt performs at Royce Hall on Nov. 6 and here are some tickets being scalped (oops, I mean resold) for $495 each.
Factoid: Ronstadt sang the national anthem before game 3 of the 1977 World Series in center field at Dodger Stadium, and sang it memorably judging by these comments at Bob Timmermann's blog The Griddle. Here's a page with Real Media video showing Reggie Jackson, Don Sutton and Billy Martin, among others, looking on. The announcers go a little gaga over Ronstadt.
Photo: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times