Elvis Week starts at Graceland on August 8. Thousands of fans will head to Memphis to celebrate the musicElvis made after he left Sun Records. Linda Ronstadt won’t be joining them in spirit. She told Goldmine magazine that Elvis “was good only when he was on Sun Records” and when asked if she liked any of his gospel songs said simply “I don’t like any of it.” This is the same woman who said she often thought her album covers were better than the records. With Elvis, she’s even less forgiving.
When Goldmine curated a list of great American singers including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Dinah Washington, Harry Nilssonand Waylon Jennings they included Elvis Presley, too. Ronstadt had no issue with anyone else on that list. Just Elvis. Her answer was two words: “Not Elvis.” She elaborated: “He was good only when he was on Sun Records, but he never made anything good after that.” Sun Records was around for just about two years from roughly 1954 to 1955. .
Related: Linda Ronstadt Hired Two Unknowns for 1971 Disneyland Concert — Accidentally Assembling One of Rock’s Greatest Bands
That’s “Mystery Train,” “That’s All Right” and “Baby Let’s Play House” — raw stripped-back recordings that sounded like nothing else in American music. Everything after that she considers a commercial compromise. When the conversation turned to his gospel recordings she didn’t soften. “I don’t like any of it. Give me Aretha Franklin and Emmylou Harris anytime. And Jennifer Warnes and Bonnie Raitt can both leave me in the dust.” Both are vocalists who’ve always put the song above the career. So has Ronstadt. That’s the point.
That’s not a hot take. That’s a philosophy. And it’s one she’s applied to herself just as ruthlessly for 60 years.
When Tiger Beat asked her in 1967 what her aspirations were she said all she wanted was to be a good Mexican singer. The interviewer had no idea what she meant. By the 1970s, she was widely called the ‘Queen of Rock‘ — the most successful female rock artist of the decade. Record labels warned her she’d torpedo her career. She left anyway and went to Broadway. She was very frustrated musically. “I didn’t really start singing until 1980” she later said. The Nelson Riddle albums. The orchestral recordings her rock fans didn’t understand. Same test. Same standard. Elvis failed it after 1955. Ronstadt feels she failed it for most of the 1970s.
The Woman Who Said She Didn’t Start Singing Until 1980 Has Very Specific Standards
Ronstadt was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2013 and tragically can no longer sing. She told AARP she couldn’t sing for the last five or six years she appeared onstage but kept performing anyway. She kept trying to figure out what was wrong. “I kept thinking, ‘What if I tried singing upside down? Or standing on my head? Or while juggling? Maybe I’d be able to sing better then.'” But, she just couldn’t. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 but declined to attend the ceremony.
@elvisprley Elvis Presley – Baby I Don’t Care (1957) | #elvis #elvispresley #music #50s
♬ original sound – 𝐄𝐥𝐯𝐢𝐬
She told Tiger Beat in 1967 she wanted to be a good Mexican singer. Twenty years later she made “Canciones de Mi Padre” — still the best-selling non-English language album in US music history. The interviewer who didn’t understand her in 1967 was answered in 1987.
She can no longer sing. But the standards haven’t changed. Not even The King gets a pass.
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