For those of us who followed and loved her music in the mid seventies, this is shattering news. I get it that everyone gets old and dies, but I somehow thought that Linda would fall in the line of service, going out with a microphone in her hand and band behind her.
Consider this 1972 clip from The Midnight Special. As beautiful as this is, it was not atypical. She always sounded this way.
This clip is from the very early days in which she was just beginning to explode on the national scene as a great vocalist in the pop/country rock tradition. Albums like Heart Like a Wheel, Prisoner in Disguise, and Hasten Down the Wind, were the trilogy that defined her dominance as the female vocalist of popular music in the 1970s.
Female vocalist of the current era--even accomplished ones--occasionally get into lip-syncing controversies. It is simply unimaginable that Linda Ronstadt would ever lip sync a performance.
I saw Linda in concert in 1975 at the Southern Illinois University campus just after she had released Hasten Down the Wind. It was the best concert I ever saw. Every song was note perfect. In 2005 I attended a Simon and Garfunkel concert in Baltimore, which may have surpassed it, but it is a close call.
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