Born in Arizona in 1946, Linda Ronstadt began performing with the Stone Poneys in the 1960s before finding success as a solo artist. Her breakout 1974 album, Heart Like a Wheel, earned her the first of 12 Grammy Awards. The singer was celebrated for her ability to adapt to a diverse range of styles, delivering albums that featured country, rock, jazz and Spanish-language classics. In 2013, Ronstadt revealed that she could no longer sing because of the effects of Parkinson’s disease.
Linda Ronstadt was born on July 15, 1946, in Tucson, Arizona, and grew up surrounded by music. One of Ronstadt's early musical influences was the Mexican songs her father taught her and her siblings. Her mother played the ukulele and her father played the guitar. Following in her father’s footsteps, she learned to play guitar and performed with her brother and sister as a trio.
While a student at Catalina High School, Ronstadt met local folk musician Bob Kimmel. A few years her senior, Kimmel moved to Los Angeles to pursue his music career, and tried to convince Ronstadt to do the same. She stayed put and enrolled at the University of Arizona in Tucson, but soon left school to join Kimmel in L.A.
Ronstadt and Kimmel teamed up with Kenny Edwards to form the Stone Poneys, and the folk trio released their first album in 1967. The group enjoyed modest success with their second album, Evergreen Vol. 2, which was also released in 1967. However, their only hit was “Different Drum,” which was written by Michael Nesmith of the Monkees.
By the end of the 1960s, Ronstadt had become a solo act. She put out several albums with a series of backing bands, one of them the nucleus of the group that would become the Eagles. Her early efforts were not particularly successful, though she earned a Grammy Award nomination in 1971 for the ballad “Long, Long Time.”
Here, below is a collection of 15 rarely seen photographs of Linda Ronstadt when she was a kid from the 1950s:
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