Tucson Music Hall to be renamed in honor of local legend Linda Ronstadt

The Tucson Music Hall will be renamed in honor of a local legend, Linda Ronstadt.

Mayor Regina Romero unveiled plans for the renaming Friday, calling Ronstadt "one of Tucson’s most iconic women" in a tweet. 

The venue will be formally renamed during the International Mariachi Conference Espectacular Concert on May 7.

In a statement, Romero said, "Linda Ronstadt is a beloved daughter of Tucson. It is time to honor her legacy and her ability to tell the story of our culture through music."

Ronstadt was among the most successful solo artists of the '70s, selling out "stupid" arenas, as she called them in a recent interview with The Republic, thanks to hits as huge as "You're No Good" and "When Will I Be Loved."

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Having launched her career in 1967 with the breakthrough single "Different Drum," a baroque ballad credited to the Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt, she managed a career-defining run of 10 Top 20 singles from 1975's "You're No Good" to 1980's "Hurt So Bad."

From there, she branched out into almost every area of music, from her starring role in "Pirates Of Penzance" on Broadway to her multiplatinum renditions of the Great American Songbook with Nelson Riddle, interpreting the mariachi classics in "Canciones de mi Padre" and teaming with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton on country albums.

After earning a Tony nomination in 1981 for her role in "The Pirates of Penzance," she moved on from the country, pop and rock sound of her hit years, recording a trilogy of albums celebrating the Great American Songbook with conductor Nelson Riddle.

These were followed by "Trio," a 1986 collaboration with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, and 1987's "Canciones De Mi Padre," the singer's first album of traditional Mexican mariachi music.

In an interview with The Republic in 2018, Ronstadt said, "In the ‘90s, I did my best singing. That was when I could sort of do whatever I wanted to do. I could make my voice do it."

She's won lifetime achievement awards from both the Grammys and the Latin Grammys. And although she prefers singing standards and Mexican folk songs to the rock 'n' roll on which she rose to fame in the '70s, Ronstadt took her rightful place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

By the time of that induction, Ronstadt had retired.

Unable to perform to her own standards, the singer gave her last performance, a Mexican show, in 2009, and retired two years later, finally learning the cause behind the loss of her ability to sing in late 2012 when she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

She did, however, tour with a highly-acclaimed one-woman show, A Conversation with Linda Ronstadt, from 2014 to 2018.

"Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice," a heartfelt documentary, won Best Music Film at last year's Grammy. 

The previous October, she received the Hispanic Heritage Foundation's Legend Award on PBS.

Romero's office said Ronstadt is scheduled to be in Tucson to unveil the music hall's new sign. 

The city also shared a statement from Ronstadt, who said, "I am fortunate to be a member of a large musical family that has been associated with the City of Tucson since the 1800s. My entire career was informed and nurtured by the music we made as I was growing up here."

The singer opened her memoir, "Simple Dreams," with a chapter titled Tucson, sharing a memory of her sister playing piano in the family's home while her brother, the soprano, sings.

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As she writes in the book, "I said, 'I want to try that.' My sister turned to my brother and said, 'Think we got a soprano here.' I was about four. I remember thinking, 'I'm a singer, that's what I do.' It was like I had become validated somehow, my existence affirmed."

In 2018, she told the Republic she still feels "very connected" to Tucson, where she returned in 1989 and lived until she moved to San Francisco in 2000.

"I have a lot of good friends and family still there," she said. "And I can find my way around town. It’s on a grid, so it’s easy. I can orient myself by the mountains. Here, I have to be able to see the Bay to know which way I’m going."

She also talked about her childhood. 

"Growing up in Tucson was learning how to play indoors because it was too hot to play outside, and a lot of going out on your own, on horseback, from a very early age," she said.

"It wasn’t that our parents were negligent. It’s just the way things were done in those days. It’s a miracle we lived to tell the tale. When I was 6 years old, I’d get on a pony and go someplace. It was like having a car when you were 6. And I think the town was only about 100,000 people, 150,000 people. You could always find a parking place."

She said they'd ride their ponies to the market, tie them up and go inside to have a cherry phosphate.

Ronstadt also spoke to the Republic about her Grammy-winning 1987 album "Canciones de Mi Padre" honoring the Mexican side of her heritage.

The singer's grandparents were born in Mexico.

As a child in Tucson, Ronstadt said, "We sang a lot of Mexican folk songs. And stuff we heard on the radio. We sang everything we heard. But the stuff I loved the best was the Mexican music that came out of the rural culture, agrarian culture."

Ronstadt had wanted to make an album like "Canciones de Mi Padre" from the time she left Tucson to launch her career in Los Angeles. 

"When I left home for Los Angeles, I took along a record by Lola Beltran and another record by the Mariachi Vargas," she said.

"I wanted to learn the songs and figure out how to make them into pop songs, like 'La Bamba.' That’s a traditional song. But the guys I was playing with didn’t have any idea how to make that kind of music."

When she won the Hispanic Heritage Foundation's Legend Award, Ronstadt spoke about the struggle to get that record made. 

"I had a hit record and I asked the record company if I could record in Spanish. They said, 'No.'"

She kept insisting, though. 

"And finally," she said, "I had enough hit records that I could just tell the record company, 'Guess what? This is what you're getting.'"

To the label's credit, Ronstadt says, "they stepped up and tried to figure out how to sell it. They didn't have any idea how to market a Mexican record."

It became the biggest-selling non-English language album in U.S. history.

"I was grateful," Ronstadt said. "I hadn't thought about it while I was making it. I just thought, 'I'm gonna make this record and it's gonna be fine.'"

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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