Tucson legend Linda Ronstadt's labor of love gets a second life

On the 30th anniversary of Linda Ronstadt’s seminal 1987 album “Canciones de mi Padre,” Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano recalled how the album came at a watershed time for Mexican Americans.

“Our generation would become the first group of Mexican Americans to grow up comfortable with both sides of that term,” he wrote in a 2017 Times op-ed. “Seeing Ronstadt sing in Spanish on national television, her album cover published in newspapers, taught us that it was OK to be unapologetically Mexican, no matter how assimilated we may be.”

“Canciones” sold more than 10 million albums worldwide and was for decades the biggest selling foreign-language album in American history. It earned Ronstadt a Grammy in 1989 for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2021. Last year, the album was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, whose mission is to “ensure the survival, conservation and increased public availability of America’s audio heritage,” according to its mission statement.

On Sept. 8, Ronstadt’s longtime friend Irving Azoff and his Iconic Artists Group is re-releasing the album on vinyl for the first time in more than 35 years.

“Anything that connects generations to their grandparents is a good thing. Anything that is a positive affirmation of who you are is a good thing, I think,” Ronstadt said during a phone call earlier this week from home in San Francisco.

The re-release comes days after Hotel Congress puts Ronstadt and the album in the spotlight for the final installment of HoCo Fest, the historic downtown hotel’s annual boutique music festival over Labor Day weekend. Each night of HoCo Homecoming from Sept. 1-4, artists will perform Ronstadt’s music in tribute of her contribution to the evolution of Tucson’s music community. Part of that also will include the official album release concert on Sept. 3.

The album is part of Ronstadt’s 2021 deal with Iconic, the artist management group formed by entertainment mogul Azoff, to sell her music assets including the masters she owns. Ronstadt said she doesn’t know if there are plans for future reissues, but “I know (Azoff) will do right by me. We’ve been friends for a long time,” she said.

If it had been up to her, Ronstadt, 77, said she would have preferred releasing both “Canciones” and the 1991 follow up, “Mas Canciones,” as a pair.

“I wish they would have released them together because they are all one piece,” she said, then demurred when asked about the idea that a whole new generation of young Hispanics will experience what Arellano experienced when “Canciones” first came out in 1987.

Truth be told, when she was recording the album, Ronstadt never considered how it would be received or who it would impact.

“I was just thinking I loved the songs and I wanted to record them,” she said, her voice growing quiet at times, a side effect of her growing hearing loss and the progression of her 10-year battle with the Parkinson’s-like disorder progressive supranuclear palsy. “I wanted to learn them and the only way to learn them was to record them.”

By the time she released “Canciones de mi Padre,” Ronstadt had recorded 14 of her 23 career studio albums since her debut “Hand Sown … Home Grown” on Capitol Records in 1969. From the 1974 release of her fifth album, “Heart Like A Wheel,” through her final solo release, 2004’s “Hummin’ to Myself,” Ronstadt racked up a breathtaking 11 platinum albums (1 million sales) including three that went double-platinum and three that sold triple.

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Yet, when she proposed recording a record in Spanish, her label balked.

She wouldn’t back down.

“I had given (the label) enough records that sold that they had to take this one because I wanted to do it,” she said. “I didn’t think about whether it would be commercial or not; it was just songs I liked. It was self-indulgence.”

The songs were part of her musical heritage and soul, nurtured in the family’s Tucson home with aunts and uncles, brothers and cousins, gathered around after family parties when her father, Gilbert, pulled out his guitar.

“That’s what we always did. We would have a big party and my dad and his guitar, and cousins and uncles singing, aunts and uncles,” she recalled. “They weren’t singing professionally; they were singing like talented amateurs and they were expressing their emotions.”

The album featured the three top mariachi bands in the world — Mariachi Vargas, Mariachi Los Camperos and Mariachi Los Galleros de Pedro Rey — and the rancheras, huapangos and Mexican songs Ronstadt sang with her family including the heartbreaking ballad “Por Un Amor,” which she said is still a favorite.

“They were all family songs,” Ronstadt said. “And they were songs I was passionate about. I loved the lyrics; I thought they were telling what my life was about. I love the idea of playing with my family; my brothers came in and played on both records. It was fun to have that full part of my life connected, my (career) and my heritage.”

Ronstadt said she knew “Canciones” would sell, but “I didn’t think it would sell as much as it did.”

“I was lucky. There was an audience for it,” she said.

When she toured with the album in 1989, her longtime promoters were nervous. No one knew what to expect.

“Mexican-Americans don’t buy tickets in advance; it’s a walkup business,” Ronstadt explained. “We were using same promoters I was using for rock ‘n’ roll and they’re used to people buying tickets in advance. So they didn’t know if we were selling any tickets. But every night we would walk on stage and the theaters were full.”

Ronstadt, who made her last public trip back home for the 14th annual Tucson Festival of Books last March, won’t be here for the HoCo Homecoming. But she said she is thrilled that young artists from the San Francisco area Los Cenzontles Mexican cultural arts center will be performing the official album release concert at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 3 on the Hotel Congress Plaza stage. The group, which Ronstadt has championed for 30 years, traveled with her to her grandfather’s native Banámichi in Sonora, Mexico, in 2019. The trip was made into a documentary, “Linda and the Mockingbirds,” which is one of the films featured in the HoCo Homecoming film festival at the Screening Room on Sept. 2.

“They are so good,” Ronstadt fairly gushed about the ensemble. “I love these people …. No one is trained to perform; they are trained to find joy in their music and express themselves in that joy.”