Linda Ronstadt retired from performing more than a decade ago, but her voice will always be a cornerstone of pop music.
Born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1947, Ronstadt began her professional singing career in the 1960s as a vocalist with The Stone Poneys. Ronstadt and her bandmates, Bobby Kimmel and Kenny Edwards, recorded three albums together before she went solo.
Ronstadt became a pop icon in the 1970s, reigning over the radio and dethroning rock heavyweights like Elton John and Led Zeppelin on the charts. Her 1974 album, Heart Like a Wheel, became her first No. 1 album in the United States, and in 2013, the Library of Congress inducted it into the National Recording Registry.
Throughout the 1980s, Ronstadt expanded into other genres, recording a country album with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris and releasing her first collection of traditional Mexican mariachi music. She continued recording throughout the 1990s but released her last solo album in 2004. Seven years later, she retired from performing after developing progressive supranuclear palsy.
Despite the fact that she can no longer sing, Ronstadt still feels grateful to have spent so many years in music. “I just feel whatever I’ve got now is gravy. I feel like I was lucky,” she said during a 2013 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross. “I got to live out a lot of my dreams, and I got to, you know, sing with all these wonderful people like Emmylou and Aaron Neville and Smokey Robinson.”
Keep scrolling for a look back at Ronstadt’s life and career through the years:
