Linda Ronstadt’s name will forever be etched in the annals of music history…
The 67-year-old Mexican American singer, who released her autobiography, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, in September 2013, will be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year, the organization has announced.
Ronstadt, who was once declared the “First Lady of Rock,” joins Nirvana, KISS, Cat Stevens, Hall and Oates and Peter Gabriel as 2014 inductees.
Earlier in the fall, Ronstadt was modest in assessing her level of achievement during her career: “I always thought I couldn’t sing very well. I was always very frustrated by it, and I was always sorta disappointed by it, y’know? Everything I did always fell short of my expectations. I wasn’t very good when I started, but the good news is I got better. I didn’t become the greatest singer in all of pop music, but I became, at least for my time, the most diverse. I wish it had all been better, but it wasn’t. It’s what it was, and I got to make it better later. I wish the records had been better, but they were as good as I could do at the time.”
Ronstadt’s records were much better than she’d imagined… In her career, the highest paid woman of rock in the 70s has earned 11 Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award and an ALMA Award.
In addition, Ronstadt was instrumental in the Latin cultural renaissance in North America.
In 1987, she released Canciones de Mi Padre, an album of traditional Mexican folk songs. The album’s dramatic, bold, and colorful cover art featured Ronstadt in full Mexican regalia.
The album won Ronstadt a Grammy Award for Best Mexican-American Performance; and the disc was certified double-platinum in the U.S., making it one of the biggest-selling non-English-language albums in U.S. music history.
The 2014 ceremony will be the Rock Hall’s first in Brooklyn after previous inductions were held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel and also the first in the New York area to be open to the public. Tickets will go on sale to the public in January, with a pre-sale for members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum starting at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31. Details are available at www.rockhall.com.
The ceremony will be filmed by HBO for broadcast in May. Additionally, the museum in Cleveland will be opening a special exhibit dedicated to the 2014 inductees early in the new year.