Prisoner in disguise
Along with The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, Poco and the Byrds, Linda Ronstadt pioneered the fusion and integration of country music and rock music. Seemingly forgotten by contemporary radio and music fans, her influence can be heard on nearly every radio station in the country. Ronstadt's impressive career ranged from Afro-Cuban to mariachi to pop standards to rock & roll to blues to country and everything in between. One needs only listen to contemporary country singers Terri Clark (who turned out an exact duplicate of Ronstadt's hit "It's So Easy" recently) or Trisha Yearwood, the Dixie Chicks or Martina McBride to hear the legacy of Linda Ronstadt. Her innovation and genre-hopping vocal skills influenced countless numbers of today's performers. So if you want to hear Trisha and Martina's lineage, check out "Prisoner in Disguise," and you will realize how pale a shadow they cast in relation to Linda's. "Prisoner in Disguise" is a genre-bending, radio-defying, gutsy romp that picks you up, carries you along, and never lets you down. Ronstadt -- at the peak of her long and successful career at the time of this recording -- doesn't miss so much as a note on this album. Fans of all kinds of music with all kinds of sensibilities will find absolute perfection here. Her song choices, her phrasing, her inflection, her raw vocal abilities are all on spectacular display, under the sure-handed leaderhip of producer Peter Asher. From the anthemic opener, Neil Young's "Love is a Rose," to the gospel-laced "Many Rivers to Cross," from the hard rocking Rolling Stones-cover "Roll Um Easy," to the sensitive, gently touching version of James Tayor's "Jukebox," Ronstadt thumbs her nose at the conventional wisdom that to be successful a singer must do one thing and do it well. Linda does all things better than anybody.
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