Linda Ronstadt Diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease … Says She Can’t Sing a Note

Sad Day in Mudville … Where has all the great music gone?

I was saddened to learn today that one of my favorite singers of all time, Linda Ronstadt, suffers from Parkinson’s disease.  In an interview with the AARP, the legendary singer stated that she cannot sing a note. The 67 year old singer said she was diagnosed wit Parkinson’s 8 months ago. Ronstadt said, “No one can sing with Parkinson’s disease, No matter how hard you try.” It is hard to believe that she will never sing again such songs as ‘When Will I be Loved,’ ‘Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me,’ ‘Different Drum’, ‘The Tracks of My Tears’, ‘Desperado,’ and so many, many more.

Legendary singer Linda Ronstadt, 67, told AARP today that she “can’t sing a note” because she suffers from Parkinson’s disease. Diagnosed eight months ago, Ronstadt began to show symptoms as long as eight years ago. But she ascribed her inability to sing to a tick bite (“my health has never recovered since then”), and believed the shaking in her hands resulted from shoulder surgery.

In a wide-ranging interview with AARP’s music writer Alanna Nash to be published on aarp.org next week, Ronstadt revealed how she discovered that “there was something wrong” with her voice.

“I couldn’t sing,” she told Nash, “and I couldn’t figure out why. I knew it was mechanical. I knew it had to do with the muscles, but I thought it might have also had something to do with the tick disease that I had. And it didn’t occur to me to go to a neurologist. I think I’ve had it for seven or eight years already, because of the symptoms that I’ve had. Then I had a shoulder operation, so I thought that’s why my hands were trembling.

One of my favorite songs of all times … ‘All My Life’ Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville … and can’t forget ‘Don’t Know Much’

The Telegraph:

During her career, Ronstadt, who was born in Arizona, won 11 Grammy Awards as well as two Country Music Awards and an Emmy. She was also nominated for a Tony Award for her role in the 1981 musical The Pirates of Penzance.

Her 1977 song ‘Blue Bayou’ peaked at No. 3 in the British charts, while her duet with Aaron Neville, ‘Don’t Know Much’, reached No. 4 in 1989. In 1978, she made an estimated $12 million, the equivalent to $43 million (£27 million) today. Dubbed “Rock’s Venus” by Rolling Stone magazine, she also featured on the front pages of numerous publications throughout her career.

On a person note: There is not one album, yes album, record, 33, that I do not own of Linda Ronstadt from her days singing with the Stone Poneys to her solo career. I am going to date myself, but what the heck. I can remember when one of my high school buddies and I got tickets for the Linda Ronstandt concert where Quarterflash was the openings act. How about that Quarterflash, there is a blast from the 80′s past with ‘Harden My Heart’. Any how, some thing happened with a dispute and next thing we know Quarterflash was no longer performing and they were going to move the concert from the Hartford Civic Center to the Bushnell Auditorium. We thought, this is going to stink, what’s the Bushnall and what are out seats going to be like? Boy were we wrong. We were 15 rows back, center in what can only be described as seeing a concert in a move theater. This was also a time when you were allowed to bring cameras in to concerts and not digital ones. We are talking Cannon and Minolta 35 mm with 200-400mm zoom lenses. It was one of the best concerts ever and some of the most incredible pictures ever. Truly a sad day as probably one of my first celebrity crushes is stricken and can no longer sing. Sad day indeed.