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.

Buyer’s Remourse: AARP Lashes Out at President Barack Obama for Using it to Promote Himself During Debate (VIDEO)

How bad was last night’s Presidential debate for President Barack Obama? Even the in the tank AARP is lashing out at Obama for using AARP by name to promote himself and Obamacare during the debate. AARP ripped President Barack Obama for using the organization’s name to support himself politically in defense of Obama. AARP, who are you kidding, Obama used his own grandmother by name in an attempt to grasp at anything to defend his failed policies and come up with some type of response.

Key phrase in Obama’s rambling, Romney worked with Democrats in the state of Massachusetts on healthcare. What did Obama do, made backroom deals with Democrat politicians, insurance carriers and AARP and rammed an unpopular Obamacare down the throats of America.

The AARP ripped President Barack Obama for using the organization’s name to support himself politically during Wednesday evening’s presidential debate.

“While we respect the rights of each campaign to make its case to voters, AARP has never consented to the use of its name by any candidate or political campaign,” AARP vice president John Hishta said in a statement immediately after the debate. “AARP is a nonpartisan organization, and we do not endorse political candidates nor coordinate with any candidate or political party.”

The president mentioned AARP to support his attack on Romney’s Medicare plan.

“And then, what you’ve got is folks like my grandmother at the mercy of the private insurance system precisely at the time when they are most in need of decent health care,” Obama said. “So, I don’t think vouchers are the right way to go. And this is not my own – only my opinion. AARP thinks that the – the savings that we obtained from Medicare bolster the system, lengthen the Medicare trust fund by eight years. Benefits were not affected at all. “

With all due respect to AARP, you sleep with dogs, you get fleas. AARP made their backroom deal with Obama and Obamacare and sold old millions of seniors that they claim to care about. AARP claims to be nonpartisan, hardly.

AARP endorsed Obamacare in what South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint called a move that “sells out seniors.” DeMint argued in a recent op-ed that AARP “poses as a disinterested senior advocate, [but] functions as an insurance conglomerate, with a liberal lobbying arm on the side.”

“AARP depends on profits, royalties and commissions to make up more than 50 percent of its annual revenues,” DeMint wrote. “Membership dues from seniors account for only about 20 percent. The sums involved aren’t chump change: AARP’s $458 million in health insurance revenue in 2011 would rank it as the nation’s sixth most profitable health insurer.”

Listen to Romney’s Response on Obamacare