Maps of Music

Simple Dreams (1977)

Where the lyrics of Simple Dreams take you, and where it was really made.

Simple Dreams ended Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and its record-breaking run of 29 weeks at number 1 on the Billboard album chart.

Key places

Recorded at Sound Factory in Hollywood (1977)

Recording site The Sound Factory — The album was recorded at Sound Factory in Los Angeles from 23 May to 22 July 1977, before its September release. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Simple Dreams: eighth studio album by American singer Linda Ronstadt
• Released September 1977 by Asylum Records
• Contains several of Ronstadt's best-known songs
• Includes her cover of the Rolling Stones' 'Tumbling Dice', featured in the film FM
• Includes her version of Roy Orbison's 'Blue Bayou', which earned a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year
• Includes covers of Buddy Holly's 'It's So Easy!' (top-5 hit), Warren Zevon's 'Poor Poor Pitiful Me' (top-40 hit) and 'Carmelita'
• Best-selling studio album of her career; at the time, second best-selling album by a female artist behind Carole King's Tapestry

Background

• First Ronstadt album since Don't Cry Now without longtime musical collaborator Andrew Gold
• Features Laurel Canyon-based session musicians who worked on her earlier albums
• Musicians include guitarists Dan Dugmore and Waddy Wachtel, bassist Kenny Edwards, and producer and multi-instrumentalist Peter Asher

Recording

• Recorded at the Sound Factory in Los Angeles from 23 May to 22 July 1977
• Produced by Peter Asher; recorded and mixed by Val Garay
• Mastered by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab in Hollywood, California

Cover

• Original plan showed Ronstadt in a mini-slip seated in front of multiple mirrors
• She was uncomfortable with the physical exposure and changed into a robe
• The picture was made artificially grainy
• Photography by Jim Shea; art direction and design by John Kosh

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · ja.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Career

• Born July 15, 1946 in Tucson, Arizona; American singer across rock, folk, pop, country, and soul.
• In the mid-1960s joined the folk-rock trio the Stone Poneys as lead singer, releasing three albums in 1967–68.
• Solo debut Hand Sown ... Home Grown (1969), described as the first alternative country record by a female recording artist.
• Became the first female "arena class" rock star; top-grossing concert artist of the decade.
• Voted Top Female Pop Singer of the 1970s; "You're No Good" reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
• Worked with producer Nelson Riddle on the Great American Songbook trilogy What's New, Lush Life, and For Sentimental Reasons.
• Recorded Canciones de Mi Padre (1987), the best-selling non-English-language album in US music history.
• Retired in 2011 after losing the ability to sing; later diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy.
• Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014; Kennedy Center Honoree in 2019.

Formation

• At age 14 formed a folk trio with her brother Peter and sister Gretchen.
• Moved to Los Angeles in 1964 to form a band with Bobby Kimmel.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• Rolling Stone: the singer evokes a bittersweet world of disappointments, fantasies and cheerfully brazen assertions, with Ronstadt and Asher having wisely scaled down the production
• Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): calls her a pop eclectic for her time, as comfortable with Mick Jagger as with Dolly Parton
• Christgau: says she still seems too predictable, though she interprets Roy Orbison as easily as Buddy Holly
• Christgau: finds her portrayal of a junkie on 'Carmelita' not totally ridiculous

Records

• Billboard album chart: five consecutive weeks at number 1 in late 1977, displacing Rumours
• Also displaced Elvis Presley from number 1 on the Billboard Country Albums chart
• Fifth consecutive million-selling platinum album for Ronstadt
• Sold over 3.5 million copies in the United States in less than a year, a record for a female artist
• Ronstadt became the first female artist, and the first act overall since the Beatles, to have two singles in the top five at the same time
• 'Blue Bayou': number 3 Pop, number 3 Adult Contemporary, number 2 Country; platinum certified
• 'It's So Easy': number 5 Pop
• Grammy: 'Blue Bayou' nominated for Record of the Year; Ronstadt nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female; album nominated for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical
• Grammy: John Kosh won Best Recording Package; Peter Asher won Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, partly for this album

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• Dolly Parton joined Ronstadt on 'I Never Will Marry', a traditional ballad that became a Top 10 Country hit in summer 1978.
• The Spanish-language version of 'Blue Bayou', 'Lago Azul', was released only as a single in 1978 and is left out of the 2017 40th anniversary reissue.
• A retouched photo from the original cover photo sessions appeared on the inner sleeve of Greatest Hits, Volume 2 (1980).
• Ronstadt, Parton and Emmylou Harris worked on a collaborative project around this time that never came together; their first Trio album arrived nine years later.
• The album has never been out of print.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

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