What's New (Linda Ronstadt album)

What's New is a Grammy-nominated, Triple Platinum-certified, 1983 Jazz album by American singer/songwriter/producer Linda Ronstadt consisting of nine songs of Jazz music. It represents the first in a trilogy of 1980s albums Ronstadt recorded with the bandleader/arranger Nelson Riddle. This disc has never been out of print.

Production

The album spawned a major change in popular culture because Ronstadt was then considered the leading female vocalist of the 'Rock' era.^[1][2][3] Both her record company and manager, Peter Asher, were very reluctant in producing this album with Ronstadt, but eventually her determination won them out and the albums exposed a whole new generation to the sounds of the pre-swing and swing eras.^[4] In 1983, Traditional Pop Standards music was pushed aside and the one-time popular music sung by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett and their contemporaries was relegated in the 1960s and 1970s to Las Vegas club acts and elevator music. Ronstadt recently remarked that she did her part in rescuing these songs in which she calls "little jewels of artistic expression" from "spending the rest of their lives riding up and down on the elevators."^[5]

Reception

What's New was released in September 1983 and spent 81 weeks on the main Billboard album chart. It held the #3 position for five consecutive weeks while Michael Jackson's Thriller and Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down locked in the #1 and #2 album positions. It was RIAA certified Triple Platinum for sales of over 3 million copies in the United States alone. The album also earned Ronstadt a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female alongside Donna Summer, Bonnie Tyler, Irene Cara and Sheena Easton, all of whom performed live on the 1984 Grammy telecast.

As Stephen Holden of the New York Times noted the significance of the album to popular culture when he wrote that What's New "isn't the first album by a rock singer to pay tribute to the golden age of the pop, but is ... the best and most serious attempt to rehabilitate an idea of pop that Beatlemania and the mass marketing of rock LP's for teen-agers undid in the mid-60's. In the decade prior to Beatlemania, most of the great band singers and crooners of the 40's and 50's codified a half-century of American pop standards on dozens of albums, many of them now long out-of-print."^[9]

Track listing

1. "What's New?" (Johnny Burke, Bob Haggart) - 3:55
2. "I've Got a Crush on You" (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) - 3:28
3. "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry" (Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne) - 4:13
4. "Crazy He Calls Me" (Carl Sigman, Sidney Keith Russell) - 3:33
5. "Someone to Watch Over Me" (G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin) - 4:09
6. "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You" (Bing Crosby, Ned Washington, Victor Young) - 4:06
7. "What'll I Do" (Irving Berlin) - 4:06
8. "Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be?)" (Jimmy Davis, Jimmy Sherman, Roger "Ram" Ramirez) - 4:18
9. "Goodbye" (Gordon Jenkins) - 4:47

Personnel

• Linda Ronstadt – vocals
• Ray Brown – bass
• Dennis Budimir – guitar
• Tommy Tedesco – guitar
• Don Grolnick – piano
• John Guerin – drums
• Jim Hughart – bass
• Plas Johnson – saxophone
• Bob Cooper – saxophone
• Oscar Brashear – trumpet
• Tony Terran – trumpet
• Chauncey Welsch – trombone

Production notes:

• Peter Asher – producer
• Nelson Riddle – arranger, conductor, orchestra
• Nathan Ross – concert master
• Leonard Atkinss – concert master
• George Massenburg – engineer, mixing
• Doug Sax – mastering

References