Linda Ronstadt recorded three albums with Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra: What's New (1983), Lush Life (1984), and For Sentimental Reasons (1985). These albums were arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle, who also worked with other prominent artists like Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra.
We've been using them in our store since they came to our attention around this time. In fact they could dearly use a repress as they are some of the best recordings we've ever heard.
What's New is an album of traditional pop standards released by American singer Linda Ronstadt in 1983. It represents the first in a trilogy of 1980s albums Ronstadt recorded with arranger Nelson Riddle. The album was a major change in direction because Ronstadt was then considered the leading female vocalist in rock. Both her record company and manager, Peter Asher, were very reluctant to produce this album with Ronstadt, but eventually her determination won them over and the albums exposed a whole new generation to the sounds of the pre-swing and swing eras. The one-time popular music sung by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee, and their contemporaries was relegated in the 1960s and 1970s to Las Vegas club acts and elevator music. Ronstadt later remarked that she did her part in rescuing these songs which she called "little jewels of artistic expression" from "spending the rest of their lives riding up and down on the elevators." The album's second single, "I've Got a Crush on You" had already been part of Ronstadt's repertoire for several years, as she'd performed it during a 1980 appearance on The Muppet Show.
What's New was released in September 1983 and spent 81 weeks on the main Billboard album chart. Its release came as the radio programming format known as Adult Standards was taking off via programming concepts such as Music of Your Life, which specialized in returning pre-rock popular music and the songs of the Great American Songbook to the American airwaves. The album held the number 3 position for five consecutive weeks while Michael Jackson's Thriller and Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down locked in the number 1 and number 2 album positions. The album also reached number 2 on the jazz albums chart.
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 pop, but is … the best and most serious attempt to rehabilitate an idea of pop that Beatlemania and the mass marketing of rock LPs for teen-agers undid in the mid-60s. In the decade prior to Beatlemania, most of the great band singers and crooners of the 40s and 50s codified a half-century of American pop standards on dozens of albums, many of them now long out-of-print."
Lush Life is the second in a trilogy of jazz albums with bandleader/arranger Nelson Riddle. The album peaked at #13 on the Billboard 200 and #8 on the Billboard jazz chart, becoming certified as Ronstadt's record tenth platinum album. Lush Life was nominated for two Grammys, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Album Package, winning the latter. Riddle was posthumously awarded the Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying A Vocal for the title track, "Lush Life."
For Sentimental Reasons is the third consecutive Platinum-certified collaboration between Ronstadt and bandleader/arranger Nelson Riddle and Ronstadt's eleventh million-selling album overall.
History
For Sentimental Reasons was the final installment of the jazz trilogy that Ronstadt recorded with bandleader and arranger Nelson Riddle, who died during the making of this disc. Three of the tracks were conducted by Terry Woodson. The album's premier single release, "When You Wish Upon a Star", peaked at #32 in Billboard Magazine's Adult Contemporary chart at the end of 1986. It was assisted by a popular music video.
All tracks were also included in the compilation "'Round Midnight", released on Asylum Records later in 1986.
I'd go as far as to say you'll know every song on these three albums. The American songbook has been "pillaged" by many artists recently and none of them have done such a great job and it must also be added than none of them have the Nelson Riddle Orchestra.
If you've not heard them please remedy this. And I am envious of the pleasure it will bring.
