Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 6, 2020

A number of fans of the great sixties (and beyond) pop superstar Petula Clark have lamented fairly vociferously at times about how sad it was that the film musical was in decline by the time “Pet” started venturing into big budget cinematic “tuners” as a kind of presumed heir apparent to Julie Andrews. As a result, Clark ended up co-starring in only two film musicals in the late sixties, Finian's Rainbow and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, neither being particularly well regarded (mistakenly, in this not so humble reviewer’s opinion) and in the case of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, rather disastrously ignored at the box office. A decade or so later, the same lament might have been raised about the lovely and vocally protean Linda Ronstadt. And in fact while Ronstadt enjoyed some early chart success with the Stone Poneys and tunes like "Different Drum" when Pet was still a mainstay on the charts in 1967, it was just about exactly a decade between Clark’s forages onto the American pop charts with songs like “Downtown” and “I Know a Place” circa 1964 - 1965, and Ronstadt’s "solo" singles like “You’re No Good” and “When Will I Be Loved” which resided in the Top 10 circa 1974 - 1975. It took Ronstadt a few years longer than Clark to finally make her one feature film appearance, in 1983’s The Pirates of Penzance (Ronstadt had previously portrayed Mabel in the Gilbert and Sullivan piece on Broadway and a made for television version of the original Broadway cast). Alas, the late seventies and eighties were probably even worse for film musicals than the late sixties into the seventies had been, and Ronstadt was therefore understandably deprived of a major film career as an actress - chanteuse. But in the long run, does it really matter? Ronstadt’s recording legacy is so huge and diverse that the fact that there aren’t a bunch of movie musicals featuring her may be a bit of a disappointment for diehard musical fans, but music fans can probably be nothing less than thrilled with Ronstadt’s recorded output.

There's a really appealing lack of pretense running through Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, not the least of which is Ronstadt's own voice providing a lot of the narration and/or voice over, often in a kind of self deprecating way. She gives the traditional biographical background, offering little tidbits about her rather amazing family (one of her grandfathers evidently invented a bunch of everyday items like the electric toaster and Westinghouse thermostat), while also speaking to what singing means to her. Ronstadt talks about growing up on a completely isolated ranch outside of Tucson and how the lack of available diversions meant she and her siblings had to create their own entertainment. Singing seemed to be part of the family's gene pool, though, and Ronstadt talks rather charmingly about how ubiquitous singing was around the Ronstadt home environment.

There’s frankly not much of a “struggling artist” subtext to Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, since Ronstadt rather quickly formed a collaboration with Bobby Kimmel, first in Tucson and then relatively quickly thereafter in Los Angeles, and in (again relatively) short order then teaming up with Kenny Edwards to found The Stone Poneys, who scored a record deal with Capitol at the behest of manager Herb Cohen (who kind of amusingly was best known at that time for managing Frank Zappa, in what might seen as a kind of “strange bedfellows” aggregation of artists). The documentary makes a point of how unusual it was for a female in what was probably perceived as a “male” group to leave that group and set out on her own, but the documentary makes clear that part of this transition was due to the desires of Capitol Records, which frankly may have not known exactly how to handle a singer of Ronstadt’s power and versatility, but which at least had the wisdom to realize they had someone very special on their roster.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice charts (pun intended) the course of Ronstadt's incredible run of hits that followed, while also offering a lot of personal information, especially with regard to her relationships with a number of other female artists like Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and Karla Bonoff. What emerges is a portrait of an artist who seemed almost blasé at times about her talent, but who also (according to both Peter Asher and David Geffen in separate interviews) could be surprisingly insecure at times. There’s a really nice nostalgic quality to some of the anecdotes of Ronstadt’s seventies and eighties heyday that make this piece an engaging companion to another recently reviewed Blu-ray release from Greenwich, Echo in the Canyon.

A propos of nothing really all that important, but something that struck me in the wake of some of what I perceived to be some pretty drastically surgically altered faces spotted during the Golden Globes broadcast that aired the evening before I'm pushing this review live, I have to say it was absolutely wonderful (to me, anyway) to see a number of "mature" women in this piece, including Ronstadt herself, who have allowed themselves to apparently age gracefully without any artificial "enhancements".

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment and Kino Lorber* with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1 (as tends to be the case with some of these documentaries cobbled together from different video sources, some archival video can be in narrower aspect ratios). I'm probably sounding (appropriately or not) like a broken record with regard to this, just the latest in a series of music documentaries that have been in my review queue lately, but this is another piece that has widely variant video quality due to the use of that aforementioned archival video, some of which is in decidedly ragged looking condition (and some of which seems to be weirdly anamorphically stretched to fill a 1.78:1 frame, rather than being offered in its original, presumably, narrower aspect ratio - see screenshot 18 for an example). The contemporary interview segments, along with some really sweet contemporary candid footage of Ronstadt, all look nicely sharp and well detailed, with an accurate looking palette. I've uploaded several screenshots of some of the archival video to give those interested an idea of the rather large quality variances on display.

*I was surprised to see the Kino Lorber masthead on this, as well as a "typical" looking Kino Lorber main menu, as Echo in the Canyon , the previous release from Greenwich which I reviewed, didn't have either, which may suggest this is a newer distribution deal.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 tracks. While this piece does offer somewhat longer snippets of music than can tend to be the case in documentaries of this ilk, this is still by and large a talking heads enterprise, and so the differences between the surround and stereo tracks may not be all that dramatic. Fidelity is fine on both tracks, delivering both music and talking head "confessionals" and/or interviews with clarity and precision. Some of the archival video does feature noticeably boxier sounding audio.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Additional Interviews offer (brief) extended moments with the following three people:

  Karla Bonoff (1080p; 1:46)

  
  

  Waddy Wachtel (1080p; 1:41)

  
  

  Peter Asher (1080p; 2:32)

• Trailers includes Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (1080p; 2:23) along with trailers for several other Greenwich documentary releases.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This really appealing documentary gives a wonderful overview of Ronstadt's rather amazing, and amazingly diverse, career, while also offering a bit of insight into her well reported health issues, though that said, she seems entirely resilient and good natured in the contemporary snippets featuring her here. The documentary is stuffed to the gills with fantastic interviews with a huge array of notables (no pun intended), and any fan of Ronstadt or the seventies' "folk rock" boom will almost certainly appreciate this film. Technical merits are solid with an understanding that some of the archival video is pretty ragged looking (and occasionally sounding). Highly recommended.