ROIO of the Week [Recordings of Indeterminate Origin]


The Return Of The Lost Albums

Recorded by Jerry Wexler over four days in New York sometime in 1981, Linda Ronstadt decided she was not ready to be a torch singer and abandoned this album to record Get Closer, her final rock album.

Click on the panels to download artwork

LINDA RONSTADT
Keeping Out Of Mischief [no label, 1CD]

There was a time when Linda Ronstadt wanted to move beyond being a rock singer to the stage. In 1981, she made her Broadway appearance on The Pirates Of Penzance and even sang opera-lite at the New York Public Theatre giving a performance of La Boheme. While in New York, the California girl convinced herself to attempt an album of standards with Jerry Wexler producing.

She told Time magazine, "The tracks weren't right, the way they were recorded wasn't right, the way I sang them wasn't right. What's New and Goodbye I couldn't sing at all. But I could sing them in the shower, so I knew there was something wrong with the arrangements." The recordings were abandoned and Ronstadt went on to call them her most "expensive rehearsal sessions".

Later in 1983 she finally recorded and released the first of three "torch" albums, What’s New, with Frank Sinatra’s arranger Nelson Riddle replacing Jerry Wexler. It established for Ronstadt a new peak, as she moved away from soft rock and SoCal [south Californian] music.

Here then is her lost album of standards.
- Professor Red

Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (these are high quality, stereo MP3s - sample rate of 192 kibit/s). None of these tracks have been released before. Thanks to Ebby for the groovy cover art.

* a different version appears on 1984’s Lush Life
+ a different version appears on 1983’s What’s New
# a different version appears on 2004’s Hummin’ To Myself

Click on the link to buy all of Linda Ronstadt’s torch albums, What’s New, Lush Life, For Sentiental Reasons and the new Hummin’ To Myself.

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