Linda Ronstadt - Hasten Down The Wind (1976) 24-Bit/96-kHz Vinyl Rip

Hasten Down The Wind is a 1976 album by singer/songwriter/producer Linda Ronstadt and Ronstadt's third straight million-selling album. Ronstadt was the first female artist in history to accomplish this feat. The album earned Linda her second of a record 10 Grammy Awards for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female in early 1977. This was Ronstadt's third album to go Platinum. Hasten itself spent several weeks in the Top Three of the Billboard album charts. It was also the second of four #1 Country albums for her.
{ wikipedia }

"HASTEN DOWN THE WIND" is not the easiest Linda Ronstadt album to "get" the first time one hears it, but it may be the classiest and longest­-lived one she has done so far. It seems beyond time; it is not a prisoner of the conventions of this or any era, it does not do something new or novel or "completely different" to catch your ear. What it does that makes it different from most albums is attend lovingly to every last detail in such a smooth, natural-seeming way that the workings of songwriters, singer, band, and producer are thoroughly integrated and become one- that and, of course, the fact that it features a better singer than most albums are able to.
In a dozen ways not quite so dramatic, the album demonstrates what an excellent band Ronstadt has assembled, as her road band had little outside help throughout. Gold's work and the way he operates so well with producer Peter Asher have been remarked upon before; we ought also to notice the subtly spectacular bass licks of Kenny Edwards, the drumming of Michael Botts (no small factor in how nicely Down So Low turned out), the versatility and purity of Waddy Wachtel's guitar playing. This is not just another band from L.A. These boys don't use electric instruments primarily to make more noise; they play notes and they know how to listen.
It's the kind of album I don't listen to one cut at a time anyway- it's the kind I listen to a whole lot. The thing has hardly been off the turntable since it got here. It's there now, and I'm anxious to get back to it for what must be the hundredth time in the last few days. That's the kind of judgment about an album I trust most.
{ Noel Coppage - Stereo Review, 1976 }



Track Listing:

A1. Lose Again
A2. The Tattler
A3. If He's Ever Near
A4. That'll Be The Day
A5. Lo Siento Mi Vida
A6. Hasten Down The Wind
B1. Rivers of Babylon
B2. Give One Heart
B3. Try Me Again
B4. Crazy
B5. Down So Low
B6. Someone To Lay Down Beside Me