For those unaware, Linda Ronstadt secures her position as the Premier Female Vocalist of the 1970s with Prisoner in Disguise which includes covers of “Love Is a Rose” and “I Will Always Love You.”

Reissued at 45RPM for the first time for its 50th Anniversary and Elektra 75: Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 45RPM 2LP set of her 1975 record plays with superb purity, detail, tonality, and definition as a 1/4” / 15 IPS Dolby A analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe.

If there was any doubt whether Linda Ronstadt would emerge as the premier female vocalist of the 1970s, the question became moot when she dropped Prisoner in Disguise in 1975. Picking up exactly where she left off on Heart Like a Wheel, the singer pairs with the same perfectionist-oriented producer and many of the same session pros on a follow-up in every way the equal of her 1974 breakthrough.

The platinum-certified set not only established Ronstadt as an all-time great. It confirmed her as the voice of the decade, a performer the press soon deemed “The First Lady of Rock.”

Sourced from the original analog master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, and reissued to celebrate Elektra 75, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 45RPM 2LP set presents the Top 5 album with extra groove space via 45RPM speed for the first time. This special 50th anniversary version plays with reference-caliber definition, depth, and dimensionality. The definitive vinyl edition of Prisoner in Disguise, it lifts prior veils that impeded the gorgeous singing and spectacular craftsmanship gracing the 11 songs. The elevated degrees of clarity, presence, and separation exceed those of even Mobile Fidelity’s long-out-of-print 33RPM reissue. Vocals — often the most difficult instrument to faithfully portray — resonate with superb tonality, openness, and naturalism.

Here, there’s practically nothing between you and Ronstadt’s whippoorwill deliveries. Her wide-spanning range and varied subtleties — vibrato, hiccups, shivers, falsetto fades — come across with rich, transparent detail. They affirm why Prisoner in Disguise is one of the four consecutive albums she made that sold a million or more copies, making her the first female artist to achieve that feat.

Each aspect of the record reveals how and why Ronstadt crashed through the glass ceiling not only with commercial and critical success, but by attaining then-unprecedented recognition in the form of national stories in the likes of Rolling Stone and Newsweek.

Collaborating for the third time with producer Peter Asher, Ronstadt turns to her career-long strengths — interpretative covers, roots-based music, aching balladry — and seamlessly jibes with a Hall of Fame-worthy cast. James Taylor, Kenny Edwards, Herb Pedersen, JD Souther, David Grisman, and Russ Kunkel are some of the elite musicians along for the ride. David Campbell handles string arrangement and conducting duties.

Everyone works toward a common and sensible goal: Spotlighting, shading, and complementing Ronstadt’s singing. Playing with an all-for-one mindset so the meanings and emotions she pulls from every song get top billing — and with a selfless restraint that helps expose the kernels of truth and beautiful melodies in indelible tunes by the likes of Neil Young, Lowell George, Jimmy Cliff, and Taylor. Few, if any, pop-rock singers ever exhibited adaptive skills on a par with that of the Arizona native. Her contemporaries ensure she has the ideal settings in which to maneuver.

Side One:
1. Love Is a Rose 2. Hey Mister, That’s Me Up on the Jukebox 3. Roll Um Easy

Side Two:
4. Tracks of My Tears 5. Prisoner in Disguise

Side Three:
6. Heat Wave 7. Many Rivers to Cross 8. The Sweetest Gift

Side Four:
9. You Tell Me That I’m Falling Down 10. I Will Always Love You 11. Silver Blue

Linda Ronstadt was a star by 1975. Her Heart Like A Wheel album had topped The American pop charts and spawned two huge hit singles. Prisoner In Disguise, released in September of 1975, increased her popularity. It would earn her another Platinum Record Award and contained two more hit singles and a top five country release as well.

She had settled into a pop/country niche that tended to revolve around up-tempo pop tunes and country style ballads. This album would be one of her most versatile as pop, Motown, country, and even a Jimmy Cliff tune would fall under her interpretive spell. She and producer Peter Asher would have the knack of picking just the right songs for her style and voice.

Her first foray into the Motown catalogue would produce two hits. She gives a pure and emotional vocal on the old Smokey Robinson ballad, “The Tracks Of My Tears,” and she moves the Martha and The Vandellas classic “Heat Wave” into a pop masterpiece.

As with many of her releases it is the ballads that truly shine. Her banjo-picked rendition of the Neil Young penned “Love Is A Rose” was another in the long line of country hits for her. A little banjo and her powerful vocal all added up to a memorable performance. Personally, I have always preferred her gentle version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” over Whitney Houston’s histrionic rendition which topped The American pop charts for fourteen weeks during 1992.

The rest of the album is comprised of an eclectic group of material which she was so good at gathering and making interesting. “Roll Um Easy” featured wonderful and precise phasing and Lowell George provides some expert slide guitar on his own tune. Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers To Cross” had a rare gospel feel for Ronstadt. Her forlorn version of James Taylor’s “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up There On The Jukebox” is both quirky and entertaining. The tender duet “The Sweetest Gift” is an early collaboration with Emmylou Harris and is an absolute gem of a cut.

Prisoner In Disguise would be the second of seven albums which would be some of the most commercial in pop history and cement her status as a music superstar. It remains mid-seventies pop/country at its best.

A songbird with a singular voice, Ronstadt time and again achieves “sweet harmony in unison” on Prisoner in Disguise, a record on which she’s at her peak.

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