Early life

Linda Ronstadt was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1946 to Gilbert Ronstadt (1911-1995), a prosperous machinery merchant who ran the F. Ronstadt Co., and Ruth Mary Copeman Ronstadt (1914-1982), a homemaker with a gift for science. She was raised along with her brothers Peter (served as Tucson's chief of police from 1981-1992) and Michael and her sister Gretchen (Suzy), on the family's 10-acre ranch. The family was featured in Family Circle Magazine in 1953.

Her father, Gilbert, came from a leading and pioneering Arizona ranching family, was Mexican-American, with some German and English ancestry, with his grandfather, Frederick Augustus Ronstadt immigrating to the West in the 1840s from Hanover, Germany, marrying a Mexican-citizen, having several children, including Federico Jos? Mar?a Ronstadt (Linda's grandfather) and eventually settling in Tucson.

The Ronstadt Family has made important contributions to arts and culture in the American Southwest. In fact, so great are their contributions to the state of Arizona that their history and influence, including wagon making, commerce, pharmacies and, of course, music, is chronicled within the library of the University of Arizona, her alma mater.

Her mother, Ruth Mary, was the daughter of the prolific American inventor Lloyd Groff Copeman, raised in Michigan, was of Anglo-American descent, with German, English and Dutch heritage. Lloyd, with nearly seven hundred patents in his name, invented an early form of the toaster, the grease gun, the first electric stove and an early form of the microwave oven. His most commercially successful invention was rubber ice cube trays.

Linda Ronstadt's early life was filled with music and tradition, which influenced her musical choices.. A product of the great American radio of the 1950's and 1960's with its eclectic broadcasting. Growing up she listened to all types of music, and credits her mother for her music appreciation of Gilbert and Sullivan and the Traditional Pop music that she herself would in turn help reintroduce to an entire generation. Staying true any musical tradition Ronstadt sticks to “what... the music demand(s)”.