Rita Or´a

With the arrival of Delta Lady: The Rita Coolidge Anthology, one can only remark: what took so long? No other singer – not Maria Muldaur, Bette Midler, Bonnie Bramlett, Carly Simon, or Linda Ronstadt – more perfectly embodied the wide range of changes that popular music underwent from the late '60s through the mid-'80s, and continues to seek new means of expression today. This two-disc anthology on Hip-O offers the first complete portrait of this complex and multivalent talent on CD (though a box set would have been nice). Rita Coolidge scored her first chart hit with friend Donna Weiss' "Turn Around and Love You" in 1969. That song earned her a studio spot where she fell in with Delaney & Bonnie, Leon Russell, and a huge cast of musicians. Being a background vocalist on Delaney & Bonnie's classic Accept No Substitute earned her a place on Russell and Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen revue and the rest is history, including a handful of chart hits and guest appearances that stagger the mind.

Music is a universal language. It transcends linguistic and (most) cultural borders. Yet it is not nationless or without idiosyncrasies determined by place and local culture. There are, therefore, instruments which are more closely associated with a particular place than with another. This does not apply just to folk instruments (as the Scottish bagpipes, the Spanish guitar, or the Russian balalaika, to name but few) but also to instruments which are fully part of the “international” musical panorama and of the Classical Symphony Orchestra. Thus, the violin is by no means a “local” instrument; yet, there is a closeness between Hungarian/gipsy music and the violin which is lacking elsewhere. Similarly, the flute is as universal an instrument as there can be (it is probably the most common instrument in all epochs and cultures), but it has a privileged relationship with France.