Linda Ronstadt -- It's So Easy

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada! We've already had our turkey but I hope that many of you will enjoy yours tonight. Since it is a national holiday, as KKP custom would dictate, we will have a special Holiday edition of Reminiscings of Youth to start our broadcast day.

Ronstadt on the cover of "Cash Box" (1976)
from Asylum via Wikimedia Commons

Linda Ronstadt has actually been on the pages of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for about nine years, but strangely enough, it wasn't through a ROY article (it was several years before that series would start up). I had been writing an article on "Kokoro no Honoo"（こころの炎）, Akiko Kobayashi's（小林明子）cover of Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram's "Somewhere Out There", the theme song for "An American Tail" in 1986. Of course, I had to include the original.

Therefore, technically speaking, this is Ronstadt's first (but definitely not last) foray into a ROY article. "It's So Easy", coincidentally enough, was also covered by Kobayashi on one of her live albums, and I'd heard this cheerful and happy-go-lucky rock (with a bit of country) song a number of times during my childhood and adolescence...not just through Ronstadt but also through its use in commercials.

"It's So Easy" was released in September 1977 as a single and as a track on her album "Simple Dreams".  The single hit No. 5 on America's Billboard chart and No. 9 on Canada's RPM. Once again, as a running theme on ROY, "It's So Easy" has surprised me in that Ronstadt wasn't the original recording artist behind it. 

That honour goes to the one-and-only Buddy Holly when he was with The Crickets. Coming with an exclamation mark, "It's So Easy!" was released back in September 1958 with Holly and Norman Petty as songwriters. Unfortunately, it didn't chart.

So, what were hitting the Oricon charts on September 19th 1977, just a day before one of Ronstadt's most famous songs hit the shelves? Here are No. 1, No. 2 and No. 4.

1. Pink Lady -- Wanted

2. Hiromi Go & Kirin Kiki -- Obake no Rock （お化けのロック）

4. Shigeru Matsuzaki -- Ai no Memory （愛のメモリー）