Black Roses

Wouldn't we all like to have someone who cares when you lose?

This song was playing in my mind when I got home, so I [first] dug out Linda Ronstadt's 1978 Livin' in the USA LP, and tracked three cuts, including White Rhythm & Blues. Don Grolnick's electric piano on the song is mesmerizing.  Nonetheless, I felt obliged to spin J.D.'s version as well, on account of he wrote it and such.  It doesn't hurt that he enlisted Phil Everly for harmony vocals, and that Henley, Frey, Felder & Browne also contributed.

Just in case you're interested, here's Linda's version:

I don't think a diamond elliptical stylus had touched either of these sweet black disks since, oh, about 1979 or 1980.  I had to go to my archived liners for information on the Ronstadt version, as it was my custom back in the day to play a disk once or twice and record it to CD cassette, and to preserve it in a special inner liner.  For a while in high school, I even recorded some stuff on Scotch/Maxell/BASF reel-to-reel tapes, though not that much, since they wouldn't fit the Radio Shack or Sanyo player in my car...

As a bonus, here's JD performing with Jackson (in the early '70s, JD and Glenn lived upstairs from Browne).  Apart from his music, JD was a pretty busy guy in those days, dating both Linda and Stevie.