Favorite Female Singer of the 70s - Revised

I stopped off today at the store was looking at one of her records, one that had a John Lennon song on it, and some then very current hit writers. Decided against it, though.

 

Rolling Stone named Aretha Franklin the greatest singer of all time. I think I would consider 3 of her 70's works to be among her finest: "Live at Fillmore West", "Young, Gifted & Black" and "Amazing Grace", arguably the finest gospel album album.

Aretha sang "Don't Play That Song" and other deep catalog songs last week at DTE Energy last week. Superb, transcendent performances that night.....

 

1. Dolly Parton
2. Karen Carpenter
3. Linda Ronstadt

I stand in awe of Carole King as a songwriter, but not so much as a singer.

 

and where is Candi Staton?

 

The OP asked for favorite female singer so this is by definition a favorites poll. A poll has to have a list of options and not every female singer of the 70s can possibly be included.

There is nothing "flawed" about this poll. You could have been polite by doing any one of the following:

1. Vote for one of the poll choices.
2. Write in your own choice without insulting the OP.
3. Say nothing.

 

Only one?!!!?

 

Of the ladies listed Carole King/Joni Mitchell You can't pick just one!

 

from this list I'm going with Joni Mitchell like everyone else, but it's a misleading poll because Patti Smith is to female singers what Jimi Hendrix is to lead guitarists

 

Only difference Hnedrix's albums sold in the multi-millions, while Smith's were in the multi-thousands.

Now if this poll was about influential female vocalists of the 70's it would be a different list although Karen Carpenter, Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton and Carly Simon would most likely still be on a list of most influential along with Linda Thompson, Joan Baez and others.

 

Well... I would have much preferred multiple choice but went with Diana Ross, finally. After that its a very tight race between Donna Summer, Karen Carpenter, Cher, Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick and Dolly Parton. There is something to love about most of these singers though, altho I have never been a fan of Joni Mitchell. Dont understand the love at all really.
Singers Id love to have seen included are Bette Midler, Stevie Nicks and Kate Bush.

Steve

 

Linda's early seventies to late seventies work gets overlooked because of her incredible popularity. She (and Peter Asher and Andrew Gold) had an amazing ear for good songs as well as songwriters.

Willin', a couple of Zevon classics, Hey Mister That's Me Up on the Jukebox, JD Souther, and many of their other choices were perfect for her. She not only introduced a lot of younger people to these writers or songs, but she furthered their careers as well by giving them exposure in a very wide market.

It was only around Mad Love that she ever appeared to be pandering to the market. I chose the word "appeared" deliberately becasue I don't think she actually was. I believe that she just liked the songs that Costello and one or two others were writing at the time. But, she did eat a lot of baloney for that release.

I think history has proven her right, Costello, like so many others that she covered in her career, was a major talent and just not a "hip thing of the moment". That said, the public can only stand the same formula so many times. Tastes do change.

She is just about the only reason to own the movie "FM".

 

what I mean is that before Hendrix nobody had "that" sound and after him hundreds of guitarists did.

I could probably name a hundred prominent female singers who use Patti Smith's accent and inflections (which, like Jagger's, are hers alone - an artistic device made up by the artist - yeah I know Jagger stole some from Van but you can do a Jagger imitation and everyone will know who you are imitating but that doesn't stop hundreds of people from shamelessly doing it on records and in concert)

You have to cast your mind back to a time when NOBODY sounded like Patti!

 

Michael Stipe has often said that "Horses" changed everything. It's not difficult to make a case that it's the most influential female rock album of the 70's.

 

Ann Wilson isn't in the poll, so I can't vote.

 

Stoney End, Barbra Joan Streisand, Lazy Afternoon, Streisand Superman, Songbird are all great records not to metion The Way we were and A Star is born OSTs.

 

As I said givin' ONE VOTE ONLY option in that kind of poll wasn't exactly the good idea. I mean Cher with 1 vote? Rita Coolidge with 0? No matter how much I love the landslide winners (and I'm as big Karen/Joni/Linda fan as anybody here) the rest here are just too good to lag behind so badly.

 

Sir, I'd recommend a 2nd revision of this poll/thread. Hopefully that your intent.

 

The reason I give only one choice is it makes us really consider who we really think is that good. If you can vote for all of them I feel that denigrates the poll because than you will vote for someone just for the fact that maybe you like one of their songs.

It would be great if on these polls they gave us the options of how many choices people can make as I would have loved to make this a vote for your top 3 favorites - but the Steve Hoffman forums polls are either 1 or all - no in between - so I opt for one.

 

Well, you can specify "only vote for 3" and hope people abide by your rules, but you're right that you can't control it.

Am I right that you consciously omitted singers in bands?

 

I did not omit singers in bands Karen Carpenter, Toni Tennille, Gladys Knight and Chaka Khan all sang with a band.

What I did omit were singers who share lead vocals in bands such as Fleetwood Mac, Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Heart, Abba and so forth.

Some may say that in Carpenters Richard Carpenter would sing the lead sometimes - but other than their debut album he sang lead on only one song in their next three albums each and from 1975 onward he did not sing anymore leads. Karen Carpenter was the obvious lead singer of that band.

 

Joni Mitchell is a singer/songwriter. I think she was largely unproven in singing and nowhere near as versatile at SINGING as say Linda Ronstadt.