Song of the Day: "Long, Long Time"

Linda Ronstadt's first solo hit reached millions again last night in haunting episode of "The Last of Us"

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books and now writer/director of award-winning films. He was also a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy.

As I’ve noted previously, the significant use of Hank Williams’ “Alone and Forsaken”—in the original game long ago and then in recent trailer for the new HBO series—got me into The Last of Us (along with my son’s recommendation). This week’s unusual and fairly amazing episode, which debuted last night, takes as its title, and makes wide and moving use of, Linda Ronstadt’s first solo hit, from 1970, “Long, Long Time.” Written by Gary White, a Texas bandmate of Jerry Jeff Walker , it sparked her solo career, and won her a Grammy nod, a few years before she became mega-popular. Look for those new mega royalty checks as the song goes top 30 again this week, Gary!

In 1971, I was set to interview Linda in NYC for Crawdaddy but it got canceled for some reason. A little later she told my Crawdaddy colleague Peter Knobler, “People are always taking advantage of you; everybody that's interested in you has got an angle." Enjoy Linda and Tina Turner below, then subscribe, it’s still free.

One of her first national TV performances of the song, on Glen Campbell’s show, 1970. She actually did it first the year before on Hef’s immortal “Playboy After Dark” but I will spare you that (even though that night she did a second, Hank Williams, number).

Oddly, there haven’t been that many big time covers. But here’s one from Tina Turner in 1974.

And for fun, Claudine Longet in her usual whisper (before she shot Spider Sabich)

Linda a few years later with the similar “Love Has No Pride”

Cartoon of the Day

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s atomic bomb movie twisted by the White House and Pentagon), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His 2021 film, Atomic Cover-up, won four awards, and his current one, The First Attack Ads, aired over hundreds of PBS stations this past fall. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.