Bonnie Raitt photographed in 2019.Most listeners don’t associate the singer Bonnie Raitt with Broadway musicals, but she grew up steeped in them. Her father, John Raitt, was an actor who starred in “Oklahoma!” ”Carousel” and “The Pajama Game.” Her mother, Marge Goddard, was a pianist. Ms. Raitt says that listening to them play together had a “tremendous impact.”
Ms. Raitt, 72, has spent a lifetime doing the same. Her 10th album, 1989’s “Nick Of Time,” made her a star, sweeping the Grammys and selling millions of copies. It was the first of three straight multiplatinum releases that firmly established Ms. Raitt as a major singer-songwriter and set the template for her career as a master interpreter and an incisive if not prolific songwriter.
Earlier this year, Ms. Raitt received the Icon Award at the Billboard Women in Music Awards. The presenter was Jackson Browne, who said that meeting her in the early 1970s was an eye opener: “She looked like Little Orphan Annie, but she talked like Redd Foxx.” Ms. Raitt laughs at her friend’s words and notes that he wasn’t the only one taken aback by her salty language early in her career.
I've been in love with her blues since her first album and her cameo walk-on performances in Mill Valley. She's a gift to music and to all of us who finally grew up in the 60's and 70's/
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