Editing Nelson Riddle (section)

==Career revival==
In the spring of 1982, Riddle was approached by [[Linda Ronstadt]]—via telephone through her manager and producer, [[Peter Asher]]—to write arrangements for an album of [[jazz standard]]s that Ronstadt had been contemplating since her stint in ''[[The Pirates of Penzance]]''. The agreement between the two resulted in a three-album contract which included what were to be the last arrangements of Riddle's career, with the exception of an album of twelve [[Great American Songbook]] standards he arranged and conducted for his old friend, opera singer [[Kiri Te Kanawa]], in April 1985, six months before his death that October. Ronstadt recalls that when she initially approached Riddle, she did not know if he was even familiar with her music. He knew her name, but basically hated rock 'n' roll. However, his daughter was a big Linda Ronstadt fan and told her father, "Don't worry, Dad. Her checks won't bounce."

When Riddle learned of Ronstadt's desire to learn more about [[traditional pop|traditional pop music]] and agreed to record with her, he insisted on a complete album or nothing. He explained to Ronstadt that he had once turned down [[Paul McCartney]], who had sought him out to write an arrangement for one of McCartney's albums, "I just couldn't do it. You can't put something like that in the middle of a bunch of other things. The mood comes and then it changes. It's like putting a picture in a bad frame."{{sfn|Levinson|2005|p=290}} Riddle was at first skeptical of Ronstadt's proposed project, but once he agreed, his career turned around immediately.<ref name="lindaronstadtwithnelson">{{cite web |publisher=Jerry Jazz Musician |title=The Peter Levinson Interview |date=April 20, 2002 | url=http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/mainHTML.cfm?page=levinson.html |access-date=April 9, 2007 }}</ref> For her to do "[[elevator music]]", as she called it, was a great surprise to the young audience. Joe Smith, the president of Elektra, was terrified that the albums would turn off the rock audience. The three albums together sold over seven million copies<ref name="gamblepaysoff">{{cite journal |journal=Family Weekly |title=Ronstadt: The Gamble Pays off Big |date=January 8, 1984 | url=http://www.ronstadt-linda.com/artfam84.htm |access-date=April 9, 2007 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20061022112831/http://www.ronstadt-linda.com/artfam84.htm |archive-date=October 22, 2006 }}</ref> and brought Riddle back to a young audience during the last three years of his life. Arrangements for [[Linda Ronstadt]]'s ''[[What's New (Linda Ronstadt album)|What's New]]'' (1983) and ''[[Lush Life (Linda Ronstadt album)|Lush Life]]'' (1984) won Riddle his second and third [[Grammy Awards]].

On January 19, 1985, Riddle conducted at the nationally televised 50th Presidential Inaugural Gala, the day before the second inauguration of [[Ronald Reagan]]. The program was hosted by [[Frank Sinatra]], who sang "[[Fly Me to the Moon]]" and "[[One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)]]" (backed by a solo dance routine by [[Mikhail Baryshnikov]]).

Working with Ronstadt, Riddle brought his career back into focus in the last three years of his life.<ref name="lindaronstadtwithnelson"/> Stephen Holden of ''[[The New York Times]]'' wrote that ''What's New'' "isn't the first album by a rock singer to pay tribute to the golden age of pop, but is ... the best and most serious attempt to rehabilitate an idea of pop that [[Beatlemania]] and the mass marketing of rock LPs for teen-agers undid in the mid-60s ... In the decade prior to Beatlemania, most of the great band singers and crooners of the 40s and 50s codified a half-century of American pop standards on dozens of albums&nbsp;... many of them now long out-of-print."<ref name=HoldenS-TNYT-1983-09-04>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |title=Linda Ronstadt Celebrates The Golden Age of Pop |last=Holden |first=Stephen |author-link=Stephen Holden |date=September 4, 1983 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/04/arts/linda-ronstadt-celebrates-the-golden-age-of-pop.html?scp=1&sq=%22Linda%20Ronstadt%20Celebrates%20The%20Golden%20Age%20of%20Pop%22&st=cse | access-date=May 10, 2007 }}</ref> ''What's New'' is the first album by a rock singer to have major commercial success in rehabilitating the Great American Songbook.<ref name=HoldenS-TNYT-1983-09-04/>

Riddle's third and final Grammy was awarded posthumously—and accepted on his behalf by Linda Ronstadt just prior to airtime—in early 1986. Ronstadt subsequently presented the evening's first on-air award, at which time she narrated a tribute to the departed maestro.