On For Sentimental Reasons, Linda Ronstadt turned a Nat King Cole swing classic into a bright, elegant salute to the American songbook, guided by the old-school grace of Nelson Riddle.
When Linda Ronstadt recorded “Straighten Up and Fly Right” for her 1986 album For Sentimental Reasons, she was not simply adding another standard to her catalog. She was standing inside a carefully chosen musical world: the third and final album in her celebrated series with arranger and conductor Nelson Riddle, following What’s New in 1983 and Lush Life in 1984. By the time this record appeared, Riddle’s name already carried decades of association with the finest architecture of American popular song — brass voiced like conversation, strings that moved with restraint, rhythm sections that knew how to swing without shouting.
The song itself had deep roots long before Ronstadt approached it. “Straighten Up and Fly Right” was written by Nat King Cole and Irving Mills, and it became one of the King Cole Trio’s early signature recordings in the 1940s. Its famous fable-like lyric — a monkey, a buzzard, a lesson in keeping one’s nerve — grew from a kind of playful moral tale, reportedly connected to a sermon Cole remembered from his father. In Cole’s hands, the song moved with sly wit and effortless rhythmic control. It was clever, crisp, and light on its feet, the kind of record that could make discipline sound like pleasure.
Ronstadt’s 1986 version carries that history without trying to impersonate it. That is part of what makes it so appealing. She had already proven, across rock, country, folk, and Mexican traditional music, that her voice could travel without losing its center. But the standards albums asked something different from her. They required not only vocal strength, but proportion. A singer could not merely overpower these songs; she had to inhabit their turns, their formal grace, their hidden mischief. On For Sentimental Reasons, Ronstadt sounds aware of the room she has entered. She does not treat the song as a museum piece. She lets it move.
What makes “Straighten Up and Fly Right” stand out in this setting is its brightness. Many of Ronstadt’s recordings with Riddle lean into romance, moonlit longing, or velvet melancholy. This one has more snap in its step. The arrangement gives her a polished swing-era frame, but there is still air between the notes. The horns do not crowd her. The rhythm has a courteous push. Riddle understood that elegance does not mean stillness; it means motion under control. His arrangement lets the song smile, but it never turns the smile into a grin.
Ronstadt, meanwhile, brings a clean directness to the vocal. She does not lean too heavily on jazz mannerism, nor does she flatten the song into pop neatness. Her phrasing has a sense of lift, especially in the way she handles the title phrase. “Straighten Up and Fly Right” is, after all, a command disguised as a dance tune. It asks for composure. It asks for wit. It asks for survival with one’s dignity intact. Ronstadt catches that mixture — the humor, the warning, the elegance — and makes it feel natural in her own voice.
The album context matters because For Sentimental Reasons arrived near the end of Riddle’s life and after the two had already changed expectations around what a contemporary pop singer could do with pre-rock material. Ronstadt’s standards project was sometimes surprising to those who knew her mainly from 1970s radio, where songs like “You’re No Good”, “Blue Bayou”, and “When Will I Be Loved” had made her one of the defining voices of her generation. Yet her move into the songbook was not a retreat. It was an expansion. She was placing her voice beside older forms and letting the contrast reveal new shades.
In that light, “Straighten Up and Fly Right” becomes more than a charming revival. It becomes a conversation across eras: Nat King Cole’s early swing intelligence, Nelson Riddle’s grand arranging tradition, and Linda Ronstadt’s fearless curiosity meeting in one brisk performance. The recording respects the past, but it does not feel trapped by it. Instead, it has the buoyancy of a singer discovering that a song from another decade can still turn on a dime, still tease, still instruct, still make the body want to move before the mind has finished admiring the craft.
There is also something quietly revealing about Ronstadt choosing a song built on poise. Her finest singing often contains a tension between emotional openness and technical command. Here, that balance becomes the point. The voice is bright, the band is sharp, and the whole performance seems to say that style is not decoration — it is a way of carrying oneself through the world. On For Sentimental Reasons, with Nelson Riddle behind the arrangement, Linda Ronstadt does not merely revisit “Straighten Up and Fly Right”. She lets it stand again, polished and alert, as a reminder that swing can be graceful, funny, disciplined, and alive all at once.
