Various Artists: Feels Like Home; Songs from the Sonoran Borderlands (Putumayo/Ode)

Although it is not necessary to have read the memoir by Linda Ronstadt of the same title – available only on Kindle at present – it's likely you would want to after hearing this collection which she has collated with the Putumayo label's founder Dan Storper.

In her brief introduction to the useful booklet with the CD, Ronstadt writes of the land of her ancestors in western Mexico (to colonial authorities in Mexico City it was “ the desolate northwest rim of New Spain”, to Americans “a wild corner of their western frontier”) and how her aunt published a booklet in 1946, Canciones de Mi Padre: Spanish Folksongs from Southern Arizona.

Ronstadt herself recorded albums in Spanish, the first in 1987 the same title as her aunt's book and drawing from it for its songs.

Ronstadt appears here on four songs: El Sueno from her Mas Canciones album which followed Canciones de Mi Padre; Across the Border with Emmylou Harris written by Springsteen, with Neil Young on harmonica, from the duo's Grammy nominated Western Wall; I Will Never marry with Dolly Parton and Piel Canela from her Grammy-winning Frenesi album.

Here too are the moving Barrio Viejo by Lalo Guerrero (a lament for his lost community which appeared on Ry Cooder's Chavez Ravine album); the downbeat prisoner's ballad Palomas Que Andan Volando/Pigeons That Are Flying by Los Cenzontles who appear again with David Hidalgo (of Lobos) on the traditional Naninan Upirin/How Will I Do It and at the end with the more upbeat Voy Caminando/I Go Walking (with Hidalgo again and Taj Mahal on banjo).

Elsewhere are Jackson Browne with Los Cenzontles with The Dreamer (which was originally on Browne's excellent current album Downhill From Everywhere) and Ronstadt's late brother Michael on the lovely Canadian Moon about nostalgia for the desert and prairie when away from them.

There is heartbreak, loss, romance, memory and the musical inspirations for Linda Ronstadt – who has been unable to perform for the past decade – which make for a moving, focused introduction to this distinctive music and place.