Hygienist returns to recording career after 40 years

Linda Perhacs, RDH, had not recorded an album since 1970 but she has enjoyed a recent resurgence.

The interest in her music brought the 70-year-old periodontal dental hygienist back to the recording studio for the first time in decades. The result is her new record "The Soul of All Natural Things." Perhacs still works at the practice of Edward Rosen, DDS, in Woodland Hills, CA, but she will take time off for a tour of California to support her new record.

Perhacs's first album, "Parallelograms," was produced by one of her patients, film composer Leonard Rosenmann, who had written scores for "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Barry Lyndon." While she enjoyed the process, Perhacs was so displeased with the low-quality of the record pressing that she walked away from music and focused on her career as a hygienist.

A 2003 reissue helped grab the attention of a range of musicians, from Swedish heavy metal bands to the Grammy-winning dance music duo Daft Punk. She was coaxed back to the stage in 2010 and began recording a new album with Fernando Perdomo, a skilled musician and producer who relocated from Florida to her neighborhood in Los Angeles.