lp discography - covers & lyrics

Country and western fans need no introduction to Tammy Wynette. They already know her and love her. They need no further help from me. But rock people are another story. So far they have been pretty snobbish about country music, even though it makes up half the roots of rock. Well, cousins, rock has felt the influence of C & W over the years, most directly through the presence of country (or country-based) artists on the pop charts: beside Elvis, the list has included Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Johnny Horton, Jim Reeves Jeannie C.Riley, Carl Perkins, Brenda Lee, Ferlin Husky, Sonny James, George Hamilton IV, Jimmy Dean, Roy Orbison, Don Gibson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roger Miller, Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and Glen Campbell, to name only the ones that come immediately to mind. But think about that list: almost all of the names mentioned were big in the 50s or early 60s and many had only one big hit on the pop charts despite a string of triumphs on the C & W listings. And some were more popular with grown-ups than with rock-and-rollers. Essentially, the same thing happened to country artists that happened to rhythm and blues performers: they were allowed a few hits in pre-Beatle days, then their ideas were stollen and they were relegated to the remainder bins so far as pop fans were concerned. The only other way that most rock fans are aware of C & W at all is through performers who have felt the music's strength and have respectfully tried to avail themselves of it. The Beatles and belatedly the Rolling Stones; the late and lamented Lovin' Spoonful, Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape; the Byrds and their offspring the Flying Burrito Brothers; the Quicksilver Messenger Service and the First Edition are among the many groups that have incorporated elements of C & W into their styles, often in performances that remarkably approximate the originals. In general, though, rock people have been far more willing to acknowledge their indebtedness to black music (except financially) than they have to C & W, which is all the more surprising when you realize that country and soul songs usually deal in similar subjects - love, sex, death and poverty - from strikingly silimar points of view. And, more surprising still, when you begin to dig into it and find out how much "soul" country music really has. There is a lot happening in country music that should interest pop fans. For my money there are two important strains: one that emphasizes traditional country performing and one that is trying to make C & W into a more relevant medium of expression. Somewhere Joe South has commented that there is now a generation that has grown up with the sound of country music but without its values. He himself has written and performed songs like Games People Play and Walk A Mile In My Shoes, that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The best of the singers trying to accompish this new consciousness are John Stewart (a former member of the Kingston Trio who is writing and performing some fantastic country-based material), Waylon Jennings (a deep-throated, soulful country performer who regularly includes Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot and Jim Webb on his programs), Shirl Milete (who writes conventional country songs about unconventional subjects like draft-dodging to Canada) and Mickey Newbury (a weird, Dylanesque singer-songwriter who is head of Nashville's underground). And of course there are still Johnny Cash and John D. Loudermilk whose careers have proven that being commercial can just mean being honest. It isn't all that simple, of course, and there are great performers, like Nat Stuckey, who are still trying to find the proper way to relate to the conteporarary scene. But as with R & B or jazz or folk music, there are artists who refuse to compromise their form. Instead, they develop country music into a sophisticated instrument of communication; in its purest form, C & W is a remarkable means of expression. Cash and Loudermilk fall into this category as well as they do into the other. Earlier in their careers so did Jennings and Stuckey. Porter Wagoner is another good example of this country classicism and, perhaps not, the greatest male proponent of it at the moment is former rock-and-roller Jerry Lee Lewis. By far the best female classicist is Tammy Wynette. Even rock fans are probably aware of Tammy Wynette's great country single D-I-V-O-R-C-E. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Building on the simplest of arrangements, using the usual Nashville foundation of steel and rhythm guitar backed by bass and drums, she wields one of the strongest and most dramatic voices in any contemporary music. And her songs are as basic as her singing: sometimes longing, sometimes demanding, always openly a woman but with her strength and irony undercutting the suppliciant's role that C & W tries to thrust on women (and that the best female C & W singers all resist), Tammy Wynette's records are classics of their genre. The only time she goes outside the format of the traditional country song is to transform tunes like Run Woman Run into her own property. In its way, this album is also the tip of an iceberg. It is one of her best albums on Epic and if you dig her as much as I do after you hear these cuts you may want to go and dig up some of her other Lps. I noticed the following line in a review of somebody else's album in Earl Kirmser's column in the rock magazine Fusion: "It might work if she had the character of, say, Tammy Wynette, but not many do." So maybe rock folks are starting to catch on. I hope so. Because otherwise we are going to miss a lot of great sounds.
The country music on this record moves along with the elegance of a deer cautiously approaching a riverbank. The songstress seems at the height of her powers, able to orchestrate each phrase and establishing a near alter ego relationship with the pedal steel guitar. What might keep listeners from returning over and over to this particular bottle of country wine would be the repetitious nature of the songs. This album gives the impression that producer Billy Sherrill decided to somehow follow or even top "Stand by Your Man" in terms of having a female singer either cooing in submissiveness or pleading to be let back into the arms of a particular man. It proves too daunting a task for the producer in his second role as author or co-author of a good chunk of these songs. Nothing has the rip-roaring thematic grandeur of "Stand by Your Man," and boredom sets in. The second side provides a too-brief glimpse of the glory that could have been with "Sally Trash," a wonderful song that easily ranks among Tammy Wynette's best recordings.

TAMMY WYNETTE

THE FIRST LADY