THE LINER NOTES

 

Released in the spring of seventy-two, ‘Cry’ stands as one of the most critically-acclaimed albums by Lynn Anderson of her entire career.

 

Co-produced again by Glenn Sutton and Clive Davis, the album was her fourteenth long-playing release, marked her fifth Number One LP, and launched one of her biggest singles since “Rose Garden”, with the re-tooling of one of pop music’s most iconic songs; the 1951 Johnnie Ray classic, “Cry”.

 

Capturing the power, depth, and emotional magnetism of this tour de force in a paragraph or two—or ten—is all but impossible. Here is the Lynn Anderson performance of her career; a performance so fraught with emotion and heartache that one wonders how she found the strength to sing the lines; each verse like pulling back another layer of herself, eventually revealing her very soul. But to say she ‘sings’ the lines is like saying Katherine Hepburn speaks her lines. These lines aren’t just sung; they’re ripped from her, torn from her heart and delivered with a passion that literally infuses every word…from the almost whispered first lines through the last, her voice soaring to a crescendo that rivals the greatest singers of our time.

 

Balanced by one of the most fluid and consistent selection of songs on any Lynn Anderson album, producers Sutton and Davis have framed the title song with ten tracks that only further underscore her talent as a stylist, and maturity as a vocalist; her voice, at twenty-five, reflecting a wisdom and worldliness that belies her youth.  Cam Mullins’ hit for Ray Price, “I Won’t Mention It Again” sounds as if Lynn is almost channeling Judy Garland, in a ballad that might’ve been written for her. In Gordon Lightfoot’s “Cotton Jenny”, her natural affinity for his lyric and melody is given the perfect acoustic frame by Sutton and Davis, and Delaney Bramlett’s "Never Ending Song of Love" reminds us how much crossover kick a Lynn Anderson vocal still has.

 

‘Cry’ --hands down this great singer’s finest hour since ‘Rose Garden’…maybe of her career.

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J Buck Ford