THE LINER NOTES

 

Launched with an uptempo, borderline risqué title track from a spurned, wanting woman, and fueled once again by Slim Williamson’s even-handed production, this sophomore set of twelve tracks released less than a year after her debut LP showcases a singer ready to take chances…to push the envelope ever so slightly, and give us a glimpse of an artist with a range beyond the confines of 1960’s country music. Her heartfelt rendition of the John Hurley, Ronnie Wilkins hit, ‘Love of The Common People’ takes a cue from Dusty Springfield and the pop-folk of The New Christy Minstrels, while her reading of Roy Orbison’s classic, ‘Crying’, captures a contralto Lynn Anderson with an emotive magnetism that literally pulls you into the song, line by line.

 

Grounding the set are five new songs from Liz Anderson, now becoming one of country music’s most in-demand songwriters, and keeping the Lynn Anderson rise to fame squarely in the family. Simple, uncomplicated story songs with a lyric twist that would become her trademark. ‘A Penny for Your Thoughts’ has an O. Henry sense of irony built into the story of a lonely wife. And ‘A Hundred Times a Day’ is classic twelve-bar country about a woman who can’t stop forgetting.  From any other singer, they might tend towards novelty, but in the capable hands and voice of her daughter, there is both weight and depth to these stories—making them tailor-made for country radio,  jukebox playlists, and, as it turned out, television. Released only a few short months after becoming a regular on The Lawrence Welk Show, her debut of the title track for a national television audience in prime time propelled the album almost overnight to #1, and the single almost overnight to the Top Five, giving Lynn her second major hit in less than a year, and the biggest of her career yet.

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J Buck Ford