THE LINER NOTES

 

Like a frame from an old daguerreotype, there is an almost Victorian feel to the cover art for this eighteenth album of Lynn’s career. Dressed in high-necked, long-sleeved white lace and taffeta, she sits astride a brightly-painted carousel horse, a double-exposed image capturing two distinct personalities in transition, reminding us that there is more than one side to this artist and woman, and like the hearts in transition in this eleven-track set of tightly-crafted songs, there is more than one side to every love story.

 

Looking to Nashville’s premiere writers, players and creative sparks, Lynn and producer & husband Glenn Sutton have designed a collection of songs together for this March, 1974 release that virtually define Countrypolitan. And while the album was their first in more than four years to fall short of the Top Ten, the second of the LP’s two singles, a cover of the Warner Mack hit, “Talkin' to the Wall” shot to #7 like it was on an express elevator, boosting the LP to the number fourteen slot.

 

But like more than one Lynn Anderson album, many of this LP’s best moments are captured in the tracks that weren’t picked as singles; the deep cuts that underline how very nearly perfectly this partnership worked. Fiddles and steel don’t just accompany Lynn on Bob McDill’s "I'm Not That Good At Goodbye" – they wrap around her and echo the cadence of a heartache; of a woman who’s only wish is that the man that’s leaving do it quickly, and let her “…keep a little of my pride…”.  Jim Weatherly’s “It Must Be Love This Time” takes on an entirely new dynamic; blending folk, country and pop, to create a musical tapestry woven throughout with Lynn’s crisp, poetic vocal.

 

But it’s a simple ballad from the pen and heart of Glenn Sutton that stands as this album’s shining centerpiece. Written for his and Lynn’s only child, Lisa, "A Man Like Your Daddy" is both a mother’s prayer, and a father’s hope, threaded together in a moving love song that said as much about their love for each other, as for the little girl who was the light of their lives.

 

You can almost see her in their arms, and hear them both saying, smile for me….

​

J Buck Ford