CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

CHRISTGNU CONSUMER GUIDE

Country music is still a singles medium, disseminated in 150-second swatches on AM radio. Although country artists record as many as three or four albums a year, it’s rare indeedyfor one to "make much show of working on them'. The standard formula is a single or two for bait, producer and/or artist connected compositions for royalties, and cover versions for filler. For those with a taste for the kind of tuneful honesty and cannily restated truism that only country music can provide—a taste which in my taste was sharpened by the phony imitations of such virtues that so many “rock ’n’ rollers” have been selling for the past decade—best-of albums are the way to go/There is one problem, though—country values are so alien to any real rock ’n’ roller that he or she is likely to prefer those few artists who t use the album formula to do something idiosyncratic (Tom T' Hall was once an excellent example), and these idiosyncrasies rarely make the cOrnpilations. All of the reviews below were written for my forthcoming Consumer Guide book, which is limited to the 70’s, and a few major artists are unrepresented because 1 pimply haven’t gotten to them yet. But there are a lot of wonderful records available to anyone who just likes songs the way I do. They stay in print, too, and in some cases are budget-priced. Worthy of investigation, believe me.

MOE BANDY: “The Best Off Moe Bandy” (Columbia ’77):: Despite the definitive “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life,” Bandy’s music on Columbia has followed the pattern of such GRC anomalies as “Bandy the Rodeo Clown” and “Cowboys and Playboys”—if not tinged with pop outright, then at, least softer rhythmically or melodically. I like these songs where they’re good, which is nowhere near often enough. But they misrepresent him—the cheated-upon protagonist of “The Biggest Airport in the World” is naive, while Bandy’s whole point is that ordinary men know about evil. This compiles eight GRC hits—all hard honky-tonk except for the above-named anomalies—and the two CBS songs I’ve mentioned. It’s an unusually solid country LP, and the GRC albums are all out of print anyway. But I miss “Smoke Fillcrd Room” and “I’m Gonna Listen to Me” and “I Stop and Get Up (To Go Out Of My Mind).” A-

MERLE HAGGARD AND THE STRANGERS: “Songs rtf Always Sing” (Capitol 77:: God damn it—I could put together four discs of Hag that would never go below A minus, but Capitol hasn’t offered me the job, so this twodisc mishmash will have to do. Dreck among the gems (Haggard had small knack for heart songs), muddled chronologically and thematically (a real waste with an artist so prolific and varied), and the fifth album to include a live version of “Okie

Robert Christgau

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from Muskogee.” But at least it offers all four of his great outside-the-Iaw songs, one per side. And it’s budget-priced. Time: 54:16. A-

TOM T. HALL: “Tom T. Hall’s Greatest Hits” (Mercury 72):: Except for “Ballad Of Forty Dollars,” & dispassionate account of a day in his life as a gravedigger, and “Homecoming,” a melodramatic account of a dayin the life as a star, all the zingers here compiled are also available on better albums—albums that don’t include songs of inspirational tolerance like “I Washed My Face in the Morniqg Dew” and “One Hundred Children,” which Hall executes no more wisely than any other mortal. Settle for this only if you can’t find I Witness Life, In Search Of A Song, or The' Rhymer And Other Fiire And Dimers, aH of them much superior. B

TOM T. HALL: “Greatest Hits Volume 2” (Mercury 75):: From the received novelty melodiesof “That Song Is Driving Me Crazy” and N“I Like Beer” to the prefab lyrics of “Country Is” and the odious “I Love”—a list of things people get sentimental about! So that they can get ~ sentimental all over again!—this should convince i any doubters in Nashville thdt T. is a professional manipulator just like them, his liberalism just * another marketing ploy. It damn near convinces me. And that’s not even counting the two kiddie songs. Time: 27:25. D-ff* “

TOM T. HALL: “Greatest Hits Volume S” (Mercury 78):: In which Hall goes to work for RCA and Mercury mops together some final product. Three of the four songs—“I Can’t Dance,” “She Gave Her Heart to Jethro,” and the mind-boggling “Turn It On, Turn It On, Turn It On,” aboutthe electrocution of a mass-murdering 4-F in 1944—date from 1972 or before, when it seemed he’d never run out of stories. B + GEORGE JONES & TAMMY WYNETTE: “Greatest Hits” (Epic 77):: If rock ’n’ roll plunges forward like young love, then country music partakes of the passionate stability of a good marriage, and here’s one couple who know

for damrrsure that the wedding doesn’t end the story. Their hits are alternately lender and recriminatory, funny and fucked up, but they’re always felt and they’re always interesting. And even though George and Tammy eventually succumbed to d-i-v-o-r-c-e, they don’t give you I, the feeling that that’s the way it has to come « out. ' A-

LORETTA LYNN: “Lorctt* Lynn’s Great8 est Hits Vol. H” (MCA ’74):: Each (short) side s closes off with the obligatory domestic#bromide. z But the other nine songs—including six by the singer and two by Shel Silverstein—embody | Lynn’s notion of female liberation. This notion isn’t very sisterly—the only woman who appears here is headed for Fist City—but does break , through the male-identified deadends of a Tammy Wynette. If Loretta doesn’t get her love rights, then she’s gonna declare her independence, and even scarier for her man she sounds like she’s itching for an excuse. You know about funky? Well then, call this spunky. Time: 26:29. A-

LORETTA LYNN AND CONWAY TWITTY: “The Very Best Off Loretta And Conway” (MCA 79):: While the mid-range emotions here are projected likably enough, they’re nowhere near as powerful as on George and Tammy’s best-of, perhaps because L&C have never been a real-life couple. But this does offer 14 virtually dudless tracks and includes foui/ great ones—two blatantly comedic (“Spiders and Snakes” and the classic “You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly”) and two shamelessly bajthetic (“The Letter” and “As Soon asT Hang Up The Phone,” both graced by long passages of recitative). Note billing order. > B +

BARBARA MANDRELL: “The Best Off Barbara MandreU” (ABC 79):: Barbara’s real secret isn’t that she’s a country singer who listens to Shirley Brown. It’s that she’s a country singer who reads Helen Gurley Brown. C-

DOLLY PARTON: “The Beet Off Dolly Parton” (RCA Victor 70):: The clear little voice is camouflage, just like the big tits. When she’s wroriged, as she is in five of this record’s six sexual encounters (four permanently premarital, one in which hubby throws her into a “mental institution”), her soprano breaks into a cracked , vibrato that for me symbolizes her prefeminist pride in her human failings (“Just Because I’m A Woman”) and eccentricities (“Just The Way I Am”). Not allthese minisoaps are perfectly realized (“I broke his heart severely”?) and covering “In The Ghetto” is a mistake. But as far as I’m concerned she rescues “How Great Thou Art” from both Elvis and George Beverly Shea, maybe because a nonbeliever like me is free to note that the man who ruined her only happy love affair (with her fella Joe and her dog Gypsy, both of whom die) was the Guy in the Sky. A

DOLLY PARTON: “Beet Off Doly Parton* (RCA Victor ’75):: In her productivity and devotion to writing Parton is like a 19thcentury woman novelist—a hillbilly Louisa May Alcott. What’s best about her is her spunkiness and prettiness (Jo crossed with Amy); what’s worst is her sentimentality and failures of imagination (Beth crossed with Meg). And this is the best of her best. At least half Of these songs have an imaginative power surprising even in so fecund a talent—images like the bargain store and the coat of many colors are so archetypal you wonder why no one has ever thought of them before, and the psychological complexities of “Jolene” and “Traveling Man” go way beyond the winsome light melodramas that are Parton’s specialty. Even when the writing gets mawkish— “I Will Always Love You” or “Love Is Like A Butterfly”—her voice is always there to clear things up. Time: 26:25. A +

JOHNNY PAYCHECK: “Greatest Hits* (Epic ’74):: The on?-time rockabilly’s unassuming Nashville-macho baritone proves a surprisingly ductile medium for Billy Sherrilj’s basic love-and-marriage-exploitation—he defers so meekly to his material that he sounds more domesticated than Tanya, Tammy, or even Charlie Rich. C +

JOHNNY PAYCHECK: “Greatest Hits Volume II” (Epic ’78):: Outlaws are hardly immune to palaver, of course. But the best-of format eliminates the posturing to which this well-named entertainer resorts when the songs get thin, while his current Waylonism limits him to one pretty good romantic ballad. Almost every other selection talks funny and sings tough—in my favorites, a drunk who picks on a Mexican has his ear surgically removed ancbJohn resigns from thel.R.S. A-

CHARLEY PRIDE: “The Best Off Charley Pride Volume 2” (RCA Victor ’72):: Says Paul Hemphill: “There might be something to the suspicion that he is Nashville’s house nigger... if he didn’t sing ‘Kawliga’ better than Hahk Williams'

' did.” Wrong. First you sing real good, and theri maybe they let you be the house nigger. Pride’s amazing baritone—it hints at twang and melisma simultaneously, and to call it warm is to slight the ( brightness of its heat—loses focus as he settles exclusively into “heart songs.” Though these tales of married love are worthy enough, only “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone” ranks with “Poes, My Ring Hurt Your Pinger” or “Just Between You And Me” or “All I Have To Offer You,” while “I’m Just Me” asserts an “identity” so vague if couldn’t get him a tricycle license. In however irrelevant a way, “Kaw-Liga” at least acknowledged the existence of race, and “The Snakes Crawl at Night” at least cast him as a criminal. Neither was much to retreat from. But they helped round out a persona that’s beginning to seem dangerously shallow. Time: 26:08. ‘ B JERRY REED: “The Best off Jerry Reed” (RCA Victor 72):: Reed sustains three identities: redneck crazy, fancy picker, and soap idol. He’s a great crazy, greater even on “Amos Moses” and “Tupelo Mississippi Flash” than on “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot.” And he’s an all right picker, if you like 'pickers. But he couldn’t sell soap to a hippie’s mother. If RCA can’t put together a whole album Called The Crazy Jerry Reed, at least they could program one side that way. B-

JEANNIE C. RILEY: “Jeannie C. Riley . Greatest Hits” (Plantation 71):: Ever since “Harper Valley P.T.A.” this woman has just known soap operas aren’t made up, and even in * Nashville her accent qualifies hereto play the Avenging Hick. The credulity isn’t always a virtue, but I’m a sucker for the accent—especially on.“The Girl Most Likely,” in which poor-butproud-and-how Jeannie gloats over tne surprise marriage of that stdck-up Suzie Jane Grout (spelling phonetic). B

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JOHNNY RODRIGUEZ: "The Greatest Hits of Johnny Rodriguez” (Mercury ’76):: Fourteen big ones from the onetime goatnapper and Chicano Charley Pride, only don’t get your hopes up—he doesn’t have Charley’s big voice (or Freddy’s big soul, either). He does sound very country, clear and nasal, but I bet he’s more grateful for his good looks and would be happy to turn into the Chicano Englebert Humperdinck if the ChicanoTom Jones were beyond his means. And doubt that Humperdinck’s within his means either. C +

KENNY ROGERS: "Ten Years of Gold” (United Artist ’77):: You can tell Kenny’s pop rather than country because his singles average over three minutes. You can tell he’s country rather than pop because he sings about adultery all the time. You can tell he’s country rather than outlaw because he’s foursquare for virtue. And you can tell he’s heavy metal because he advocates murder. * C

JEANNIE SEELY: “Jeannie Seely’s Greatest Hits” (Monument ’72):: In 1966, Seely’s “Don’t Touch Me” took country women’s sexuality from the honky tonk into the bedroom even though it didn’t end up there, and the on. again off-again ache in her voice retained its savor afterwards. But never again did she find a song at once so moral and so febrile. Time: 26:51. " B

PORTER WAGONER & DOLLY PARTON: “The Beht of Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton” (RCA Victor ’71):: There are rCal pleasures here, but they’re chiefly vocal. The surprises are few, the jokes weak and infrequent, the sentimentality overripe (“Jeannie’s Afraid Of The Dark,” yeucch), and the best song by Paxton, not Parton. In short, a lousy ad for couple bonding, though whether Porter is repressing Doljy or Dolly holding out on Porter I wouldn’t know. B