|
|
| What
do you get when you combine the songwriting abilities and heartfelt
conviction of a county music legend with the excellent skills and
trained ears of a Detroit-based rock music artist and record producer?
Answer: Van Lear Rose, which just happens to be the title
of the latest release by country music star and living legend Loretta
Lynn. |
Loretta Lynn
VAN LEAR ROSE
(2004) Music Review by Jim Davis |
| This
page was created on August 23, 2004
This page was last updated on
July 27, 2005
— MUSIC REVIEWS
INDEX
— Jim's
Van Lear Rose blog comment here
|
| DETAILS |
| 1.
VAN LEAR ROSE
2. PORTLAND OREGON (DUET WITH JACK WHITE)
3. TROUBLE ON THE LINE
4. FAMILY TREE
5. HAVE MERCY
6. HIGH ON A MOUNTAIN TOP
7. LITTLE RED SHOES
8. GOD MAKES NO MISTAKES
9. WOMEN'S PRISON
10. THIS OLD HOUSE
11. MRS. LEROY BROWN
12. MISS BEING MRS.
13. STORY OF MY LIFE
|
| CD
INFO |
Van
Lear Rose
Loretta Lynn
Garage-rock hero Jack White producing honky-tonk legend Loretta Lynn?
And Lynn comparing him to renowned Nashville producer Owen Bradley?
Yes, we all know the world is rapidly shrinking, but now we've seen
everything. Most stunning of all--they nailed it. For the first time,
Lynn has written all of an album's songs, and her lyrics are as cutting
and incisive as ever. On the powerful, biting "Family Tree,"
she brings her babies to the home of her husband's mistress, so that
they can see the "woman that's burning down our family tree."
Throughout she cunningly tackles tried-and-true honky-tonk themes
of love gone bad, drinkin', cheatin', and murder. Lynn even offers
a compelling slice of theological fatalism ("God Makes No Mistakes").
White's production--mostly stark and atmospheric--ranges from more-traditional
country to straight-up White Stripes, with most tracks falling somewhere
in between. White duets with Lynn on the rousing one-night-stand story
"Portland, Oregon," but he does not need to sing to leave
his personal stamp. At 70, Lynn seems thoroughly engaged and delighted;
at times she delivers some of the most emotionally potent singing
of her career. A decade earlier, Johnny Cash turned to rock and rap
producer Rick Rubin, and the move resuscitated Cash's career. Now,
Jack White has done the same for Loretta Lynn, another country legend
whose music is simply too raw and honest for the contemporary country
crowd. Van Lear Rose exceeds all expectations, a bold collaboration
in which artists from two different musical universes forge a memorable
work that neither could have created alone. --Marc Greilsamer
|
| POSTER |
|
 Loretta
Lynn
VAN LEAR ROSE
(2004) Music Review by Jim Davis
Jim is the Director/Program Administrator
of a Christian organization called “God’s Havens For
Children”, San Luis Obispo, California. GHFC currently operates
a licensed Foster Family Agency and a youth mentoring program. He
received degrees in Organizational Communication (B.A.) and Public
Administration (M.P.A.) from California State University, Stanislaus
(Turlock, CA). A native San Franciscan, he now lives on the California
Central Coast with his wife Eileen (employed as a teaching assistant
for autistic children) and their 4 children. Jim appreciates an
eclectic variety of music styles, and says that, “music has
a considerable amount of influence on people of all ages and popular
culture in general.” |
|
|
 What
do you get when you combine the songwriting abilities and heartfelt
conviction of a county music legend with the excellent skills
and trained ears of a Detroit-based rock music artist and record
producer? Answer: Van Lear Rose,
which just happens to be the title of the latest release by country
music star and living legend Loretta Lynn.
The
recent passing of American music legend Johnny Cash (who, in the
decade before his death had made several excellent “American
Recordings” label releases under the direction
of veteran rock-record producer Rick Rubin) left a hole in the
world of music. Crashing right out of that vacuum comes this powerful
and revealing work by Loretta Lynn. Her latest release pairs her
up with producer Jack White (of the Detroit rockers “White
Stripes” fame) and the resulting effort
showcases the engaging, often biographical, and always honest
songwriting talents of Lynn (all of the 13 songs are original
tunes penned by Loretta).
The
entire album has a very warm and rich sound, thanks to producer
Jack White, who avoids using digital recording equipment and mixers,
opting instead for an analog 8-track studio set-up. The result
makes VLR truly sound like a record, rather than a CD (audiophiles
who grew up actually listening to records will understand the
difference between the two).
Along
with Lynn’s compelling lyrics and talented singing, the
musicians on this record provide a wide range of enjoyable music.
Lynn plays acoustic guitar, producer Jack White (in addition to
his assistance on vocals) plays acoustic and electric guitar,
piano, organ and even some percussion instruments. Assisting Lynn
and White with the music is the garage-rock band “The
Greenhorne’s” (and a couple of other
excellent Detroit and Cincinnati session players). Lynn, in the
liner notes of VLR, dubbed this group the “Do Whatevers,”
saying, “they got in there and did whatever we needed them
to!”
This
talent-rich musical gene pool provides surefire, rock-tinged country
music that not only complements the lyrics and singing, but provides
listeners with a heightened appreciation of the entire Country
and Western music genre (which, as a musical category, doesn’t
even begin to explain the range of music covered by the songs
and music contained on this record).
Coupled
with the great production work and warm, rich sound of the record
is a strong sense of lyrical honesty, as Lynn digs down deep into
her roots and brings forth tales of strong family ties, love,
good memories, and the darker stories of revenge, adultery and
even murder. Surrounding all of this is the singer’s ever-present
faith, as many of Lynn’s songs reflect her faith in and
reliance on a redemptive God of love and mercy.
The
title cut, “Van Lear Rose”
recounts Loretta’s fond memories of sitting
on her father’s knees and hearing the story of how her Dad
was the “poor boy” that caught the eye of “the
belle of Johnson County . . . a beauty to behold, like a diamond
in the coal.” Her Daddy proudly told her how he, right under
the nose of all of the other coal miners, “stole the heart
of the family rose.” The song’s steel guitar wails
and cries, the drums are strong (but not overbearing), and Lynn’s
voice is in great form as she tells this classic story of how
the underdog wins the girl of his dreams, and in doing so surprises
all the others that stand around telling you how it “ain’t
never gonna happen.”
 Next,
Lynn shouts out a emotion-crusher-power-ballad entitled,
“Portland Oregon”; this song is a
duet with Jack White, and it is delivered with the earnest conviction
of a woman who has been there and back and yet still lives to
talk about her journey. Pain, shame and trials abound as Lynn
sings about a woman who bemoans the pitfall of a “sloe gin
fizz induced one night stand.” The music is strong and supports
the tune that Loretta belts out, and Jack White answers her back
in true country-rock duet fashion.
“Trouble
On The Line” is the honest woman’s
tale of the static that seems to always exist in the relationship
between her and the Lord. The steel pedal guitar rings out as
if to highlight Lynn’s simple and apologetic prayer: she
sings that she “cannot understand a word you’re saying”
and that “communication is one thing that we never seem
to find.”
This
song reminded me of a Bible story (found in the book of Luke,
Chapter 18) where Jesus spoke about the Pharisee (in this case,
a word for a religious hypocrite) and the tax collector: The Pharisee
was very proud of the fact that he was “not like other men—robbers,
evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.”
The scripture goes on to say that the tax collector stood at a
distance, and would not even look up into heaven, but “cried
out and asked God for mercy.” Jesus said the it was the
tax collector who was righteous and deserved mercy, and who was
the one person who, in Christ’s eyes, was justified before
God (in another part of the Bible Christ said that “he who
humbles himself will be exalted.”)
Lynn’s
lyrics remind me of the tax collector who was humble, and would
not compare himself to others, and because of his humility, ended
up being called “righteous” by the Lord. [The message
that I read between the lines is that sometimes we are actually
closer to God than we may realize.]
 “Family
Tree” is the cry of a woman who is in the
midst of the hardship and pain associated with a husband who has
gone astray; this song focuses on the proverbial “other
woman,” who in Lynn’s song has come to “tear
down the Family Tree.” Lynn sings, “I brought along
our little babies, ‘cause I wanted them to see the woman
that’s burnin’ down our family tree.” Lynn sings
with gut-level honesty and pulls no punches, calling this woman
the “trash that is burning down our family tree.”
Once again the steel guitar wails and cries along with Lynn, echoing
the heartfelt, sad emotions reflected in the lyrics of this simple,
and yet haunting tune.
“Have
Mercy” an upbeat tune (driven by strong
guitar and a steady drum beat) has Lynn crying out to a lover
that is tearing her apart; she begs him to “Have mercy on
me baby, I’m down upon my knees” and reminds him that
“the way you did it to me . . . you know that you done got
to me.” She follows up with a line of truth by saying about
the other woman, “she’s’ got you hypnotized
and paralyzed, like a puppet on a string.” Lynn does not
flinch, and tells the truth about what will happen to her lover
if he chooses to continue down this road of pain and misery.
“High
on a Mountain Top” is a charming song that
evokes the smoky mountain music and close-knit family life that
the coal-mining region of Virginia is famous for. Loretta sings
this song as if she had never left her hometown or the family
roots that she still seems to be closely connected to. She tells
how her family “never did have a lot of money, but they
laughed a lot.”
I was talking with someone just the other day and wondering
how we ever made it without cell phones, fax machines and microwave
ovens? Oh, for a bit more simplicity as the pace of life seems
to run at such fast speed!! Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan captured
this thought well, as he sang, “Time is a jet plane, it
moves so fast” in his song “You're a Big Girl Now.”
“Little
Red Shoes” sounds like a page right out of
the singer’s childhood diary: in the song she tells a story
of growing up in a family of humble beginnings, where money did
not grow on trees. Lynn has an amazing ability to draw the listener
in to her early world (even during a song that seems to ramble around
a bit too much) and the memories, both happy and sad, that seem
to be so strongly etched into this woman’s heart, soul and
mind.
 “God
Makes No Mistakes,” expresses the simple
faith that seems to be at the core of Lynn’s life. She expresses
her confidence in the Maker, and attempts to provide some answers
to the “why did God allow this?” questions that almost
everyone seems to ask at one time or another in their lives. The
bedrock faith that the singer seems to hold close to her heart
comes shining through with an autobiographical tone in this simple
song of testimony. The message of this tune rings true as Lynn
attempts to connect with listeners and provide them with some
answers to their own questions of faith.
“Women’s
Prison” is the earnest cry of someone who
caught her lover cheating and, in a “crime of passion,”
committed murder. In this song Lynn sings that she knows that
she “has been forgiven, but the price of love is high.”
In the midst of the singer’s pain and cries there is an
expression of faith that surfaces as the song trails off into
an “Amazing Grace that saved a wretch like me” chorus.
This song portrays the eternal hope that someone with faith may
experience, even in the midst of the dark walls and hardship that
are so often associated with the
life of a prisoner on death row.
“This
Old House” recounts the Lynn’s childhood
years, as she sings about pleasant family related memories that
come from a warm and loving home life. It seems that this “coal
miner’s-daughter” has never forgotten her roots, and
her strong sense of family and related memories of “home-sweet-home.”
“Mrs.
Leroy Brown”: Crafty guitar hooks and quick-paced
drums are combined with Lynn’s singing and sense of humor
in this tune about a woman who is fed up with having to stay at
home “bouncing babies on her knees” while her husband
is down carousing at the local bar. The song’s character,
“Mrs. Leroy Brown” draws all of her husband’s
money out of the bank to buy a pink limousine, that she then uses
to chase her wayward husband all the way around town, finally
confronting the mistress that has wreaked havoc on her home life.
Lynn sings that “I’m gonna grab ‘er by her phony
ponytail, I’m gonna sling her around and around. When she
wakes up she’ll know she met up with mad Mrs. Leroy Brown.”
Talk about revenge: this woman is not content to sit by idly but
instead gladly and literally takes matters in her own hands! (this
song brought back memories of the early 1970’s hit song,
“Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”, by the late Jim Croce).
In
the song “Miss Being Mrs.”
Lynn remembers her late husband as she sings of lying all alone
in her bed of memories, and dreaming of her husband’s sweet
kiss. As the song title so aptly says it, she misses being Mrs.
Tonight. This song is the sad and haunting cry of a widow bemoaning
the loss of her husband, and coming to grips with living life
without her mate. Apparently this song is very close to Lynn’s
heart and her life, as she lost her husband Doo back in 1996 (who
died as a result of a long illness), and now knows all too well
that pain and hurt that a grieving widow struggles with as they
face life without their marriage partner.
“Story
of My Life,” the autobiographical closing
song on the album, retraces the steps of Loretta’s life:
Lynn sings “Here’s the story of my life, listen and
I’ll tell it twice . . . folks in Kentucky are born lucky”
and continues to tell the story of her rise to stardom, “
Got me a guitar, moved to Nashville and wrote me a song,”
recounting her marriage at a young age and early motherhood and
caps off her album by singing, in spite of life’s hardships
and trials, “I hafta say that I’ve been blessed .
. . Not bad for this ole Kentucky girl, I guess.”
This
“ole Kentucky girl”
has done well, and the most recent proof of this is Van
Lear Rose, a powerful collection of all original
Loretta Lynn songs. Lynn’s cutting edge collaborative effort
with Jack White has produced a record that stretches (and pulls
apart) the “County and Western” and “Nashville”
music categories, and in doing so, these artists rightfully deserve
the acknowledgment by the Grammy Award judges. Keep your ears
open to find out what happens at the Grammy Awards, but in the
meantime give this record a good listen.
— Jim's
Van Lear Rose blog comment here
|
|
| ABOUT THIS CD |
| Van Lear Rose
For
over four decades now, Loretta has fashioned a body of work as artistically
and commercially successful—and as culturally significant—as
any female performer you’d care to name. Her music has confronted
many of the major social issues of her time, and her life story
is a rags-to-riches tale familiar to pop, rock and country fans
alike. The Coal Miner’s Daughter—the tag refers to a
hit single, an album, a best-selling autobiography, an Oscar-winning
film, and to Lynn herself—has journeyed from the poverty of
the Kentucky hills to Nashville superstardom to her current status
as an honest-to-goodness American icon.
 Her
latest album, the Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose, is poised now
to remind the world yet again of Lynn’s power as a vocalist
and her skill as a songwriter. As she puts it on “Story of
My Life,” the new album’s closing track: “Not
half bad for this ol’ KY girl, I guess... Here’s the
story of my life. Listen close, I’ll tell it twice.”
Loretta
was born in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, the second of Clara and Ted
Webb’s eight children. Just as she would later sing in “Coal
Miner’s Daughter,” Loretta’s family eked out a
living during the Depression on the “poor man’s dollar”
her father managed to earn “work{ing] all night in the Van
Leer coal mine [and] all day long in the field a-hoein’ corn.”
As she also notes in that song, “I never thought of leavin’
Butcher Holler.” But that was before she met Oliver Lynn (aka
Doolittle or Doo, or “Mooney” for moonshine), a handsome
21-year-old fresh from the service who swept the young Loretta Webb
off her feet. The couple married when Loretta was barely 14.
Looking
for a future that didn’t require him to work the mines, Doo
found work in Custer, Washington, and Loretta joined him in 1951.
The following decade found Lynn a full-time mother—four kids
by the time she began singing seriously in 1961—of precisely
the sort she would one day sing to and for. In her spare time, though,
with Doo’s encouragement, she learned to play the guitar and
began singing in the area. During one televised talent contest in
Tacoma, hosted by Buck Owens, Loretta was spotted by Norm Burley
who was so impressed he started Zero Records just to record her.
Before
long, Loretta and Doo hit the road cross-country, stopping every
time they spotted a country radio station to push her first Zero
release, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl.” By the time
they reached Nashville, the record was a. minor hit and Loretta
found work cutting demos for the publishing company of Teddy and
Doyle Wilburn. One of these, Kathryn Fulton’s “Biggest
Fool of All,” caught the ear of Decca Records producer Owen
Bradley. He thought the song would be perfect for Brenda Lee, but
the Wilburns worked a deal—you can have the song if you record
Loretta. Soon, Loretta was in the studio cutting sides with Bradley,
producer at the time not only for Lee but Patsy Cline, Bill Anderson,
and Webb Pierce.
At
this early stage of her career, Loretta was greatly influenced by
Kitty Wells, the groundbreaking “girl singer” who turned
the tables on several decades worth of male double standards with
the 1952 classic, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk
Angels.” Like Kitty’s, Loretta’s delivery on “I’m
a Honky Tonk Girl” was twangy and nasal, rhythmically straight
up and down, plainspoken and emotionally understated. Such a down-home
vocal style was Loretta’s birthright; it was more or less
the way she had sang back in Kentucky, it was the style she took
with her to Washington, and it was a vocal approach particularly
well-suited to the duet sides she soon made in Nashville with honky-tonk
legend Ernest Tubb. (“Mr. and Mrs. Used to Be,” from
1964, was the pair’s first and biggest hit.)
Working
with Bradley in Nashville, however, Lynn quickly fell under the
musical spell of new friend Patsy Cline. Patsy’s distinctive
style, marked by dramatic slides, growls and crescendos, was more
modern and “pop” sounding than that of Wells’
and the other female country singers of the day. It’s not
surprising then that “Success,” the 1962 single that
became Loretta’s first Top Ten hit (and that was later covered
by Elvis Costello on his Almost Blue album) showcased Loretta in
a full-throated, string-backed setting that’s more than a
little reminiscent of Patsy Cline.
Out
of these influences, Lynn soon fashioned her distinctive style—a
mature fusion of twang, grit, energy and libido—an approach
she first perfected in the songs of other writers. In “Wine,
Women, and Song,” “Happy Birthday,” and “Blue
Kentucky Girl,” each a Top Ten hit in 1964, Loretta played
a plucky young woman who alternated between waiting for her wayward
man to walk back in the door and threatening to walk out herself.
Such
hits were early hints of Loretta’s undeniably strong female
point of view—a perspective unique at the time both to country
music specifically and to pop music generally and a trend in her
music that became further pronounced as she began to write more
of her own songs. In her first self-penned song to crack the Top
Ten, 1966’s “Dear Uncle Sam,” Loretta presented
herself as a woman who was going to fight to keep what was important
to her, even if that meant questioning the wisdom of her government.
Indeed, “Dear Uncle Sam” was among the very first recordings
to recount the human costs of the Vietnam War. “Doo encouraged
me to write that one,” she recalls today. “I was wondering
what it would be like to have someone over there and what I would
do if I did.” (The song made a return to Lynn’s live
sets with the coming of the Iraq war.)
Over
the next few years, Loretta wrote a string of hits unprecedented
for their take-no-crap women narrators. In “You Ain’t
Woman Enough (to Take My Man)” [#2, 1966], “Don’t
Come Home A’Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind)”
[#1, 1967], and “Fist City” [#1, 1968], among others,
Loretta presented a new character on the country scene: a woman
unafraid to stand up for herself, just like real women did. Drawing
upon her own experiences as a harried young wife and mother, and
upon a homespun sense of humor at once both pointed and hilarious,
Loretta issued warnings to soused and philandering hubbies everywhere—and
to the female competition—that she was not to be trifled with.
In her words, “You better close your face and stay out of
my way if you don’t wanna go to Fist City.”
[Note:
As on most of Lynn’s biggest solo hits, the studio band for
the above numbers included members of Nashville’s famed A-Team:
guitarist Grady Martin, six-string electric bassist Harold Bradley,
bass player Junior Huskey, pianist Floyd Cramer, drummer Buddy Harman,
and pedal steel guitarist Hal Rugg.]
As
the ‘60s turned into the ‘70s, Lynn forever solidified
her reputation as an advocate for ordinary women. Typically, Loretta’s
brand of women’s liberation was attuned specifically to the
lives of her blue-collar audience, the wives and mothers who were
far too overwhelmed by the demands of, say, childcare to place much
stock in symbolic foolishness like bra burning. Indeed, while a
guest on The Dick Frost Show, Loretta once famously dozed off while
listening to the upper-middle class feminist Betty Freidan talk
theory with the show’s host.
Loretta
was more interested in life as it was lived—in the kitchen
and in the bedroom--by millions of working-class women everyday.
For example, “One’s on the Way,” a Shel Silverstein-penned
hit from 1971, let Lynn voice the concerns of a harried Topeka woman,
worn out from raising her kids, cleaning the house, and dealing
with a husband with enough free time to be calling her from a bar
while she’s home making dinner.
But it was with her own songs that Loretta best conveyed the complexity
of women’s lives. In “I Wanna Be Free,” Loretta
reveled in the possibilities a divorce might bring (“I’m
gonna take this chain from around my finger, and throw it just as
far as I can sling ‘er”), while in “Rated X”
she complained that new divorcees were inevitably treated like easy
women. In “I Know How,” she boasted of her sexual prowess;
in “When the Tingle Becomes a Chill,” she bemoaned the
loss of desire that accompanies a bad marriage; and in “The
Pill,” a record banned by many radio stations in its day,
she captured perfectly the power of birth control to let women love
without the passion-dowsing fear of pregnancy: “The feelin’
good comes easy now since I’ve got the pill!”
Each
of the above songs was a Top Three country hit between 1968 and
1975, and Loretta Lynn (to paraphrase the title of a 1970 album)
both wrote ‘em and sang ‘em. The same was true, of course,
of her signature song, the 1970 chart- topper “Coal Miner’s
Daughter,” which chronicled for all time the strides women
were making in these years—from country to city, from home
to workforce and, in Lynn’s case, from “girl-singer”
to superstar.
The
immense popularity of these songs, as well as other straight-shooting
hits like “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath,” “Women
of the World (Leave My World Alone)," and “You’re
Looking at Country,” culminated in 1972 when Lynn won her
second Best Female Vocalist award from the Country Music Association—and
when she became the first woman to win the CMA’s most prestigious
award, Entertainer of the Year.
It
didn’t hurt that sprinkled among her many solo hits was a
series of amazing collaborations between Loretta and her dear friend,
singer Conway Twitty. Indeed, Loretta also won her first Vocal Duo
of the Year award in 1972, with Conway, a title the team held onto
through 1976. (And this in the years when the duet competition annually
included Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton and George Jones &
Tammy Wynette!) The pair’s close harmony style and dramatic
song selections—especially, “After the Fire Is Gone,”
“Lead Me On,” “As Soon As I Hang up the Phone,”
and “Feelin’s”—explored adult romantic relationships
as wrenchingly as any records ever made.
Through
the next decade, Loretta scored more and more hits—and became
more and more famous beyond her country base. In 1973, she appeared
on the cover of Newsweek; in 1976 her autobiography (written with
journalist George Vescey) became a New York Times Bestseller; in
1980 the book was made into a hit film starring Sissy Spacek and
Tommy Lee Jones. By the time of her last major hit—”I
Lie,” in 1982—Lynn could count 52 Top 10 hits and 16
#1’s.
Loretta
Lynn spent the ‘90s largely away from the spotlight, caring
for her ailing husband Doo and, after he died in 1996, grieving
his loss. The music scene has changed considerably in her absence
but it’s also a scene she helped create. Indeed, it would
be all but impossible to imagine the likes of Shania Twain’s
“Any Man of Mine” and Deana Carter’s “Did
I Shave My Legs for This?” or any number of Dixie Chicks hits,
without her. Van Lear Rose, with its moody, propulsive arrangements,
loud and rocking guitars and intimate songwriting, can only extend
Lynn’s profound influence into a new century—and to
a new generation of fans.
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