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Section: Music
Loretta Lynn
By Ron Ehmke
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Loretta Lynn
Van Leer Rose.
Interscope.
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It used to seem so easy, way back when: country music was about preserving tradition, and rock was about destroying it. At least, that was the cliché. But that was before Nashville-loving college boy Gram Parsons started reviving gospel hymns in the late 1960s, Elvis Costello began covering George Jones in the 70s, Alabama sandblasted the soul out of country in the 80s, and Garth Brooks spent the 90s announcing that his major influences included Kiss and Elton John.
Nowadays, commercial country radio is a wasteland of pop songs disguised with a touch of twang, its moneymen completely uninterested in the legacies of such revered pioneers as Jones, Merle Haggard, or the late, great Johnny Cash. Meanwhile, the so-called “alt country” movement of the last decade is full of former punk rockers who’ve traded in their old Sex Pistols albums for Hank Williams compilations.
So I probably shouldn’t have been too surprised when I learned some time ago that Loretta Lynn’s next album was going to be produced by Jack White of the White Stripes, part of the latest wave of deliberately crude, back-to-basics rebels. Actually, I have that backwards: what I really heard was that Jack White’s next project was going to be an album by Loretta Lynn. Either way, it was just plain weird, a likely recipe for disaster: trendy alternative rock star of the moment joins forces with faded country queen. (Lynn had her last chart hit back in 1982.) Novelty bin, here we come.
But instead of a campy throwaway, Van Lear Rose brings out the best in both Lynn and White, inspiring them each to reach new heights and explore new territory. White, whose own albums I’ve admired but not really loved as much as the buzz around them has suggested I should, turns out to be an excellent producer who is extraordinarily sensitive to his subject’s many strengths. The new album marks the first time that Lynn—one of the most acclaimed female songwriters in any genre—has written all her own material since 1970. And what songs they are! The compositions on Van Lear are beautifully compact short stories; take the one about a wife who drags her kids, dog, and unpaid bills to confront the homewrecker who’s “burning down our family tree,” or the harrowing final moments of one resident of a “Women’s Prison” sentenced to death row for seeking revenge on her cheating husband.
Lynn’s portraits of strong women are invariably fleshed out with colorful turns of phrase. “The smoke’s so doggone thick you can cut it with a knife / and the music’s so loud you can hear the same line twice,” she says of a honky tonk in the feedback-and-drum-driven “Mrs. Leroy Brown.” Then there’s the terrific adage that “Sloe gin fizz works mighty fast / When you drink it by the pitcher and not by the glass” in the surprise college-radio hit “Portland, Oregon,” Lynn’s duet with White depicting a drunken one-night stand in the title city.
Lynn, now 70, still possesses one of the strongest, most distinctive voices in country, and White showcases it beautifully. His wailing guitar and garage-rock backing band may be light years from the slick professionalism of Lynn’s best-known producer from her heyday, Owen Bradley, but somehow they are equally as appropriate to her vocals as Bradley’s polished Nashville Sound. That’s because White has a great feel for one-take improvisation and Lynn’s just-folks delivery. If most of the selections here sound like they were captured by chance during a sing-along, that’s because they pretty much were. (One of the most powerful tracks, “Little Red Shoes,” is not a song at all but a recording of Lynn telling the band a story from her childhood, set to a moody instrumental by White.)
It’s always intriguing to learn what musicians of one generation hear in the work of their predecessors, and where it takes them next. The Rolling Stones brought Muddy Waters to the attention of Swinging London; Eric Clapton turned Robert Johnson’s blues into the foundations of acid rock; Led Zeppelin’s love of other bluesmen inspired them to forge heavy metal. A decade and a half later, REM revisited the guitar style and vocal harmonies of the Byrds and came up with the blueprint for alternative rock. With Van Lear Rose, 29-year-old Jack White has forever changed the way many listeners will think of a certain Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Ron Ehmke is a writer, performer, and teacher who lives in Tonawanda
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