Loretta Lynn

Certain Songs #970: Loretta Lynn (feat. Jack White) – “Portland, Oregon”

August 22, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Van Lear Rose
Year: 2004

I’ll admit it: in 2004, when Van Lear Rose came out, I only had a vague knowledge of Loretta Lynn’s music. I mean, obviously, I knew that she’d been a Country superstar in the 1970s, and that Sissy Spacek had won the Oscar for Best Actress playing her in Coal Miner’s Daughter.

On the other hand, I completely knew who Jack White was, as The White Stripes were probably at the peak of both their popularity and their powers, and I was interested in Van Lear Rose because it was his first(?) extracirrcular project outside of the peculiar constraints he’d previously set on the music made.

Certain Songs #969: Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty – “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man”

August 21, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man
Year: 1973

Like Rod Stewart or Neil Young, Loretta Lynn was such a juggernaut in the early 1970s that she had two separate careers happening at once: releasing solo records and collaborations with a frightening frequency.

I can’t pretend to heard — well — any of these, but she released 17 solo albums and another 9 collaborations with Conway Twitty in the 1970s, and while they probably weren’t all great, or even good, judging from a song like “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” there were probably gems throughout.

Certain Songs #968: Loretta Lynn – “Fist City”

August 20, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Fist City
Year: 1968

Loretta Lynn wrote enough great songs worrying about other women stealing her man that you could occasionally wonder why she didn’t choose better men in the first place. But maybe we should be glad, because otherwise we wouldn’t have ever gotten a song as awesomely clever as “Fist City.”

Yes, I know that violence is awful and stuff, and apparently the violence threatened in “Fist City” got it banned from Country radio, no doubt because said violence was threatened by a woman, that didn’t matter to the vast majority of the late 1960s country music audience, because “Fist City” was a Country #1 in 1968.

19 Musical Moments To Die For

February 13, 2009 by Jim Connelly

This month, in honor of St. ~~Hallmark’s~~ Valentine’s day, it’s a special theme version of Musical Moments To Die For.

Love songs! Nothing but love songs!

Well, that’s not exactly right: not so much love songs, but songs about love, which is a totally different head. Totally.

However, just because I’ve applied a theme to this month’s post, it isn’t meant to be a definitive list of greatest songs about love or anything like that. It just happens that all of the songs this month are about it, that’s all. Which means, not uncoincidentally, a lot of these songs were huge hit singles or are incredibly familiar or obvious. Which, of course, doesn’t make them any less to die for.

This is the seventh in a series: The first one had 25, the second one had 24, the third one had 23, the fourth one had 22, the fifth one had 21, and the sixth had 20.