Loretta Lynn sure had a big family, and long coattails as well... Several of her younger siblings landed contracts at Decca Records, including brother Jay Lee Webb and sisters Peggy Sue, as well as Crystal Gayle, who was the baby of the family, having been born in 1951. Gayle's early efforts on Decca, from 1970-74, were professionally frustrating. Sure, being Loretta's little sister could get you a deal on her label, but then what? It was hard to emerge from Loretta's shadow or get any real promotional pushes, being seen by the guys at the label as more or less only a novelty act and a nepotistic hire. After several years of her Decca singles failing to crack into the Country Top Twenty, Brenda Gail Webb decided it was time for a change.
With a little nudge from her big sister, Crystal Gayle signed with United Artists, found a new producer, and completely remade her image, abandoning beehive hairdos and plangent twang in favor of long, straight '70s hair and a more pop-oriented, cosmopolitan sound. And, boy, did it work. Her first album was recorded with the help of Allen Reynolds, who had apprenticed as an engineer working with Don Williams and had learned a thing or two about mixing country and pop in a more subtle way than most folks in Nashville. Here's a quick look at her career...
Crystal Gayle "Crystal Gayle" (United Artists Records, 1975) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds & Garth Fundis)
After years getting stuck in neutral over at Decca, Crystal Gayle finally got a chance to shine. This was her first full album, and the start of her long and extremely fruitful collaboration with producer Allen Reynolds, who successfully sculpted a new sound and a new artistic persona for Crystal Gayle to inhabit. It also yielded her first Top Ten single, "Wrong Road Again," a very Don Williams-y sounding ballad penned by Allen Reynolds that peaked at #6 on the Billboard charts. Not a bad start.
Crystal Gayle "Somebody Loves You" (United Artists Records, 1975) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds)
Crystal Gayle "Crystal" (United Artists Records, 1976) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds)
Crystal Gayle "We Must Believe in Magic" (United Artists Records, 1977) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds)
This album, of course, spawned one of the biggest pop-country crossover hits of all time, the slow, sultry ballad, Richard Leigh's torch song, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue," which was a perfect showcase for Crystal Gayle's smooth, emotive vocals. I'll admit it: the song remains a guilty pleasure, even after all these years. Also, by the time she cut this album, Gayle's transformation into a cosmopolitan, middle-of-the-road ballad singer on a par with Karen Carpenter or Olivia Newton-John was complete: she would always have a refuge in the Country charts, but had also decisively crossed over and become a dominant figure in the world of 'Seventies soft-pop. Say what you will about the aesthetics, but the numbers don't lie. This diva had arrived.
Crystal Gayle "When I Dream" (United Artists Records, 1978) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds & Garth Fundis)
Crystal Gayle "We Should Be Together" (United Artists Records, 1979) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds)
Crystal Gayle "Miss The Mississippi" (Columbia Records, 1979) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds & Garth Fundis)
Crystal Gayle "These Days" (Columbia Records, 1980) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds & Garth Fundis)
Crystal Gayle "Hollywood, Tennessee" (Columbia Records, 1981) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds & Garth Fundis)
Crystal Gayle "True Love" (Elektra Records, 1982) (LP)
(Produced by Jimmy Bowen & Allen Reynolds)
Crystal Gayle "Cage The Songbird" (Warner Brothers-Nashville, 1983)
(Produced by Jimmy Bowen)
Uh, fellas...? Folks, I dunno about thet thar lofty, artsy-fartsy album title. "Cage The Songbird"? Seems like you're drifting into some real Kenny Rogers-level pretentiousness. But, hey, nobody asked for my opinion at the time.
Crystal Gayle "Nobody Wants To Be Alone" (Warner Brothers-Nashville, 1985)
(Produced by Jimmy Bowen & Michael Masser)
See? I told you so. This album more or less tanked -- a couple of modest hit singles on radio, but sales numbers slumped low enough that this album was singled out by The New York Times as an example of how country music was losing its appeal. Of course, it was just a particular brand of country music that was faltering, the slick, glossy, soulless stuff the labels felt they could keep cranking out as long as they had slick, glossy artists like Crystal Gayle to propel the post-countrypolitan gravy train a little further down the tracks. Well, this is where that train ran out of steam. Of course, another neo-trad resurgence was right around around the corner, with folks like Randy Travis getting teed up to take over... And Ms. Gayle herself would turn things around a little bit on her next album, though really, her whole pop-crossover thing had kind of run its course.
Crystal Gayle "Straight To The Heart" (Warner Brothers-Nashville, 1986)
(Produced by Jim Ed Norman)
Crystal Gayle "Straight To The Heart" (Warner Brothers-Nashville, 1986)
(Produced by Jim Ed Norman)
A change in producer seemed to help somewhat... I'm personally more of a fan of Jim Ed Norman than of Jimmy Bowen, at least in terms of by-the-numbers country production. The marketplace seemed to respond as well, with this album spawning two chart-topping (though unmemorable) singles, "Cry" and "Straight To The Heart." But if you feel your attention waning, you are not alone. I'm not sure how long I can keep this up...
Crystal Gayle "A Crystal Christmas" (Warner Brothers-Nashville, 1986)
(Produced by Jim Ed Norman)
And... there you have it! Crystal Gayle's first holiday album. Need we say more?
Crystal Gayle "I've Cried the Blue Right Out of My Eyes" (MCA Records, 1978) (LP)
It was not lost on the folks at her old label that one of Crystal Gayle's earliest singles, "I've Cried the Blue Right Out of My Eyes," a modest #23 chart entry from 1970, had a title and the theme that sounded an awful lot like her chart-topping crossover smash hit, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue," which at the time this "best-of" set came out was one of the biggest pop hits on the planet. Thus, they rushed this budget-line collection of old, long-forgotten material to market, ten songs drawn from her ill-starred tenure on Decca. But for some country fans, particularly those of us less-than wowed by her glossy countrypolitan stuff, the chance to hear a younger, twangier Crystal Gayle during her "Little Loretta" phase might actually be slightly revelatory. It's most mid-range or back forty material, including some stuff that never charted, but it's also twangy and has that classic, treble-heavy Decca/MCA sound, a production style that some of us really dig. Worth a spin, might yield a few surprises.
Crystal Gayle "Classic Crystal" (Liberty Records, 1979) (LP)
Crystal Gayle "Classic Crystal" (Liberty Records, 1980) (LP)
Crystal Gayle "A Woman's Heart" (Liberty Records, 1981) (LP)
Crystal Gayle "Greatest Hits" (Columbia Records, 1983) (LP)
(Produced by Allen Reynolds)
Uh, well, this collection drawn from her three albums on Columbia isn't exactly what I'd call her "greatest hits": it's "Brown Eyes Blue" or nothing, as far as I'm concerned! But never underestimate the record industry's ability to drain a cash stream dry... But seriously: how many "best of" albums can the market endure in such as short period of time?
Crystal Gayle "The Best Of Crystal Gayle" (Curb Records, 1993)
Think how scary it must have been to be Crystal Gayle... You're Loretta Lynn's kid sister, and in the mid-1970s ya emerge out of the lower rungs of the Country Top 40 to become a super-duper superstar in your own right, epitomizing the height of 70's pop-country cheesiness... Then, when you make a few sad little stabs at sounding country again (as heard here on songs like "Heart Mender" and "River Road"), you're brutally punished in the sales charts... This disc is an interesting collection, which hopscotches back and forth between her pre- and post-"Brown Eyes Blue" recordings, including a few less well-known tracks from the early '70s that show a slightly rootsier side to her work than we normally hear... In a sense -- a very limited sense -- I guess this could be considered her "true" country record... At any rate, it was thoughtfully assembled with an ear for material that Gayle's regular fan base might not know that well. The sci-fi-ish "We Must Believe In Magic," which closes off the disc, is a real disaster, though... But other that that, this disc has some interesting surprises.
Crystal Gayle "The Best Of Crystal Gayle" (Rhino Records, 2002)
The ultimate, horrible conclusion of the whole super-posh, pretentious torch song tendencies of the countrypolitan scene. Yeesh. If you've heard "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (which, I hate to admit, I still sort of like, in a pit-of-my-stomach sick kinda way...) well, then you've heard the best she can do. The rest of her hits follow the same formula, but they aren't as good. I am horrified to find out how many of the other songs I actually dimly recall hearing at one time or another. And they called this stuff "country"? Brrrrrrr. Scary.
>
