Like so many honky-tonk singers of her own and previous generations, Loretta Lynn was always a little country-come-to-town, a rural-raised girl in the big city whose pre-fame struggles lent her music grit and authenticity. Born in a Kentucky mining town called Butcher Hollow, a teenage bride and a mother several times over before she even arrived in Nashville, Lynn sang with a hill-country accent (notably different from typical Music Row stars) and with the unchecked candor of her toughening experiences. In this smoothly defiant voice, she sang of her man's and her own cheating ways, as well as the hardships of motherhood, wifehood, and celebrity as if each were one and the same-- and they probably were.
In Nashville, she was a rough in the diamond: Her hard-edged songs like "Fist City" and "Rated X" were backed by pristine countrypolitan production-- mostly courtesy of Owen Bradley-- which helped sell her to a wide audience. At the same time, the disparity between her voice and her accompaniment created a fascinating rural/urban friction that never let listeners forget that she was less a superstar than a small-town girl at heart. Crucial to her image and her success, the depth of Lynn's noncelebrity is perhaps why her old material still bristles and burrs even today.
On her new album, Van Lear Rose, producer and admirer Jack White (who dedicated White Blood Cells to Lynn in 2001) immediately erases that friction with a rawer, in-one-take live sound that adds texture to her songs without overpowering her voice. White's intention isn't to update or revise Lynn's music or her persona, but simply to recast her voice in a new setting, to make her sound like she's right back in Butcher Hollow.
To this end, White has corralled a backing band that consists not of Nashville veterans, but of young 'uns from the decidedly non-rural locales of Detroit and Cincinnati. Dubbed the Do Whaters by Lynn ("I named them that because they got in there and did whatever we needed them to!" she explains in the liner notes), the group consists of The Greenhornes' rhythm section Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler, with Blanche's Dave Feeny adding elegant pedal steel and slide guitar flourishes. Together, they prove a dynamic backing band, able to set a warm country atmosphere but not afraid to make some rock noise.
And they do just that on the first single, "Portland, Oregon". Lynn and White exchange verses about sloe gin fizzes and drunk lovin', recalling her adultery duets with Conway Twitty but with more of a boisterous sound, courtesy of White's Zep blues riffs. On "Mrs. Leroy Brown", the band bang out a bar-stormer to match Lynn's adventures riding around town in a pink limousine. Even bigger than that limo, though, is the unmistakable smile on her face as she disses her man and his floozy: "I just drawed all your money out of the bank today/ Honey, you don't have no mo'."