Review: Brenda Lee - Grandma What Great Songs You Sang! (1959)
Tracks: 1) Some Of These Days; 2) Pennies From Heaven; 3) Baby Face; 4) A Good Man Is Hard To Find; 5) Just Because; 6) Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye; 7) Ballin’ The Jack; 8) Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody; 9) Pretty Baby; 10) Side By Side; 11) Back In Your Own Back Yard; 12) St. Louis Blues.
REVIEW
Together with Eddie Cochran and a couple other artists, Brenda Lee is notoriously inconvenient to talk about from an LP-based chronological framework. By the time her first album came out (in August 1959, even though the actual sessions were held as early as January of the same year), she had already spent almost three years in the limelight of national attention, and put out almost a dozen singles, including most of her biggest hits – ‘Jambalaya’, ‘Dynamite’, ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’, all of which we shall have to consider in the next review. Why? Because the Decca label, to which Brenda was signed, apparently pursued a «great stuff for singles, weird stuff for LPs» policy — at least in the actual case of Brenda Lee, the amazing child prodigy who had captured the hearts of rocking teenagers all over the country with her singles... and was now supposed to capture the hearts of their parents with her first LP. You see, singles are for kids, and long-playing albums are for grown-ups. No kid could possibly lift something as heavy as an LP off the ground anyway...
Anyway, the practice itself of having young(er) artists record sets of «oldies» with more contemporary arrangements, to bridge the generation gap and everything, had been well established by 1959, so there is nothing particularly revolutionary about having Brenda Lee, the 14-year old rock’n’roller, turn to pre-war material scattered all the way from Broadway to the Delta for her first «conceptual» exercise. (See Bill Haley’s Rockin’ The Oldies from way back in 1957, for instance). One could squirm at the album cover — even back then — for its corny display of reverence, though discerning listeners in 1959 should have already been accustomed to the fact that LP sleeve art hardly ever correlated properly with the actual musical content of the vinyl disc. But could one, and should one, actually squirm at the music?
This would naturally depend on your priorities. For instance, if you are a fan of the classic Nashville sound, you can hardly go wrong with a set recorded by the local A-grade team, including Harold Bradley, Grady Martin, and Hank Garland on guitars, Floyd Cramer on the piano, Boots Randolph on saxophone, Bob Moore on bass — all those same guys who fed and nurtured everybody from Patsy Cline to Elvis in their Nashville days. This ensures that, even if the material is rotten and the singer is inadequate, the overall sound shall still have enough class.
The actual track selection is also chosen with care, focusing on catchy pop songs amenable to a steady rock beat — in fact, some of them, like ‘Baby Face’ or ‘Just Because’, had previously already been tentatively transformed into rock’n’roll numbers by the likes of, respectively, Little Richard and Elvis. Other upbeat oldies, such as ‘Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye’, adapt themselves better to being reinvented as «comical R&B» pieces à la Coasters or LaVern Baker. Most of the songs, however, are slower and predictably sound like contemporary mid-tempo country-pop — with major emphasis on contemporary, because if you happen to be unfamiliar with the originals, there are very few indications (lyrics, mostly) that these «grandma songs» were not actually written in 1959.
Finally, there is Brenda Lee herself, still below the age of 15, yet singing each of the songs with complete understanding of their emotional content and a level of maturity that often avoids singing ladies twice her age. Granted, her own emotional range is not as wide as we might like it to be: for instance, «vulnerability» and «melancholy» are words totally alien to her lexicon (at the time, at least) — which is perfectly normal for a girl who had to be the chief breadmaker for her family since age 10 (after her father died). So when she tackles a grief-soaked tune like ‘St. Louis Blues’, she sings it the only way she can — that is, like a powerhouse: her take on "I hate to see that evening sun go down..." is that of an actual hater, all set to keep that blasted evening sun in the sky even if it takes violating the laws of physics to do so. But while this attitude is indeed barely compatible with lines like "I got the St. Louis Blues just as bluest I can be", it still gives the song a new perspective. She could never sing it like Bessie Smith anyway — all the more reason to give it a brand new, «aggressive» spin, if only to show that in this case, the granddaughter might actually have much bigger teeth than her grandma ever had.
Likewise, ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find’, which also used to be a classic Bessie performance: here, Brenda and her crew cut out the opening verse ("My heart is sad and I’m all alone...") because Brenda’s heart is not sad, nor could it, at this point, be as sad as Bessie’s — then they transform the rest of the song into an anthem of pure girl dominance, where "hug him in the morning, kiss him every night, give him plenty loving, treat him right" feels more like a procedure of chaining your man to yourself rather than chaining yourself to your man, if you get my meaning. Considering that Brenda Lee is one of those very rare women artists who has been happily married to the same person (Ronnie Shacklett) since 1962, it looks like she was the first one to follow her own (or, rather, Bessie’s) advice, so this here is a clear-cut case of practicing what one preaches. (People like Johnny Cash could learn a thing or two from the lady).
This does not imply that Brenda’s personality is completely free from tenderness; ‘Pennies From Heaven’, ‘Side By Side’, and ‘Back In Your Own Backyard’ all have their moments of empathy, compassion, and romance, although she always steers clear of croony sentimentalism — rather, she simply does not know how to do it, which is just fine by me. In all these cases, it’s more of a «strong, brawny girl shows a good heart» kind of thing, totally in line with Brenda’s reputation as «Little Miss Dynamite». It may not be the best way to sing such songs, but I, for one, am not even sure that I would necessarily prefer the best way to sing such songs — too much soul here and you risk plunging into suave cheapness. Throw in a touch of grit, though, and you may lose some subtlety, but gain some... honesty? Ah, whatever. These are decent takes.
That said, decent takes or not, my heart is primarily with Brenda when she rips through songs such as ‘Just Because’, rivaling, if not bettering, Elvis at his own game. Once again, Grandma, you did sing really great songs, but now’s the time to sing them with just a bit more of that «girl power». What could feel sweeter than taking that good old misogynistic vibe and turning it back on the perpetrators? And how many 15-year old girls — in 1959, at least — were capable of injecting that much sneer and vitriol into a super-energized putdown of the opposite sex? (Joan Jett, eat your heart out!)
All in all, if you only know Brenda Lee through her biggest early hits (which is most likely the case), do not be put off by the cornily old-fashioned album title and cover — both of which actually look quite ironic in light of the actual content. This here is really Little Red Riding Hood kicking the shit out of the big bad wolf, rather than simply pampering her grandma with cakes. I do realize that it is hard to get rid of a biased impression based on a superficial listen — thus, the only current «review» of this clearly forgotten record on RateYourMusic states: "Prime example of ‘finding a new talented artist and being totally clueless what to do with her’" — nothing could be further from the truth.
Admittedly, I do not know if the idea of recording this «conceptual» album stemmed from Brenda, or from her record label, or from her Nashville producer, Owen Bradley, but the fact remains that her heart was clearly in the project, and that she was fully successful in imbuing each of these songs with her strong, snappy, youthful-but-mature personality. These songs may not exactly be «rock and roll» in form, but they are very much so in spirit. Besides, let us not forget that for Brenda, a country girl in her essence, «rock and roll» was at best a passing phase, the same way it could be construed for Johnny Cash and other country artists who were not above letting their hair down every once in a while, but were typically happy to stay lodged in a more «earthy» kind of tradition.