Dottie West – Are You Happy Baby: The Dottie West Collection (1976-1984)
Million-selling country singer Dottie West started out without much chance for the good life. Born in McMinnville, Tennessee, she was raised in an intensely abusive household, but her good-for-nothing father did manage to give her one gift in life: Music, piped in by the Grand Ole Opry as he played his fiddle and Dottie sang along. When he finally ended up in prison, Dottie escaped to Tennessee Tech, where she met her husband, steel guitar player Bill West, and began playing around Nashville. Eventually she signed with RCA, recorded a duet with Jim Reeves (disappointingly not included on this collection), and was on her way.
Where exactly she went depends on your opinion of the current state of commercial country radio, because without Dottie West and her estimable sidekick Kenny Rogers, things would be mighty different. Listening to this collection, one can actually smell the tar of tires squealing on pavement as the country music industry slammed on the brakes and discovered the Middle Of The Road. Beyond her many hits on the country charts, huge mass exposure for West came via a Coca-Cola jingle, later recut as a full song (also not included). The really big stuff didn’t come until her duets with Rogers, which dominated the country charts and began impacting the pop charts as well, reaching their peak with “What Are We Doing In Love” in 1981.
Were it not for occasional breaks of muted fiddle or the moan of pedal steel, there is little to separate this from Air Supply or Lawrence Welk. Some of it is fun pop like “You Pick Me Up (And Put Me Down)”, with its irresistible Sesame Street bounce, while West’s country duet hits such as “Every Time Two Fools Collide” and “Anyone Who Isn’t Me Tonight” allow her considerable vocal talents to shine. But for the most part, this collection does little more than add weight to the popular hypothesis that Kenny Rogers is single-handedly responsible for the decay of country music.
Regardless of how poorly her material has aged, West deserves credit as a trailblazer for the current crop of Country Power Chicks. Sadly, her story is far more tragic and compelling than the body of work she left behind: West died in a car accident on her way to perform at the Opry on September 4, 1991, at age 59 with her finances in shambles. Still, Dottie’s “Go, Girl!” spirit carried her up out of a miserable existence and into the spotlight, and that triumph over adversity makes for some of the greatest legends in Nashville.