Norma Jean – The Best Of Norma Jean
Casually, regularly referred to in her heyday in the ’60s, and since, as “Pretty Miss Norma Jean” (well, she certainly was that), and more often lately as “that girl who sang with Porter Wagoner before Dolly Parton” (and she was that, too), Norma Jean was also a groundbreaker in country music in her own right, and a distinctive performer — gutsy, engaging and intelligent. Here’s the first good chance in some time to check out her important contribution, in this first CD collection by an important, too-long-neglected artist.
Perhaps because her image was tempered by beauty, and her vocal style more sweet than gritty or threatening, this is one country girl who actually got to sing with backing in the unmitigated George Jones era honky-tonk style. The payoff is a uniquely affecting combination of the smooth and the tough.
And tough these songs are, including her biggest hits. There’s a notable, unusual, pre-Loretta Lynn emphasis on everyday realities of a working woman’s life, seen in key numbers such as “Heaven Help The Poor Working Girl” and even “Truck Drivin’ Woman”. There are in-his-face responses to the behavior of trifling or demeaning men in the likes of “Don’t Let The Doorknob Hit You on Your Way Out”, “You Changed Everything About Me But My Name”, “Jackson Ain’t A Very Big Town”, and “Then Go Home to Her”.
And there are, in a special genre that seems to have been created just for Norma Jean’s persona, feisty, semi-comic come-on numbers that almost play on mid-’60s sexual frankness — “Let’s Go All The Way”, “I Cried All The Way To The Bank”, and “Go Cat Go”. The rightly famous trio hit “The Game Of Triangles”, recorded with Bobby Bare and writer Liz Anderson, is included; Norma Jean, of course, plays the other woman in the triangle.
With Anderson, Harlan Howard and Hank Cochran writing for her, it’s a pretty consistent collection of 21 numbers, richly and effectively produced and recorded. When she walked away from Porter Wagoner’s show to pursue the life of a homemaker, music lost a lot. She’s been active in some recent reunions of off-radio honky-tonk heroes; it’s good to have these key recordings more accessible as well.