„silk purse“

(Capitol, 1970)

I admit I picked this record for the cover only. Everybody owns the Best of Volume 1, or at least everybody should. Strangely Best of Volume 2 is much harder to find. Anyway, just take a look at the young girl with bare feet and dreamy smile sitting in the pigsty – what message does that cover send to the public? That makes the deepest parts of the reptile parts of the brain tingle with excitement, no wonder half of the male population of the USA got up from their Lay-Z-Boys and purchased this album. Who does not dream of a gentle, dreamy countrygirl whose innocence and naivity turns into sexual fervor and unbelievable (or so it would be imagined) activity and energy if she ever takes a man for her man. And then there is the title of that album - “Silk Purse” – which is an only loosely hidden metaphor for vagina, if I ever saw one. Yes, I know, every poor country girl wants a “silk purse” for her spare coins, ha ha ha. Every country girl has a silk purse and all the men want that one. This is only a minor step away from the “Hand sown – home grown” handjob-metaphor of her debut solo album, but on the second step Linda promises the real thing. The full Nelson. Covering all bases. Going all the way. (And by the way, if an artists is presented as a young girl, it is okay to use the first name only, even if it sounds patronising, instead of the more respectful family name. So I’ll keep on calling her Linda as much as I want, got it.) You know, that kind of sassy realness that would remain for the next decade.

Of course, music history has found innocent reasons for all of this imagery, like the photo shooting with the pigs being reasoned on Ronstadt keeping her country image and because she likes pigs. And successively the record being called “Silk purse” because of the old saying “you can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear” and to prove that probably it is possible. Sounds convincing, nevertheless you can never stop the mind and the subconscious from working in their own mysterious ways.

Ronstadt would be forcing the innocent young girl image in the next years and only come back to the sexual innuendo of her record covers in the mid Seventies with Hasten Down The Wind (the romantic paper back novel), Simple Dreams (Lady Marmalade-style) and Living in the USA (roller girl porno). Then she grew up, it is a pity. It was all over when she started doing musical for god’s sake in the late Eighties. Let’s get back to the early Seventies: Lester Bangs in a review for the Playboy called her “the high school girl you dated once or twice and remembered for the rest of your life” – and she was already 26 back then, when Silk Purse was released. Bangs also mentions that “her disdain for bras and her predilection for skimpy blouses tied above her navel ... and being barefoot” helped her impress the male bossery in music city. The fantasy of the straight men about the ways of a hippie-chick are legend. And Linda Ronstadt never was one of the clean cut country singers, she rather falls into the Janis Joplin with a grip on her life category. Nevertheless, she later on told a lot about the troubles of a girl singer in a male music business world, from musicians leaving because they don’t want to back up for a girl singer to the seedy business ways of Nashville. 

the back cover of "silk purse"

The back cover of the album is a much better presentation of what is to be expected from this Nashville-sound rock-record. A blast, and it still is. This record and the vocal performance is so full of energy and life, of innovations and power it still kicks ass today. Ronstadt’s debut album “Home Sown Home grown” is still widely accepted as one of the first alternative country records by a female artist, and “Silk Purse” does not shy away from the expectations. It is her voice most of all: energetic, full of passion and at the same time vulnerable and strong. It is a promise of all the things you want and dream about, a fantasy come true or rather, a fantasy to come true, in the sexually open way only the late Sixties and early Seventies could bring. It is soul, after all, and it has formed a distinctive pathway from the early female country singers (Carter family) to the current crop of alt.country damsels (Freakwater). She has the voice that makes you wish Chan Marshall would be a little less, well, bloodless.

“Silk Purse” starts right off with a rendition of Hank William sr.’s “Lovesick Blues”, speed up and revelling in banjo and country instrumentation, but with a definitve rock twist. Probably to claim from start that this actually really is a country record, and not a rock record. The first years of the Seventies saw a lot of great country-turns-rock-albums, mainly by Neil Young, Flying Burritto Brothers, The Band (after the shooting of the cover Ronstadt suggested “Music from the Big Pork” as the title for the album) but of course also the early Southern rock albums were a big influence on the beer and whisky drinking bored youth of the Midwest. The best songs on the album are soulful crooners like the Shirelles / Carole King hit “will you love me tomorrow” and then “Long long Time”, which became Ronstadts first hitsingle and earned her a Grammy (the first of 27 in all). Both songs are beautiful and tearjerking in the way only country music is able to – or rather the best of country ballads are able to make grown men weak in their knees and sob about all the chances lost in their lives. Outstanding is also the song “Louise”, which apart from an acoustic guitar has no arrangement at all, and was allegedly recorded on the spot in a single take at three o’clock in the morning after a long day of recording sessions. 

Linda Ronstadt appr. 1970

There is no filler on this record, and I don’t want to go all the songs now, though. There are traditionals and rockers, ballads and pop-songs, so what else do you need. The unique and strong singing voice of Linda Ronstadt is on all of them. There are songs about lonely girls and truck stop whores. What is more about Silk Purse, that makes this album rank for “best of all or at least most underrated” records? It is a ragged and shabby kind of record as well, a loose production and probably a quick one, too, and this crudeness (along with the sexual imagery) has given it bad notes with the academic rock compiler crew. I mean, have you ever tried to read those “1.000 most important rock record”-books or the “guide to 20^th century rock music”-encyclopedias? They always pick the wrong records for the wrong reasons. This record is good because it is crude, the unrefined power of a young woman filled with energy and strength. It is also the only true Nashville record Linda Ronstadt ever made, even if parts of it were recorded in Los Angeles. I’ll take the same summary as the writer for Circus magazine in 1970: “Any girl who likes pigs and unrestrained breasts can’t be all bad.” Actually, if the girl can sing like Linda Ronstadt I don’t care about her affinity towards animals or fashion at all. This is an all time classic record.