Lefty Frizzell

Simply one of the great vocal stylists in country-music history, Texas-born William Orville "Lefty" Frizzell came out of the Southwest honky-tonk circuit to land a recording contract with Columbia Records in 1950, when he was 22 years old; he would become one of the biggest stars in country music only a year later. When his Columbia run ended in 1970, he left with 17 Top 10 hits and six #1 singles on his rŽsumŽ, plus a host of devoted disciples including Merle Haggard (whose song "The Way It Was in '51" memorialized the total dominance Frizzell and his buddy Hank Williams exerted over country music in one vibrant year) and Willie Nelson, who saw fit to honor one of his major influences with an entire album in 1977, To Lefty From Willie. Frizzell was only 47 when he died from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1975, but his legacy lives on in succeeding generations of vocalists such as Clint Black, the late Keith Whitley, and especially Randy Travis, each of whom forged an individual style out of what he had learned from Frizzell's emotionally rich and revealing phrasing.

Frizzell's records, while offering a fair share of heartbreak and despair, are remarkably life-affirming, considering his struggles with alcoholism during his short life. This is especially true of the early smash hits, which build on a traditional country foundation while being streamlined in a way well-suited to the quickening pace of post-World War II America. Lay a personable, gimmick-free tenor voice on top of that, and you've got something that speaks directly to listeners looking for stories relevant to their own lives. The simple affirmations of unconditional and enduring love for parents in 1951's poignant "Mom and Dad Waltz" skirt sentimentality not only in the lyrics but also in the dirgelike fiddle lines and moaning pedal-steel fills, ultimately saying what many feel in their hearts. Similarly, the buoyant expressions of romantic love fueling Frizzell's debut hit, "I Love You a Thousand Ways" (one of his landmark recordings; it's now an acknowledged country classic) effectively encapsulate a starry-eyed view of a significant other, even though the song was written from a jail cell in which the 18-year-old Frizzell was serving a sentence for statutory rape; by the same token, the melancholy strains of "Always Late (With Your Kisses)" describe the kick inside when something's amiss in a relationship, especially in the futility with which Frizzell in-vests his lyric, "Why oh why do you want to do me this way?" On balance, Frizzell had a way with a love song that brooks few comparisons in all of country-music history -- the tenderness he brings to his singing and his uncanny modulations in tone and phrasing to suit the mood of the moment are blueprints in the art of technically adroit, openhearted vocalizing.

The essential overview of Frizzell's Columbia years is the two-CD Look What Thoughts Will Do. His music speaks volumes, and there's plenty of it here -- 34 songs, from the breakout 1950 double-sided chart-topper, "I Love You a Thousand Ways" and the honky-tonk classic "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time" to his final #1 single, 1964's brooding, haunting treatment of the folk-styled masterpiece, "Saginaw, Michigan." Of special note is the tasty, low-key country blues from 1952, "Lost Love Blues," previously unissued in the U.S., and two masterful homages to Jimmie Rodgers, "Travellin' Blues" and "My Rough and Rowdy Ways." To his credit, Frizzell approached Rodgers' songs in his own way and found where they lived in his stylistic range rather than attempting to replicate Rodgers' vocal approach and arrangements. Columbia eventually released an entire album of Frizzell's Rodgers covers, Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, which has now been reissued on CD by Koch. It's neither classic nor indispensable, but it's an enjoyable album that deepens the impression of an artist who has a sure sense of himself.

Elsewhere, Rhino's Best of is an exemplary summary of the Columbia years, albeit less thorough than Look What Thoughts Will Do. Columbia's American Originals and King's Country Music Hall of Fame entries fall woefully short of the mark of the Columbia/Legacy and Rhino sets.

Finally returned to print after years in the cutout wilderness are Frizzell's ABC recordings from 1972 to 1974, many of them originally issued in the albums The Legendary Lefty Frizzell and The Classic Style of Lefty Frizzell, in 1973 and 1975, respectively. Given his self-destructive personal habits, it's fair to say That's the Way Love Goes: The Final Recordings of Lefty Frizzell features an older if not necessarily wiser artist. (DAVID MCGEE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide