Smith’s greatest strength is to sing the material straight, without the usual vocal embellishments that lesser crooners use to dress up their inability to phrase material in a forthright and honest manner. She even has her three daughters sing harmony on the hymn “Take My Hand”, a song about human fallibility. Cheatin’ songs and country music go together like love and marriage and divorce, and Smith does know all about this. There’s something weird about making such a record with your husband, but hey, they are both professionals. The material is mostly cheatin’ songs: songs about wanting to be cheatin’ or resisting cheatin’ or given in to cheatin’ and so on. Long Line of Heartaches sounds like an old Nashville record. This gives the music of the 70-year-old Smith a time capsule quality rather than a lively engaging sensibility. The bad news is that times have changed while Smith has not. Her bluesy twang makes a torch song like “I’m Not Blue” (which she co-wrote with Stuart and Nashville legend Kostas Lazarides) smolder with pain and passion. The good news is that Smith sounds very much the same today on her latest album as she did during her heyday back in the ’60s. She’s been a cast member of “The Marty Stuart Show” since 2007, where her and her husband perform traditional country music. Smith largely stopped recording in 1979, except for occasional sessions including a 1985 single written by Steve Earle, “A Far Cry From You”, and a comeback album co-written and co-produced by her fourth husband, Marty Stuart, in 1996. Her career has had its ups and downs over the years, but legends such as George Jones, Dolly Parton, and Elvis Presley have sung Smith’s praises. 1 country hit back in September 1964 and stayed there for eight weeks. Connie Smith’s debut single “Once a Day” was a No.
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