Description
An old-fashioned tribute album through and through, 2010's Coal Miners Daughter: A Tribute to Loretta Lynn was conceived as a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Lynn's first single. The celebration includes country singers of all stripes -- mainstream vocalists like Lee Ann Womack, Alan Jackson & Martina McBride, and Faith Hill rub shoulders with the precise prettiness of Carrie Underwood and the rowdy Gretchen Wilson, not to mention such alt-country stalwarts as Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle & Allison Moorer -- and there's room for rockers, chief among them Lynn's latter-day patron Jack White, who lends the White Stripes' 2001 cover of "Rated X" to the proceedings. The Stripes' fellow Detroit rocker Kid Rock gives "I Know How" an appealingly greasy treatment, but "Rated X" is the most distinctive thing here -- spare and loose, it's a genuine reinterpretation, a rarity among these 12 cuts -- rivaled by Paramore's terrific stripped-down acoustic reading of "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)." That the rockers wind up taking more liberties than the country singers isn't much of a surprise -- they pick up on Lynn's rebellious side, while the country vocalists play up the tradition, sometimes being so faithful they border on either the dutiful (Underwood's "You're Lookin' at Country") or sleepy (Womack's "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl"). Despite these couple of dragging moments, Coal Miner's Daughter is for the most part filled with solid, respectful versions of excellent songs and serves as a worthy tribute to an enduring icon. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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