THE LINER NOTES

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While ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ was not the smash follow-up to ‘67’s #1 ‘Promises, Promises’ LP that was anticipated, it may have been one of the most important records in the career and life of Lynn Anderson.

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Released in July of 1968, the album’s twelve-song set included much of the fare we’ve come to know and expect from a Lynn Anderson album; a collection of quick, uptempo tracks punctuated by virtuoso Lloyd Green’s punchy pedal steel, balanced with a handful of wistful and wry story songs from mother, Liz Anderson, and a couple of covers showcasing Lynn’s ability to stretch herself as an artist. But yielding only one single, the title track, neither the album nor the single broke the Billboard Top Ten.

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But it was the addition of two songs from one new writer that bring this LP squarely to the forefront of the Lynn Anderson discography. Two songs that sound as if they’d been produced for a different record; written by a man who would become the guiding force that would make Lynn Anderson one of country music’s biggest stars and the man who would become her other half in one of the most storied, and explosive marriages and partnerships in country music history. Her husband, Glenn Sutton.

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As one of the top writers for Al Gallico Music, Sutton knew Lynn through Slim Williamson, and was a fan. They’d met socially more than once, and by the time the sessions for ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ began, he’d crafted two songs he knew would fit Lynn Anderson like a glove; “You Mean The World To Me”, a mid-tempo shuffle with echoes of the Terry Gilkyson hit, “Memories Are Made of This”, and “I Live To Love You”, a ballad that stands as one the most personal songs of Sutton’s long career, the forerunner of what would become his trademark, Countrypolitan sound, and an obvious love letter to the woman and artist that had captured his heart.

 

J Buck Ford