Many objectionable things are coming back to light with the current ’70s cultural revival, but if it’s had any hand at all in prompting the appearance of this compilation, the balance sheet will have to show a positive bottom line. Royce and Jeannie Kendall, a Missouri-bred father-and-daughter team, made some of the greatest country records of the 1970s and early 1980s, and until now they’ve been ill-served on CD.
The Kendalls had kicked around the music business in St. Louis and then Nashville for the early part of the decade before signing with Ovation Records and scoring big with “Heaven’s Just A Sin Away”, which spent four weeks in the No. 1 slot in the summer of 1977. Though they were loath to acknowledge it publicly, it seems likely that the peculiar combination of a cheating song with a familial act made them especially interesting to at least a few fans. But for most folks — well, for me, anyhow — it was the music that counted, even as they continued to ring changes on that theme (“It Don’t Feel Like Sinnin’ To Me”, “You’d Make An Angel Wanna Cheat”, “Teach Me To Cheat”).
With producer Brien Fisher behind the board and an experienced, creative gang of musicians (Sonny Garrish, Ron Oates, Fred Newell, Fred Carter Jr., Jack Ross, Jerry Kroon) in the studio, the duo punched out a string of albums for Ovation and then Mercury, offering a hard-edged sound that intelligently updated tradition while remaining firmly, unmistakably grounded in it. Kroon’s drums were frequently given an almost disco-like thump, Oates made heavy use of a distinctive, mildly funky clavichord sound, and Newell’s guitar leads ran the gamut from smooth to snarling, while Garrish’s muscular steel guitar and, above all, Royce and Jeannie’s full-throated, intense vocals kindly kept it country.
It was a hell of a combination, especially when applied to material by gifted writers such as Bob McDill, Sonny Throckmorton, Jim Rushing and Larry Kingston. Many of the songs were anything but subtle — when you heard Jeannie follow Royce’s line “Found myself in Pittsburgh/Workin’ in a steel mill” with “And I was a country girl/whose husband did the same,” you knew just where it was going from there, even if you hadn’t read the punning “Pittsburgh Stealers” title — but their singing, especially Jeannie’s sweet, throbbing leads, trumped every hint of kitsch. And plenty of their work was in a more serious vein anyhow, such as McDill’s wearily hopeful “Just Like Real People”, or Rushing and Don Schlitz’s achingly beautiful “Heart Of The Matter”.
After they faded from the charts, the Kendalls soldiered on; they were working on an album for Rounder when Royce died in the spring of 1998, and it may come out yet. 16 Greatest Hits barely scratches the surface of their quality output — what they really need is a box set — but until a more comprehensive look comes along, it serves as a handy, well-produced introduction to an impressive body of work.
