LimeWire Music Blog

While she may have enjoyed her first major taste of chart success with 1988’s “Train Wreck Of Emotion,” Lorrie Morgan had already been involved in country music for many years at that point. The daughter of Country Music Hall Of Fame member George Morgan, Lorrie made her debut at the Grand Ole Opry as a teenager and has been making records since the late 1970s. On her latest, A Moment In Time, she has assembled fourteen classic songs that have special meaning to her and put her own unique stamp on it.

“These songs are what made me fall in love with Country Music,” she says on a gorgeous fall morning on Nashville’s Music Row. While the album is a stunning piece of work, it’s not something she was exactly sure about. “I was speaking with Wally Wilson, my producer, and he suggested that we go in and do a ‘country classics’ album. I was very skeptical of that at first,” she admits. “It seemed at that point that everybody and their brother were doing albums just like that.” Then, a light bulb went off. “I said that I didn’t want to do it unless we can think of a way to make it different,” she told LimeWire. They did just that, making the album the old-fashioned way. “So we decided to go in and we cut fourteen songs in two days — just like they did in the old days.” Not only were the songs retro-ish, but the recording technique was as well. “There were no overdubs, and we went live to track — just like they used to do. We were all in one room — myself, Wally Wilson, the musicians, the background vocalists, and the string section.”

The no-overdubs rule met with some resistance, according to Morgan. “Jimmy Capps, who is a great friend of mine — a great musician and a great gentleman, asked me if he could go in and fix his part — not that it was bad, but it was something that bothered him. We told him no. He said ‘Are you kidding?’ We said, ‘Nope…We can’t do it, so you can’t do it,’” she says with a playful smile. Morgan added that in time, the players got used to the approach. “They were very gracious and accommodating about there being no overdubs,” she said. The human touch on A Moment In Time was important to Morgan, who says that if you listen really closely, you’ll hear the singer sing a wrong word, which was left in. “I was after the heart, the soul, and the vibe,” she said. “I wanted the listener to feel everything. It was pretty incredible.”

“We cut fourteen songs in two days — just like they did in the old days.”

Morgan eschewed some of the more obvious choices for A Moment In Time’s song selections. Says the singer “I’m a lover of album cuts and songs that younger people have never heard of, and some of us older folks have forgotten about. Some of these songs weren’t necessarily #1 records, but they were great songs.”

Such is the case with “I’m Always On A Mountain When I Fall.” While it was a huge hit for Merle Haggard in the spring of 1978, it’s not on the scale of such oft-covered Haggard classics as “Okie From Muskogee” or “Today I Started Loving You Again.” Still, it’s a song that Lorrie Morgan identifies with. “That one’s the truth about me,” she said. “I’m always when a mountain when I fall. It never fails. I can’t just a little bit, but all the way down the cliff,” she says knowingly, referring to her much-covered personal life. “I’ve always loved it, and it’s my favorite Merle Haggard song.”

The album also features a couple of high-profile guest appearances. Tracy Lawrence joins Lorrie on “After The Fire Is Gone,” and she teams up with Raul Malo on a romantic swing through Freddie Hart’s “Easy Lovin.” Duets are nothing new to Morgan, of course: She has recorded over the years with acts such as Vince Gill, Johnny Mathis, and Dolly Parton. So what is about collaborations that seems to work so well for the singer? Morgan offers her take:

“Well, I think that when you find a peer that appreciates your music that you do as well, it’s like a double whammy. You both accentuate each other, and you reach a little harder, because you do respect your singing partner. It kind of lights a fire under you, and you think ‘Oh, my God! This is connecting!’ There’s something about duets, and you can ask anyone who’ve ever sang one, that if you’re singing with someone, and you’re not feeling that feeling, then it ain’t right. That feeling that a singer gets in their throat, when another artist’s vocal matches it… It’s like a vibration in your vocal chords that you know you’re sounding good together. That’s a big thing with me. I’ll sing along with someone on the radio, and think that I would love to do a duet with them because I feel that vibration. I think a duet partner brings out the best in you. You tend to push a little harder, so the other person won’t think ‘Hell, why’d I do this?’”

The singer was thrilled beyond words at how “Easy Lovin” came out, and equally thrilled to share the microphone with Malo. “I have been a fan of his since the CMA had their Country Meets Broadway event,” she admits. “I watched him sing some Broadway songs, and I had chill bumps come over me. I had no idea he was such a great singer. When Wally told me they were brothers-in-law, he asked what I thought about bringing him in on the album. I said ‘He’s not going to want to do a track on this album with me.’ He said, ‘I bet he would,’ and of course, he came in and nailed it. He really did.”

“That’s one of the greatest compliments, when someone records your song. You know, a lot of people have mixed emotions about going back in and doing a Patsy or a Tammy song. They ask ‘Why would you want to go in and redo a classic?’ With me, it’s not so much about redoing it, as it is paying homage to them — these great songs that affected my life, so if someone were to record mine, I would know that song persuaded or affected their life in some way, musically. That’s a great compliment.”

Many of the selections on A Moment In Time have a heavily dramatic tone. That suits Morgan just fine, since she feels she has lived them. “My life has been one big drama, to be honest. As I’ve gotten a little bit older, I’ve realized that the drama I’ve gone through has made me a strong woman. I love singing sad songs and ballads about heartbreak. It’s great therapy for me.” She says the emotions she feels on a Patsy Cline or Tammy Wynette song like “Till I Get It Right” are “vulnerable yet strong. I just love songs that talk about heartbreak. I don’t think that there is anybody I know of that hasn’t suffered heartache or experienced a loss or loneliness. Those are real-life emotions that we go through every day. They are songs I love to sing about.”

One such song that fits that description on the disc is “Misty Blue.” Eddy Arnold’s 1967 recording of the song was the biggest hit, but Morgan remembers a couple of other versions. “The first time I heard the song, it was on one of my dad’s old albums. I always thought it was so beautiful and heart-wrenching. The next time I heard it, it was by one of my all-time favorite singers, Wilma Burgess.” Her recording of the song, a Top 5 Country hit from 1966, really made a mark on Lorrie. “You’ve got to go back and listen to some of her catalog,” Morgan says of Burgess, who died in 2003. “She was a hellacious singer. Some people have never heard the song. I cut it a few years ago, but it didn’t make the album,” she says. “As it turns out, Wally was a lover of the song, and when I mentioned it to him, he said ‘Yes, let’s do it,’ so I finally got to have it on an album after all these years.”

Her father also played a part in the selection of another song from the album, “(All Right) I’ll Sign The Papers.” The tune allowed her to pay tribute to two singers at once, as George Morgan put the song on the charts in 1964, and the writer, Mel Tillis, did so four years later. One night recently, while playing on her computer, Morgan found a surprise. “I was on YouTube, and I found a clip of my dad and Mel — who had some success at the time, but was still a young whippersnapper — and my dad said ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to cut a Mel Tillis song,’ and he ended up cutting that one. It was so weird to see that clip because there was a great connection to me wanting to do it, and not really thinking it was a Mel Tillis song. I wasn’t really aware that Mel had written it, I just remembered Dad doing the song. I guess it took YouTube to jog my memory.”

She didn’t need to do a lot of research when selecting the tracks “Lovin’ On Back Streets” and “Borrowed Angel.” The songs were among the biggest hits recorded by the late Mel Street. One of the most tragic figures in country music history, Street was one of the most admired singers of the 1970s, but fell into a deep depression, committing suicide on his 45th birthday in October 1978. Morgan, like many other artists in the genre, is a big Mel Street fan. “When he took his life back then, it was devastating to Nashville,” she recalls. “It took everybody my surprise. Nobody expected that to happen. I had been a fan of his songs since I was a little girl, and when I started singing in honky-tonks around 1975 or 1976, I would be with the band, and the guys would all be doing his songs. I said ‘I want to do a Mel Street song,’ and they would say ‘You can’t do that because you’re a girl.’ So…we did two on this album,” she says, delighted to get the last laugh.

With a catalog of her own hits, such as “Something In Red,” “Half Enough,” and the 1997 vocal showcase “Good As I Was To You,” how would Morgan feel if, in about a decade or so, somebody were covering her? “I would be ecstatic,” she exclaims. “That’s one of the greatest compliments, when someone records your song. You know, a lot of people have mixed emotions about going back in and doing a Patsy or a Tammy song. They ask ‘Why would you want to go in and redo a classic?’ With me, it’s not so much about redoing it, as it is paying homage to them — these great songs that affected my life, so if someone were to record mine, I would know that song persuaded or affected their life in some way, musically. That’s a great compliment.”

It’s shaping up to be a busy time for the always-beautiful singer. Not only will she be promoting A Moment In Time, but she will also be heading to the Big Apple for a co-starring gig on Broadway as Lula in the stage adaptation of Pure Country. In addition, the singer is continuing to develop her talents as a writer, having helped to pen several cuts on T.G. Sheppard’s latest disc, as well as her upcoming album of originals, I Walk Alone.

For more on Morgan, log on to her website, lorrie.com!