Harlan Howard – All Time Favorite Country Songwriter
Without question, Harlan Howard is one of the great songwriters of country music (not to mention one of the most prolific). The man who penned such classics as “I Fall to Pieces”, “Heartaches By the Number” and “Busted” has seen his songs recorded by a huge and wide-ranging field of artists: Patsy Cline, Buck Owens and Kitty Wells were among the earliest, but the list also includes Burl Ives and Ray Charles, and, in recent years, Reba McEntire, Ricky Van Shelton and Patty Loveless (who took Howard’s “Blame It On Your Heart” to No. 1 in 1993).
Tex Ritter and Johnny Bond were the first to publish Howard’s material while the struggling writer (who was born in Harlan County, Kentucky, and raised in Detroit) was working day jobs in L.A. in the late 1950s. Bond, Wynn Stewart and Buck Owens were among the first to record his songs. But when Ray Price cut “Heartaches By the Number” and it became a major hit in 1959, Howard’s life changed for good. He and his new bride, singer Jan Howard, packed up and moved to Nashville, where Howard has kept himself in steady work ever since.
Unlike fellow songwriters such as Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Tom T. Hall and Mickey Newbury — all of whom were his buddies — Howard never had the ultimate ambition to make it as a singer himself. Still, he did record five albums during the 1960s and ’70s. All Time Favorite Country Songwriter, released in 1965 by Monument and reissued this summer by Koch, was his second, and it contains some of his most enduring and frequently covered songs (“Pick Me Up on Your Way Down”, “Tiger By the Tail”, “Heartaches By the Number”, et al).
As a singer, Howard is no Jim Reeves, but he isn’t bad, either. In fact, is version of “Busted”, which opens this album, is one of the best recordings of that song on the market, the words pouring from Howard’s mouth like milk from an old farm pitcher (“I’m boouhstid”). The arrangement is steady and spare, and the pedal steel tingles and buzzes like a field of fireflies.
On the whole, though, All Time Favorite Country Songwriter fails to shine as a work of art; frankly, it’s a curiosity more than anything. Howard’s plain voice may be warm and inviting, his words smooth around the edges, but when he takes the mike, his lack of vocal complexity shows, and he rarely brings the material up off the page. Compared to the hit versions by Buck Owens, Howard makes “Tiger By the Tail” and “Above and Beyond” sound flat-out boring.
The album does have its points of interest — in addition to “Busted”, “The Everglades” is also done well, with Howard even tossing a couple of tiny yelps and warbles — and even its dullest moments are never unpleasant. Just don’t expect any major revelations.