Nashville’s leading proto-feminist is arguably sending mixed messages on the eyebrow-raising sleeve of 1969’s Your Squaw Is On The Warpath. Here’s Lynn, the scourge of selfish feckless manhood, tarted-up as a tomahawk-wielding Native American flashing a liberal amount of shapely thigh; though the album’s contents find her striking several blows for independently-minded saloon gals.
The title track is combative country at its best, a close relation to Tammy Wynette’s Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad, while she’s just as feisty on a version of Tom T Hall’s Harper Valley PTA. A softer, more vulnerable side shows its face on Taking The Place Of My Man, in which Lynn turns to booze to soothe a broken heart, and the self-penned love triangle dilemma He’s Somewhere Between You And Me.
Fist City, released the previous year, is splendidly spiky, not least the title track, where Loretta threatens to get violent with a love rival (“You better move your feet/If you don’t wanna eat/A meal that’s called Fist City”), and the curtain-twitching, infidelity-strewn Jackson Ain’t A Very Big Town. Redneck soap operas, filtered through the voice of a real poet.
