Linda on My Mind

AMG Review of Linda on My Mind

Thom Jurek
All Music Guide

Linda on My Mind is one of Conway Twitty's finest moments on wax. For a man who could sing the contents on a soup can and make it emotionally compelling, that is saying something. Twitty was such a badass as a persona and as a vocalist -- not too mention as a songwriter, as through the '70s he wrote virtually all of his singles -- he was bigger than life. The title track is an example where the honky tonk beer-weeper is transformed into a real-life drama complete with visuals and a backing chorus to underline the song's most poignant moments and a pedal steel ringing above it all to pierce the air. And while it's true that Twitty was making albums full of these songs in the 1970s, it was because he could always do it convincingly. But that didn't keep him from throwing a few surprises onto each album and this one is no exception. His version of the Flatt & Scruggs standard "Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms" is done not as a luegrass tune but as a honky tonk song for the first half and then as an electric luegrass rocker! There's also Twitty's read of Kris Kristofferson's "Why Me" that reinvents the original by turning it into a prayer rather than an accusation. And, of course, it has to be mentioned that the infamous "I" trilogy is on this album: In a row, Twitty laces "I'll Get Over Losing You," "I Just Can't Get Over You (Getting Over Me)," and "I'm Getting Tired of Losing You." Twitty wrote the first and last part of this unholy trinity of barroom weepers. And man, does he sing the hell out of them. Despite the obvious humor at their placement, not only on the same album but also in succession, these songs are devastating in their emotional brokenness and helplessness. Twitty ends the album a few tracks later with another of his songs that comes to the conclusion that "Only Love Can Make Her Stay." Oh yeah, this is the stuff. Find it, get it, play it to death; you may become enlightened.