Hymns

AMG Review of Hymns

Stewart Mason
All Music Guide

Loretta Lynn's fourth album -- fifth if you count her duet record with Ernest Tubb from earlier in 1965 -- is a collection of Christian songs but, despite the title, the record is actually about evenly divided between raditional church music and what would eventually come to be called contemporary Christian music. The rollicking opening track, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven (But Nobody Wants to Die)," biblical verse or no, sounds more like a classic Sun Records ockabilly single, complete with slapback bass and Scotty Moore-style guitar, than anything one would be likely to hear on a Sunday morning. That song is a Lynn original, as is the closing "Where I Learned How to Pray," a sentimental weeper in the classic style. In between, Lynn essays raditional hymns and newer classics of the style like the Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey's immortal "There'll Be Peace in the Valley for Me," the arrangement of which strongly recalls Elvis' hit version. A relative rarity among Lynn's albums, this disc was reissued by King Records in 1998.