Angel From Montgomery. Bonnie Raitt. 1974. Warner Bros.

John Prine’s country classic about the rural poor calling out to us from the rougher edges of mortality. As songwriter, Prine is as clear-sightedly unsentimental as the best folk artists, and Bonnie Raitt sings with a full-bodied country blues swagger that registers as a frustrated carnal longing spread out over a lifetime. Performing before audiences from a very young age, Raitt’s sensitivity to character helps broaden Prine’s vision of female isolation; she puts flesh on the bone of the inspired characterization from Prine’s 1971 debut. Her vocals impart to the lyric a dimension of the ache of domestic fatigue that anchors the song in your imagination like an Edna O’Brien short story. Fifteen years prior to her commercial breakthrough album Nick Of Time, Raitt had already created, together with the great album producer Jerry Ragovoy, an American genre classic with the artistic reach to transcend genres. Angel From Montgomery resonated at a time when the States was just learning to integrate the female voice into its social and cultural polylogue, and, in a 2000 interview, Raitt confirmed the affinity her fans held for the song, calling it one of the most important she’d ever recorded. Raitt achieved what only the best twentieth century country and blues artists could do: make human sadness come alive with the triumph of personal expression.


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