Records and Roots: Connie Smith delivers with new album

Connie Smith sings hungry. Her vocal prowess long renowned, Smith earned her distinction as country music's Rolls Royce decades ago.As she's grown older, she sings even more poignantly. At the age of 82, Connie Smith sings as if she were 22 and hoping for a career to come. She's growling.So it goes within the blissfully twangy grooves of Connie Smith's 55th new album, "Love, Prison, Wisdom and Heartaches." Produced by her husband Marty Stuart, the Country Music Hall of Fame member sings as if she's still angling for entry in the oh-so-exclusive hall of fame.Embedded within the tears and fears and aching breaking heart of Smith's new album stands like a statue the quest for hope.Frankly, Smith maintains and improves upon an excellence that's been her modus operandi since her 1964 debut. Back then it was "Once a Day" and a string of hits to follow. Nowadays, it's as if country's living queen stepped out of her trailer to knock us dead again.No pause. Smith swings with intent and delivers a haymaker with her album's opening track, a reprise of a song she first recorded in 1965, "The Other Side of You." Upon instant contact of the needle on the record, Smith's full-throated voice opines "An introduction to the other side of you." Gary Carter's biting pedal steel guitar slices alongside Smith as she belts "I'm finding out some things I never knew."Marty Stuart's band, the Fabulous Superlatives, provide much of the album's musical accompaniment. Taut yet reserved, it's as if they stand back a bit to make way for Smith's gargantuan vibes.Smith's subtle-to-sizzling voice traces like the grain of the hallowed circle of wood on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. Hank Williams stood there when he reached for a purple sky on "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Smith aches, too, when she tackles "Once More" and such lyrics as "just for tonight to hold you tight" and "if you just give me all of your heart."The hunger? Smith growls as if famished during Dallas Frazier's "If You Won't Tell on Me." Carter's dazzling pedal steel rises to meet Smith as if heart-to-heart during the song's stroll through guilt. Yep, it's stellar three chords and the cheatin' truth country.Smith pays homage to songwriters and singers throughout "Love, Prison, Wisdom and Heartaches." Picturesque as blue skies and yellow daisy meadows, she reinvigorates Dottie West's "Country Girl" as a light waltz of simple declaration.Loretta Lynn often provided a voice for people hidden within the cracks of life. So it goes with "World of Forgotten People." Smith reached back to 1963 and Lynn's "Loretta Lynn Sings" LP to find the long-overlooked gem for people "who've loved and lost their heart so many times."Thing is, had Connie Smith ever lost her heart, she didn't have far to look to find it.From traditional pop legend Perry Como comes "Seattle." It's a song of prayed-for love. Smith's Norman Rockwell-ish voice full of bounty and beauty, emotes "And you pray you that you will find, someone warm and sweet and kind" as one who astutely knows well of such things.Few people have tackled Skeeter Davis' "The End of the World." Until now. Smith takes on the persona of the woman on the receiving end of goodbye. For her, the broken romance does not mean love washed away. But she wonders, "why does the sun go on shining?" and "why do the birds go on singing?" Be honest. Who hasn't felt that at least once in life?Well, that's Connie Smith circa 1964. And that's Connie Smith today, 2024. She relates with people.Back in '64 at the age of 22, Smith sang of the pain in the aftermath of a breakup in Bill Anderson's "Once a Day." Today at 82, she remembers life's occasional choppy waters before wedded bliss with Marty Stuart on Dallas Frazier's "Beneath Still Waters." She reaches as if deep into corners of her heart and mind to sing the line "even a fool could see that you'll soon be leaving me" with unabashed clarity and authenticity.Yep, Connie Smith has throbbed with the thrashing and bashing of a heart hurt to the point of no apparent return. But she survived. You can, too.Sad songs, Elton John sang of years ago, say so much. A critical element of country music and Connie Smith's Country Music Hall of Fame catalog, she digs deep into her scarred and beautiful country singing heart for a modern-day masterpiece in "Love, Prison, Wisdom and Heartaches."Listen close. There's hope for us all.