POP MUSIC REVIEW : Crystal Gayle’s Force Clears Country’s Hurdles

One of the problems with having a lot of hot new contenders in country music is that it makes less room for the established artists, several of whom have been squeezed out of the charts of late.

Such has been the case with Crystal Gayle, whose most recent album, released earlier this year, sank without a trace.

But if the country charts are fickle, country fans aren’t, and Gayle’s early show Monday at the Crazy Horse Steak House (she was also scheduled Tuesday) was packed with admiring listeners who got an 80-minute set that justified their loyalty.

Gayle may not have the gritty personality of her sister Loretta Lynn--you’d likely never hear Gayle convincingly voicing “Fist City” and “Rated X”--but she has her own charms. As hinted at on her 1977 crossover hit “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” she has a vocal temperament suited to jazzy torch ballads.

That character may have been obscured on some past tours, when her band arrangements were clotted with heavy synthesizers. This time out, though, her seven-piece River Road band (including sister Peggy Sue on backup vocals) took a pleasantly unplugged approach to much of the material, giving Gayle’s voice the room to do its stuff.

But before going any further, we should probably do an update on Gayle’s hair. It passed the “long enough to sit on” mark ages ago. It seems now to be holding where it has for the past year or two, reaching down to her heels. That may be the limit, unless she intends to start piling it on a skateboard behind her.

She made a requisite hair joke or two during the show and engaged in some scripted banter with her sister and band members. Aside from that, and a curious duet medley of songs the sisters grew up with, the performance was surprisingly unaffected by show-biz glitz.

Backed on many numbers with soft settings featuring fiddle, mandolin and stand-up bass, Gayle finessed the lyrics to such tunes as her first hit, 1974’s “Wrong Road Again,” 1978’s “Talking in Your Sleep,” the Judy Collins hit “Someday Soon” and “I’ll Get Over You,” which Gayle ended with a torchy flourish.

She took a few forays out of the country field, with tunes ranging from Delaney and Bonnie’s homespun 1971 soft-rocker “Never Ending Song of Love” to the 1951 Johnny Ray tear-jerker “Cry,” which was graced with some Floyd Cramer-like piano fills from keyboardist Dean Slocum.

Gayle stepped assuredly from calico to satin in assaying Irving Berlin’s classic “Always,” suggesting she could well find a second career doing standards.

Her band gave her strong, subtle backing throughout, with just the right amount of personality added by fiddle player Buddy Spicher and multi-instrumentalist Jay Patten, who colored the arrangement with mandolin, guitar and a variety of saxes. Bassist Jim Fergusson took the Eddie Rabbitt vocal part in the duet “You and I.”

Peggy Sue, as usual, took the lead on “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind).” She and Gayle shared the odd oldies medley, presumably made up of songs they grew up singing.

These veered through “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Good Hearted Woman,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Country Roads” and other tunes, never lingering long enough to inject much personality or feeling into the lyrics.