Tina Turner's
Goes Country, aka the 1974 United Artists Records LP
Tina Turns the Country On, was
Turner's debut solo album, made during the last years of her professional and personal relationship with
Ike Turner. As such, her typically impassioned performance of
Tammy Wynette's
"Stand by Your Man" probably will strike listeners as the most curious selection on the album. Those looking for clues to the future, however, may be inclined to concentrate on such titles as
"If This Is Our Last Time" and
"We Had It All." Actually, the original title of the album is more appropriate than the one on this reissue.
Turner doesn't really go country on the disc. What she does is perform a batch of country songs in her own inimitable R&B/rock style. For better or worse,
Turner has only one mode. She sings full-out, which means that, for instance, the nuances of
Kris Kristofferson's
"Loving Him Was Easier" escape her, but that, on the other hand, her take on
the Box Tops'
"Soul Deep" (not actually a country song, even if it comes from Memphis) is masterful. And she goes right to the emotional core of
Loretta Lynn's
"You Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man." Other singers might "go country" by making an album full of steel guitar and fiddle arrangements. But whatever the nominal style of music, when
Tina Turner sings it, it becomes
Tina Turner music. ~ William Ruhlmann
