Pure Connie Smith

Pure Connie Smith
Studio album by Connie Smith
Released	November 1977
Studio	Woodland Sound Studios and Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville, Tennessee
Genre	Country pop
Length	28:34
Label	Monument
Producer	Ray Baker
Connie Smith chronology
I Don't Wanna Talk It Over Anymore (1976) Pure Connie Smith (1977) The Best of Connie Smith (1977)
Singles from Pure Connie Smith
"Coming Around" Released: March 1977

Pure Connie Smith is the thirtieth studio album by American country music artist Connie Smith. The album was released in November 1977 on Monument Records and was produced by Ray Baker. It was Smith's first album for the Monument label, after leaving Columbia Records earlier in the year.

Background[]

Pure Connie Smith contained ten tracks of new material. The only cover version included on the release was Dottie West's top-20 single "When It's Just You and Me". The album was recorded in a different format than any of Smith's previous albums; most of its material had a softer country pop sound. After signing with Monument in 1977, Smith's musical style moved towards not only country pop, but also slow tempo adult contemporary and upbeat disco. Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine reviewed Smith's 1993 compilation Greatest Hits on Monument (which included three songs from Pure Connie Smith) and criticized her musical sound under Monument, stating, "This is commercial music that doesn't really work. It has a state-of-the-art production that dates instantly, walks the line between crossover pop and country-pop rather clumsly [sic], and lacks good material."^[1]

Slipcue.com reviewed Pure Connie Smith and gave it a more positive review, calling the album Smith's "swinger album" and further explaining that the album had a "much looser, casual sense of morality in evidence".^[2] The release was issued on a 12-inch LP album, with five songs on each side of the record.^[3]

Release[]

Pure Connie Smith only spawned one single. The album's first track, "Coming Around", was released as a single in March 1977, only becoming a minor hit in the United States. The song peaked outside the top 40, reaching number 58 on the Billboard Magazine Hot Country Songs chart shortly after its release.^[4] Pure Connie Smith itself failed to chart on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, as all of Smith's albums for the label "stiffed" according to Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic.^[1]

Track listing[]

Personnel[]

• Grady Martin, Jerry Stembridge, Reggie Young, Robert Thompson, Ray Edenton, George Jackson — guitars
• Bob Moore, Tommy Cogbill, Leon Rhodes — bass
• Lloyd Green — steel guitar
• Kenny Buttrey, Kenny Malone — drums
• Charlie McCoy — harmonica
• Shane Keister, Ron Oates — piano
• Sheldon Kurland, Carl Gorodetzky, Roy Christensen, Steven Maxwell Smith, Virginia Christensen, Samuel Terranera, Marvin D. Chantry, Gary Vanosdale, John Allan Catchings, Ann R. Migliore, Lennie Haight, George Binkley III, Byron T. Bach — strings
• Johnny Gimble — mandolin
• The Lea Jane Singers, The Nashville Edition — background vocals

David McKinley, Rex Collier, Hank Williams, Ronnie Reynolds, Ronnie Dean — engineers^[5]

Sales chart positions[]

Singles

References[]