Country
albums in the '60s sometimes seemed like singles with a lot of B-sides. Artists could release four albums a year, one for each hit single if they were lucky.
Jack Greene
's
Statue of a Fool
is like that: the title track was a number one hit, and the remaining 11 album tracks are a mixture of covers (
Gordon Lightfoot
"Ribbon of Darkness,"
Merle Haggard
"Hungry Eyes"
) and songs by Nashville songwriters like
Hank Cochran
and
Dallas Frazier
.
"Bring Me Sunshine,"
a hit the same year for
Willie Nelson
, adds jazzy guitar chords and a swinging beat that show how easily the smooth-mannered
Greene
could have encroached on
Eddy Arnold
's quasi-Vegas territory.
"I Don't Need Tomorrow,"
on the other hand, is a
country
shuffler with plenty of steel guitar.
is a capable vocalist but his something-for-everyone approach yields a forgettable product here. ~ Greg Adams