What an interesting story. Thanks.
Not being too much of a C/W fan, I shall have to look Nanci and the songs up.
(I do love George and Tammy, though.)
When I thought about this thread of the greatest love songs ever, I started doing research.
I looked at dozens of ‘top 25, top 50’ greatest love songs lists from many different sources.
My own list of favorites were on every list I looked at- with the exception of a very few.
I was surprised that not a one on FR listed any of these songs as being a great love song.
Nanci's not a country/western singer. At one point, if you had to categorize her, she was a contemporary folk singer. Then Rolling Stone Magazine called her the "Queen of Rockabilly." There was a long period in the 1980s when she was the biggest US musician in the UK and was famous in Europe. She recorded 'From a Distance' two years before Bette Midler. Nanci's version went triple platinum in Europe.
When she did her tour for the album "Other Voices, Other Rooms," a series of duets of folksongs that had inspired her as a child, she had a huge surprise at Carnegie Hall.
After she was on stage, she was surprised by a huge group of friends who showed up to sing with her. I don't remember the full lineup. Perhaps John Price, Bob Dylan, Odetta, J.I. Allison & Glen D. Hardin (of Buddy Holly and The Crickets), Arlo Guthrie, Harlan Howard, Emmylou Harris, Lucy Kaplansky, Darius Rucker ("Hootie"), Bela Fleck, Ian Tyson (of the 60s folk group Ian & Sylvia). The people who showed up that night to see Nanci got their money's worth.
She's beloved by other musicians and musical artists.
Nanci's something of an unofficial member of Ireland's 'national treasure' group.
You can't really pigeon-hole her as country-western or anything else, except as Nanci Griffith. She was in Nashville because her record label tried to make her CW for a record or so. That was followed by using the same producer from the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers album on her next works. Yeah. She's just Nanci.
I wouldn't buy anything more recent than Other Voices, Other Rooms or A Trip to Bountiful to begin with. The more recent albums became political and are an acquired taste. Little Love Affairs, Last of the True Believers, Once in a Very Blue Moon - or many more. But stop after A Trip to Bountiful.