A showbiz kid who owed her professional career to the largesse of
Bob Hope
,
Victoria Hallman
sang as if she was born to sing for
Richard Nixon
â?¦which she did at the dawn of her career.
Hallman
emerged on the national stage after
Buck Owens
took a shine to her in the late '70s, a period when he was still reeling from the tragic early death of his partner
Don Rich
.
hardly functioned as a replacement for
Rich
-- she didn't play an instrument, let alone two -- but
Buck
's affection for the singer helped give him a project during a tumultuous time. He took her on tour with
the Buckaroos
, got her hired on Hee Haw, then when she became a series regular in 1982, he took her into the studio and produced an album designed to get her on the charts. The record didn't come out in the 1980s though. Both suffering from upheavals in their personal lives,
Owens
and
put the album on the back burner, and then it got lost, eventually resurfacing as an acetate in the late 2010s. A record collector sent that acetate to
, leading to the 2023 release of
From Birmingham to Bakersfield
, which pairs the
-produced album with three demos
cut with an impressive band featuring guitarist
James Burton
and backing vocalist
Herb Pedersen
. Despite the nod to Bakersfield country in the album title, there isn't a hint of twanging Telecasters or train-track rhythm here.
abandoned his trademarks to give
a shiny urban cowboy gloss that's highly commercial -- a sound that suits
, who sings with a smile trained on the audience. The combination of shameless razzmatazz and syrupy schmaltz makes
feel like a relic of the golden age of television variety programs, a period where all-purpose entertainers pulled out all the stops to put on a show. Singing to the rafters when there's a TV camera two feet in front of her,
's enthusiasm can be a little exhausting, especially when she's delivering such breathy camp as "Sexy Movies." It doesn't help that
is firmly and inexplicably determined to make himself anonymous, creating a record that could be mistaken for any old Music City production from 1981 if it weren't for the fact that it features a singer who grabs the listener by the lapels and refuses to let go. That quality is evident on the comparatively stripped-back demos because that's the driving force in
's recorded persona: she's going to give you a good time whether you like it or not. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine