The Judds
Warm, ungussied, lilting and folksy (once in a while to a fault), Mama Naomi and daughter Wynonna could rewrite the book on how to charm country music fans. This is their second album of duets and it's as much fun as their first. Their version of the old Allen Toussaint hit for Lee Dorsey, Working in the Coal Mine, is on the perfunctory side and it seems out of place even in an era when there are plenty of women coal miners. But most of the songs, by such country mainstays as Paul Kennerley, Sonny Throckmorton, Wayland Holyfield and Brent Maher, the Judds's producer, are as well formed as granddaddy's prize hog. The Holyfield-Maher tune River Roll On and Kennerley's Have Mercy are most likely to meander through a listener's mind for a while. The Judds also have an advantage over the nearest act to theirs in big-time country music, the Kendalls. It sounds a lot more acceptable for a mother and daughter to be musically commiserating over those gosh-darned men than it does for a father and daughter to be singing tunes about carrying on, however innocently. (Curb/RCA)
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