It’s a really pretty song.

I saw a(British, I think) documentary series about Nashville years ago really showed how troubled she was from the start. She was not able to get it together on a personal basis even early on.

I have been listening to some of her music. Her version of “The Dance” is beautiful. After hearing that, I feel that everyone should have to record “The Dance” at least once in their career. Because when played after their death, it is always beautiful.

And I just discovered that Rondstadt cover. Just gorgeous.

In a very classy Facebook status last night, Pam Tillis mentions mindy performing that song:

“I remember one of my first shows in the beginning of my touring career. There were several new artist on the bill and Mindy McCready was one of them. I remember being beside the stage waiting to do my sound check. She was doing her sound check and did the Linda Ronstadt song A Long Long Time. It was SO good and so beautiful, she had real talent that unfortunately got pegged into a bimbo image. They wanted to make her the blonde Shania and that was just a dead end street for her……….He­r singing really moved me and I never forgot it. I’m very sad that she never recovered from her substance abuse issues. I hate it that it is another beautiful voice squandered and especially for her children. People kick people when they’re down and that’s really too bad……….It­’s not for us to judge. I hope she rest in peace.”

One place that I think showed where Mindy might have gone had things in life panned out far better is on her 1997 album If I Don’t Stay The Night. Among that album’s tracks is a fairly faithful rendition of “Long Long Time”, a gut-wrenching ballad made into a country-rock standard (and a #25 pop hit in 1970) by Linda Ronstadt. It takes a lot of nerve to record that song; and even if Mindy’s version didn’t supersede Linda’s, it showed that she was willing to take a fair amount of chances with the material she chose to record.

Here’s hoping that she has found a better place for herself. And we should remember her, and appreciate her, for what she actually bought to the table in terms of her admittedly and tragically short career, not simply lament for what happened to her.

Her voice had an excellent range and quality, and an elasticity, for lack of a better word, better than any of her mid-nineties contemporaries. She could run through a series of notes and inflections in a single syllable (examples: “ten thousand a-an-gels“, the outro to You’ll Never Know) and make it sound like the most natural, beautiful thing in the world.

I started listening to more of Mindy’s music after reading Kevin’s Six Pack a while back, and I fell in love with several songs that I probably would not have discovered otherwise. I couldn’t agree more with his statement that McCready deserves to be known by her music, not her personal life – which I always wanted to believe would come together eventually, and I think she believed so as well.

It’s a terrible tragedy that it had to end with her taking her own life, and I can only pray that her two children are able to cope with such a devastating loss.