“She’s Too Good to Be True”
Charley Pride
Written by Johnny Duncan
Billboard
#1 (3 weeks)
November 18 – December 2, 1972
This song is a fairly weak facsimile of “Kiss an Angel Good Morning,” regurgitating that song’s central theme and storyline with diminishing impact.
So this makes for a perfect time to bring attention to how Pride could elevate a so-so song into something better with his charismatic vocals and Jack Clement at the console.
Clement was a mentor to Garth Fundis, who would go on to produce most of the best work from Don Williams, Keith Whitley, and Trisha Yearwood. He was one of the first producers in Nashville to perfect what would eventually evolve into the new traditionalist sound that laid the foundation for country music going supernova in the 90s.
This record is muscular in its production without relying on the sweeping strings of the Nashville Sound to sound robust. That’s why it can go toe to toe with the pop and rock records of the day in a way that so much of this era’s producers were not able to deliver.
It helped to make Pride a gold-selling albums artist in an era where selling 100k got you a party on Music Row. This just sounds better than most of what’s on the radio at the time, even if the material isn’t quite up to Pride’s usual standard.
“She’s Too Good to Be True” gets a B.
Every No. 1 Single of the Seventies
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My thoughts exactly. A good but not great record from a great singer
Good song worthy of a “B”.
Going through this 70s features, it has struck me now this has always been Nashville studio’s modus operandi. After an artist’s career record, the studio response always seems to be “let’s have another of those…..” on the next album, which always seems to end up being the lead single. I guess I get the instinct, but I wonder if they ever end up getting protests from the artists who don’t want to risk typecasting their career as “the guy who sang those songs”. We’ll be seeing something like this again later in this series with Ronnie Milsap. Pretty sure I haven’t heard this one before, but like just about everything Charley recorded, it sounded great.
I enjoy this song and mainly for sentimental reasons of thinking of my wife. Charley was a killer vocalist that I kind of underappreciated but these features really have helped expand my appreciation for his music.
I am increasingly appreciative of the role a producer sympathetic to an artist’s musical inclinations, tendencies, and strengths has in the creative process. The right producer amplifies the best attributes of an artist and plays to their strengths, which Clement does here. When the artist is as talented as Charley Pride, the impact of their collaboration is significant and enduring.
I didn’t know Garth Fundis was a Clement acolyte. It is fun to connect all the dots, and follow how the influence flows through different eras of country music.
As another example of this, I think Jamie O’Hara’s “Rise Above It” worked so well as a showcase for his songwriting talents because of Fundis’ careful and reserved production choices with those songs and O’Hara as a vocalist.
Pride is our gold again. I could listen to his music endlessly.