Often dismissed as Andre Previn’s bonkers ex-wife, the erstwhile Dorothy Langdon was a Hollywood songwriter and poet who recorded for a range of major labels throughout the 1970s. This 17-track taster is culled from four United Artists LPs released during her incredibly productive 1970-72 heyday.
The accompaniment switches wildly from folk rock to bluegrass to trad jazz and beyond, but it’s the witty, highly personal and beautifully enunciated lyrics – about myth, religion, sexual politics, mental illness, child abuse, and losing your husband to Mia Farrow – that serve as compelling mini-screenplays; a curious hybrid of Janis Ian, Randy Newman and Ivor Cutler.
JOHN LEWIS
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