“For Linda, songwriting emerged rather unexpectedly. One big hang-up was her sense of personal worth. How could God or anyone else want her or anything she could do? “I am nothing! I am no good. It wouldn’t be worth it to God – He wouldn’t be getting a good bargain”. When she finally gave in, she told God he was stuck with her. He would have to make something good out of her life, if he could. This she doubted.
A month later she wrote her first song.”
Sleeve Notes
I feel a bit uncomfortable reading the back cover of Linda Rich's debut album. It feels exploitative, her heart exposed on the sleeve. Whilst we should be grateful for those who took Linda under their wing, sometimes evangelical enthusiasm needs tempered by pastoral protection. The music contained on the record, however, does indeed introduce us to a unique talent struggling to find her place in the world.
The opening song “There’s More to Living Than I Know so Far” sets the tone for the album, showcasing her warm, soothing and gently expressive alto voice, bright acoustic guitar playing, and sweet melodies. Rich lulls the listener in, slows things down, then expertly disarms with lyrics of simple, unvarnished honesty.
The song reviews the turmoil and social changes of the 1960s – wars, racism, urban alienation, shallow celebrity culture and suburban consumerism. It's easy to imagine Melanie, for example, writing something similar. Whilst often considered disparate, folksy hippie and youthful Christian values were often closely aligned during that era - love, peace, concern for others and a desire for a meaningful, spiritual, less materialistic life.
Rich had a difficult time settling in at Wichita State University, suffering a mental breakdown and ongoing depression. She responded by learning guitar and writing folk songs that expressed her new-found faith and personal struggles. A few small public performances followed, which brought her to the attention of InterVarsity, an evangelical Christian University fellowship. Impressed by her talent, they recognised that she could be an effective means of spreading the word, singing at their events. Recording an album by Linda, to sell at gatherings and at Christian bookshops, became the next logical step - InterVarsity had created their own small private press label to facilitate such ventures. After failed first recordings in Colorado, due to engineering issues, Rich travelled to Chicago in December 1968 to quickly re-record her songs with Ron Steele and some session musicians.
Ron Steele
Steele was a highly regarded engineer, producer, guitarist and arranger who had worked with Elvis a few years previously. He added exceptional, restrained instrumentation to create elegant chamber folk pieces with some parallels to contemporaneous works by artists such as Leonard Cohen or Vashti Bunyan. "Sunlight Shadow" is a good example of his work, drawing out the hope and despair of Rich's song - the flickering contrast between light and dark accentuated through use of flute and low strings.
Like most Christian records of the time, the music was unheard outwith immediate circles and was never reviewed by an uninterested music press or mainstream newspapers. About the only reference I can find comes 35 years after the album's release - a bizarre Guardian interview with Steve Mason of the Beta Band:
"... he found out that his grandmother was an American singer called Linda Rich. Mason has her album, There's More to Living Than I Know So Far. "She was a religious nut so the songs tended to have titles like Man of Galilee. It's interesting to think about her, and what my dad was doing, and what I'm doing now, but the only real link is the fact that we all have a slightly disabled look about us."
The Guardian 2004
This was, of course, a complete fabrication - just Mason, bored with interviews, winding up a gullible journalist. Nonetheless, his joke is quite telling, scoffing at an album likely picked up in the unwanted, bargain crate of a second hand or charity store. Lack of monetary value of the record matched by the lack of worth ascribed to both its contents and to the performer, including his mocking of her physical looks.
Certainly, she didn’t have the willowy, bohemian and ethereal appearance of say Joan Baez or Judy Collins. Large, bespectacled and awkward, she was a long way from the stereotype of the free-spirited artist and muse. It is easy to believe that she would have struggled to have won approval from the sexist music industry of the period. The photograph below, does however, shows a young woman looking increasingly confident and comfortable in her own skin. Fortunately, many who did see her play, or bought the record, accepted her as she was, and her music seems to have resonated deeply with them, given the heartfelt comments left on YouTube clips or blog posts.
Linda Rich Urbana Conference 1970
There aren't any mountains in Augusta, Kansas, where Linda was raised. Almost 600 miles from the sea, it sits within an expansive prairie, dominated at the time by the industrial towers, chimneys and domes of the Augusta Oil Refinery. Brought up in such an environment, the natural world, that is such a recurring theme in her songwriting, appears distant from her home town. The landscape she describes, and longs to be walking within, is rich and abundant, with flowers, meadows, trees, hills, mountains, rivers and the sea. It's partially a metaphorical one, obviously, but Rich doesn't reference biblical settings. Rather it feels more as if the green and pleasant land of Blake's Jerusalem or the Pre-Raphaelite landscape described in Christina Rossetti's poems and hymns.
Vintage postcard of Augusta
"The Edges of His Ways" combines an English sounding folk melody with an encircling strummed acoustic rhythm. Rich sounds like the ultimate outsider looking in - wanting to engage with nature, get closer to a Christian life and, perhaps also, to gain acceptance from wider society. It's a remarkably poignant song.
The relationship between Rich and InterVarsity wasn't always harmonious. There were disputes over release of particular songs and use of insulting language towards her. In 1975, not long after a legal pay-out to resolve these issues, she suddenly moved on, without leaving a forwarding address. She hasn't been in contact with family or friends since. No one knows whether she is dead or alive. She probably thought no-one cared about her, yet many of us who have listened to Linda without preconceptions have been touched by the music of an exceptional, emotionally moving singer-songwriter. I wish we could reach out and let her know.
Notes
The following article on Medium by Jonathan Poletti was particularly informative. https://medium.com/belover/a-genius-of-christian-music-went-missing-in-1973-971e3bd4873a
Steve Mason of the Beta Band had a severe mental breakdown in 2004, the same year as the Guardian interview. He went missing for a while and has suffered from serious depression. He has become a vocal advocate for raising mental health awareness in the music industry.
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