For just a moment there, Sammi Smith—Girl Hero is what some folks called her—was the most popular female country singer in the world. In 1971, Smith's recording of "Help Me Make It Through the Night," written by a then still little-known songwriter named Kris Kristofferson, topped the country charts for three weeks. It cracked the pop Top 10, too, and was honored by the CMA as its Single of the Year. Smith died this past Saturday, Feb. 12, in Oklahoma City, of emphysema. She was only 61, and just a day shy of marking the 34th anniversary of the day her career record hit No. 1 on the Billboard country chart.
I saw Smith sing in person only once. Last July, her son Waylon Payne was making his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, and a beaming Smith joined her bouncing-off-the-walls son onstage to celebrate. She was a slight little thing, with short hair and tight-fittin' jeans, and she looked fabulous. If you hadn't known who she was, you might've guessed she was 40 instead of 60. I knew she'd been having health problems for a while, though, so I wasn't expecting her to sound like her records, wasn't counting on hearing Sammi Smith, Girl Hero. But, to my ears, when she took the mic, her voice—husky and bracing and possessed of an intimacy more commonly associated with whispered secrets—sounded like it was that 1971 moment all over again. As she had done countless times before, everywhere from dive bars to big auditoriums, from Hee-Haw to The Mike Douglas Show, the song she sang was "Help Me Make It Through the Night."
Well, of course it was. Most singers only dream of having a signature song so beloved. "Help Me Make It" was for Sammi Smith what "Stand by Your Man" was for Tammy Wynette; it was for Smith what "I Hope You Dance" is going to be for Lee Ann Womack for the rest of her life. "Help Me Make It" became so closely identified with Smith that for most casual listeners the song and the singer have long since melded into one event, the way rain just naturally goes with clouds or busted hearts come with tears. And Smith sings the song with a rare vulnerability, imploring and desperate but very, very quiet and, just barely, controlled. Today's singers, who so often confuse intensity with volume and emotion with attitude, could learn a great deal by listening to Sammi Smith sing "Help Me Make It." They could learn how to sing human-sized.
And not just "Help Me Make It," but dozens of other sides very nearly as powerful. If all you know of Smith's work is that one moment, you owe yourself the thrill of hearing more. I'd recommend especially the first four albums she released for Mega Records between 1970 and '74. You'll have to hunt for them, too—they've never been released on compact disc, a grievous oversight—but it will be worth your effort. Help Me Make It Through the Night (originally titled He's Everywhere) and Lonesome, The Toast of '45 and Something Old, Something Blue, Something New are stellar examples of country soul, as lasting in their way as Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis or Charlie Rich's early albums on Epic.
Rich's vocal style, especially, approximates what Smith was up to behind the mic. She was at her best as an interpreter, and like the Silver Fox, she was an expert at tone, texture and phrasing. Merle Haggard once said that her version of his "Today I Started Loving You Again," Smith's third and last Top 10 single, was his favorite reading of the song. Smith could pack more, and more complex, meaning into a single pause than most singers convey over the course of entire albums. On "Saunders' Ferry Lane," the leadoff track from her Mega debut, her phrasing is so matter-of-fact, her delivery so quiet, and the string chart behind her is so melancholy and spare, that as Smith tells her story, it's as if we can see the leaves she describes tumbling and the clouds threatening, as if we can hear the dock in the song creaking. In Smith's voice we can feel the "awful cold in Saunders' Ferry Lane," and we understand she's not just complaining about the temperature.
When the Outlaw bit exploded in the mid-'70s, Smith, her biggest hits behind her, became associated with that crowd because she sometimes played the same bills and because many in that group were her friends; it was Jennings, for instance, who dubbed her Girl Hero. But Smith's music wasn't in the least Outlaw-ish, not in the sense that has become the Waylon & Willie stereotype. Smith was never cocky or in-your-face; more like she was sitting across the table, speaking to you from some place deep down and nakedly human, or like she was sobbing quietly on your chest.
When Bill Friskics-Warren and I wrote Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles, we made sure to place three Smith records in the roll call, including "Help Me Make It" at No. 1. There were several reasons we thought that made sense. "Help Me Make It" remains representative of a time when country music was in great flux: Smith herself was in the vanguard of appreciating the new Dylan-inspired country songwriters; her version of "Help Me Make It" was an example of the new countrypolitan sound at its most soulful; and it was a record that heralded the higher profile women were about to enjoy on country radio, as well as the sexual themes they would often address.
But, really, it's that voice that mattered most to us. Sammi Smith, Girl Hero, sang softly but tugged at our hearts, made us attend closely, like few singers ever. She is one of my heroes, and she deserves to be one of yours, too.
