"Delta Dawn" was as big a hit for
Reddy as was "I Am Woman," but
Long Hard Climb fails to equal her previous album, coming across as just a strained retread. Half of the material had already appeared in superior recordings --
Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Until It's Time for You to Go" in particular. Originally a sincere, affecting love song, here it's interpreted as an forgettable cocktail-cum-lounge number. Similarly,
Maria Muldaur's take on "Long Hard Climb" trounces
Reddy's damp reading -- her blunt, rather cavalier approach to singing simply can't find the emotional core of either that song, or many of the others. The dramatic song-story of "The West Wind Circus" is one of the few successes here and reassurance, at least, that
Reddy hadn't entirely lost it. ~ Charles Donovan