Reviewing The Top Ten Hits From This Week In 1982

 

One wonders if the hits of yesterday can possibly be as bad as the dreadful chart toppers of today. I'm on a mission to find out. Looking at the top ten charts for a particular week is an eye-opener. I've made the point in a previous post, but most weekly top ten singles are utterly forgettable. Take the week of February 6, 1982, for example. Only one of the top ten immediately conjures a melody in my head. A few of the others have somewhat familiar titles, but the songs themselves are mysteries. The rest I've never in my life heard of.

Thus, as this experiment goes, I will review each song as if this is the first time I've heard it (which in some cases is true). Please note that since these singles are forty years old, finding performance videos will be hit or miss.

Let's go....

#10 ~ Diamonds In The Stars ~ Ray Price

 

Love the singer. The recording? Not so much. This may have been a decent country song with the proper arrangement. I prefer fiddles to violins and I prefer country to Jimmy Webb-style country pop. The song itself is inoffensive, though not terribly original. There's a fine line between "a little sophistication" (take, for example, a song like Burning Memories) and "a little too much". This is an entirely forgettable track; one that I wouldn't listen to again.

MY RATING: B- (points for the singer)

 

#9 ~ Midnight Rodeo ~ Leon Everette

This singer is so unfamiliar to me I looked up his discography, and I do not recognize a single one of his tracks. I'm not a fan of his voice, nor of the song. It's got that kick drum beat that seems to be prevalent in songs of the era, one that adds no nuance to the song. It's straightforward and dull. It might have gone over well on the dance floor just before closing time. From the YouTube comments this was apparently considered "racy" for its time. Meh. 

MY RATING: C-

#8 ~ I Just Came Home To Count The Memories ~ John Anderson

 

The singer has a unique, very appealing country voice. A country ballad should ramp up the emotion when the chorus hits, and this one does. The song itself is so-so, but the singer saves it. I wouldn't purchase this single, but it's solid, as country ballads go.

MY RATING: B

#7 ~ Shine ~ Waylon Jennings

While I definitely like the singer, it seems that all his hits have approximately the same melody; only the lyrics change. But if you find a winning formula, I guess why change it? I could listen to any Jennings hit and hear, in essence, the exact same song, so no, I wouldn't buy it. Like the Anderson track above, the singer saves this one.

MY RATING: B-

#6 ~ You're The Best Break This Old Heart Ever Had ~ Ed Bruce

The singer has a presence, reminiscent of Gordon Lightfoot to a degree. The chorus saves the song. It's a singalong and sticks in your head after you've heard it. And that's what good songs should do. Though it's not a track I'd lay down money for, it's solid.

MY RATING: B 

#5 ~ Watchin' Girls Go By ~ Ronnie McDowell

It must have been easy to memorize the lyrics. Not sure what this is. Never trust a country singer who can't or won't play guitar. That only leads to embarrassing "dancing". It's unfair of me to base my ranking on a video, though, so I'll just say that the song is imminently forgettable. I've already forgotten it! There is really nothing to recommend this track.

MY RATING: D

#4 ~ Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good ~ Don Williams

Original message, pleasing melody, wonderful arrangement, comforting vocals ~ this seems like a track that will stand the test of time. There's a bit of gossamer that distinguishes a great song from most any of the ones referenced above. A guy named Dave Hanner wrote it and he has an interesting life, documented on his website (check it out). This is my top hit of the week.

MY RATING: A

#3 ~ Only One You ~ T.G. Sheppard

I probably shouldn't like this one, but I kind of do. Not every country song has to follow the same formula. And yes, he's a microphone-holder, but at least he's not "dancing". It seems to me, judging by his previous hits, that this singer has a keen ear for what works, or at least what works for him. A good track is really a melding of singer and song. I wouldn't buy this, but I give Sheppard props for staying true to himself.

MY RATING: B+

#2 ~ Someone Could Lose A Heart Tonight ~ Eddie Rabbitt

This is a disappointing effort from an artist who can do much, so much better. One wonders what he was thinking when he recorded this. This track is utterly forgettable and mercifully so. I didn't expect this one to be the worst on my top ten list, considering that I love the singer. But it is; it truly is.

MY RATING: D (and that's being generous)

#1 ~ Lonely Nights ~ Mickey Gilley

If I heard this for the first time on my car radio, I'd change the station out of boredom. Somebody obviously talked Mickey into abandoning his signature piano and adopting a Casio keyboard. I hate this. I hate Eddie Rabbitt's song for different reasons, but at least his is ambitious. This is paint-by-number pap. 

MY RATING: D-

It's actually serendipitous that from the top ten chart of February 6, 1982 I found one rare gem. So 1982's chart was only nominally better than 2022's. That kind of shoots down my theory that country music has gone to hell. Oh, it has, but it's eye-opening to know that the sum total of country music was always crap. Don't be deceived by the Haggards and the Yoakams. Those are the ones we choose to remember. To save our musical sanity. 

This experiment is a valuable wake-up.

 

September Is Country Music Month (The Middlin' Seventies)

Country music in the seventies was such a schizophrenic time, it's almost impossible to sum up the decade in one post. Whereas in pop music, the sixties could be separated by a solid line right through the middle of the decade, the seventies in country music are more like thirds, or even fourths.

In 1970 Merle Haggard was still at his peak, with The Fightin' Side of Me; Conway Twitty had re-recorded and had a monstrous hit with Hello Darlin'; Ray Price had For The Good Times.

'71 saw Easy Loving by Freddie Hart; Sammi Smith's recording of Kristofferson's Help Me Make It Through The Night was huge. Conway and Loretta teamed up and recorded After The Fire Is Gone.

By 1972 record labels began flexing their muscle, and radio suffered the consequences. Even Merle and Faron Young became a bit poppier, with Carolyn and It's Four In The Morning, respectively. And the cringe-worthy Happiest Girl In The Whole USA shot to number one.

'73 still had some gems, like Charlie Rich's Behind Closed Doors, but it also produced dogs like Teddy Bear Song.

By 1974 we saw the likes of Olivia Newton-John and John Denver, pop singers, take over the charts. Even many of country's stalwarts buckled to record company demands and recorded covers of pop hits ~ it wasn't a good look. On the list of the top 100 singles of 1974 it's almost impossible to find a true country track. One of the only bright spots of that year was the emergence of a new guy named Ronnie Milsap.

And 1974 is kind of where I stopped.

I didn't stop completely, but I began to wean myself. The preset button on my car radio no longer landed on the country station. The emotion I most distinctly recall is disgust. I truly believed country music was gone forever, and it wasn't right. I'd given almost a decade of my musical existence over to country; had grown to cherish it, and it went and knifed me. Most of the country music I was even familiar with by now was the pond scum featured on network variety shows ~ Convoy by CW McCall and Rhinestone Cowboy by Glen Campbell.

One could find some real country if they searched long and hard enough. Gary Stewart and a new girl singer, Emmylou Harris, were recording real country. Merle even dipped a toe back in the country music brook. Then there was Gene Watson. I didn't miss out on these artists, because I became an album connoisseur and took a stab in the dark and plunked down three dollars and ninety-nine cents at Woolworth's solely on faith. Emmylou was giving corporate country a dainty middle finger and recording true country in the face of the pop-country pap radio was forced to play. Gene Watson was who he was, which was stone country, and take him or leave him, he reckoned. Gary Stewart was the hillbilly renaissance of Jerry Lee Lewis.

Around this time, Wanted: The Outlaws became a thing. Truth be told, The Outlaws was a compilation LP put together solely by a producer in Nashville. This was no concept album by any stretch. But it took over, much like the Urban Cowboy soundtrack hijacked the airwaves. I'd loved Waylon Jennings since 1967, so there was no "discovery". The Outlaws was a new Waylon, and I was okay with it; but it wasn't the "best country album of all time", regardless of what fable Rolling Stone Magazine tries to foist upon us.

And this is where my consumer story comes in. I grew weary of kneeling on the living room carpet to spin Gary and Emmylou on my mom and dad's castoff console stereo. The built-in fabric-covered speakers had one setting, and poor as I was, I was ready to step into the new audio world. One Saturday I scuttled off to a little sound shop ensconced inside a crumbling strip mall and innocently placed myself in the greasy salesman's hands. "This new Swedish company, Bang and Olufsen, has these speakers that are bad!" They were definitely ponderous, as was the price tag. Inside that little shop, everything sounded exactly the same, but boy, these B&O's were big! Oh well, I had my BankAmericard inside my crocheted shoulder bag. What the heck? Throw in that Technics turntable and the Pioneer receiver!

Merle's "Movin' On" LP did sound better on my new setup. Though there were few current albums worth purchasing, I made the most of what I already owned. As 1976 dawned, I discovered a couple of new artists who were different, and thus good. Eddie Rabbitt was one of those. Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers were the other.

'77 produced a hit that struck me, "Stranger" by Johnny Duncan with a nameless female singing strong backup (who we eventually would learn was named Janie Fricke). A group previously ensconced in gospel suddenly began releasing country singles. They went by the old-fashioned moniker of "Oak Ridge Boys". On the minus side, Dave and Sugar, a thoroughly stupid name, became huge, and yep, I fell for it, too. I bought their albums, even though it was impossible to keep up with their changing personnel.

1978 was mostly forgettable, except for the rise of another artist who would take country even further from its roots. Thanks, Kenny Rogers. And, of course, Barbara Mandrell scorched everyone's eardrums with "Sleepin' Single In A Double Bed". There was, though, John Conlee's "Rose Colored Glasses".

Nothing much changed in 1979. The cast of players didn't change. The only memorable hit was by a folk-pop group called "The Dirt Band". Gosh, whatever happened to those guys?

If a year produces at the most two great songs, I'd label that a failure, which is essentially my take on the seventies. I think my fondest memories of the seventies were albums by Julio Iglesias (seriously) and Marty Robbins (very seriously). Is it any wonder I threw my hands in the air and surrendered?

However, let's not just let the decade go without reviewing the best.

1970:



1971:



1972:



1973:



Bonus Track:



1974:



1975:



Bonus Track:



1976:



1977:



Bonus Track:



 

Bonus Track #2 (Rodney Crowell!):



Bonus Track #3:



1978:



1979 (written by Rodney Crowell):

Gotta use this one, because the song is not the same without Linda Ronstadt:






If one is an easy grader, the seventies weren't all that bad. If one has scruples, yea, the seventies were bad. But at least they brought us Gene Watson and Eddie Rabbitt and the Oaks.

I'll settle for that.

I'm Selling My Jukebox

UPDATE:  Sold. Gone. Thanks, Dad, for the memories.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sure, it's a little dusty, but then, so am I.

It hurts to put it up for sale. You see, this came from my dad. It was, I guess, 1968 or 1969 when the Rock-Ola took up residence in our garage. My followers know that my dad owned a bar that came as a package deal with the motel my parents purchased in 1966. When we moved to North Dakota in December of '66, the bar, politically-incorrectly named "The Gaiety" was leased out to some guy, so we paid it no heed, except for my dad, who could never resist a flashing neon sign. As the calendar pages ripped, the lease expired and Dad took the bar over. I don't know how the Rock-Ola ended up in our garage exactly, but I think it had been replaced with a newer model; hence my big brother was tasked with rolling the obsolete reject down the bar's front door ramp and shoving it into an unused corner of our garage, smack-dab next to the industrial clothes dryer.

It became a novelty that my little sister and I took notice of anytime we were bored. The machine had its peccadilloes ~ you had to push the reset button on the back to get the record to eject. Not a major deal. All we had to do was prime the machine with a quarter and we could play as many songs as we wanted. The Rock-Ola's ultimate downfall with regard to my sister's and my attention spans was the fact that it didn't house very many records we actually liked. Playing the same two or three records over and over lost its spark quickly. My sister was a pre-adolescent, so we had to haggle to land on records we both liked.

Here are the two I remember:





(We'll never know what The Fireballs looked like in concert, alas.)

Eventually, my mom and dad sold the motel and retired to an actual house. My dad asked me if I would like the jukebox and of course I did. Mom wanted to be rid of it ~ it took up too much real estate, and what would she do with that behemoth anyway? I parked it in my basement and pondered how to make it nicer. First on my list was getting rid of the crappy records and replacing them with songs I actually liked. Then, through some mail order concern, I found jukebox labels. (I don't remember if the labels or the songs came first.) I never took things a step further and refurbished the machine ~ I really couldn't afford to do that, and its rusty exterior reminded me of the halycon garage times.

Now it's time.

Nobody who is a direct descendant wants it, because they don't care about the nineteen sixties, which are akin to the Civil War days. And it's not like I hug it every day. I've essentially ignored my Rock-Ola; yet felt secure in the fact that it was always there whenever I wanted to lay my hands on it.

If I could touch it and bring my dad back, I'd never let it go. But time moves on and we need to shed a tear and surrender.

Jukeboxes are passe. Except in country:

1990 Music...And A "Career"

By the spring of 1990 I was desperate to escape from Farm Credit Services. It felt like I'd been there forever, when in fact it had only been a little over a year. I'd made friends, one of whom in an attempt to "help", I'd inadvertently had to say goodbye to. Linda's husband was a ranch manager who was ready to move on. I found an ad in the classifieds that was just up his alley and pointed it out to my friend. Before I knew it, Kirk had accepted the job and Linda's whole family moved clear across the state. Aside from the stultifying cloud I worked under, fun came from unexpected sources. Our local United Way conducted a promotion in which people could have someone "arrested" and the person would have to call everyone he or she knew in order to raise "bail" and be released. Before Linda left town, we arranged to have our boss arrested. It was all for charity....

In the fall of each year Bismarck held its annual street fair, which consisted of arts and crafts shopping galore and various corny events, like a pageant that featured contestants from local establishments. We decided to get into the spirit and sponsor an entrant from FCS. We talked one of our co-workers, eventually, into allowing her name to be placed into contention. (Paula ultimately, despite her initial revulsion, found the whole experience exhilarating.) I think half the contender's score was based on the creativity of her sponsor's promotion, so I busied myself drawing up posters and concocting catchy slogans. I believe that was the only time Nancy, my boss, ever offered me a compliment (I knew my strengths). Alas, Paula didn't prevail, but it was a win-win experience for everyone involved.

As a result of quitting smoking, my weight had shot up...and up. I'd gained fifty pounds and was most likely viewed in the office as the FCS schlub. Ultimately, even I became disgusted with myself and plunked down money I couldn't afford to spend to enroll in a program called "Diet Center" (admittedly, not the most original, but at least the most honest, commercial program at the time). Who wouldn't lose weight on a regimen that basically consisted of baked fish, asparagus, and Melba toast? I think a lemon was considered a "free food". I'd done Weight Watchers in the past with my mom, but this was infinitely more restrictive. But once I committed myself to something, I was determined not to fail, and I succeeded wildly. I lost all fifty pounds and more and reduced to a size three before I stopped. I bought clothes at the local consignment shop because my frame continued to shrink. My Diet Center "counselor" tried to talk me into posing for an ad, but my aversion to attention put an absolute kibosh on that notion.

As a downside, I took up smoking again. Damn, I was starving!

(After I'd left FCS, I joined my former cohorts one evening for a get-together on a local bistro's patio, and one of the guys was perplexed when Paula pointed out that I was there. He searched the area for a time and shrugged. I was unrecognizable ~ no longer the schlub.)

In my zeal to get away from Nancy and her disapproving glances, I had been scouring the want-ads for a while. When I spied one that said, "National Insurance Company Seeks Claims Examiners For a New Local Branch", I became obsessed. I fixated on that ad and staked my existence on garnering one of those positions. I knew absolutely nothing about health insurance, but for some unknown reason I understood that this was my destiny, which sounds utterly dumb, but there it was. I applied and received an appointment for a group interview, and henceforth sat in my garage every day after work and smoked and practiced answering hypothetical questions and hyping myself.

The group interview was an assembly line. I'd move to the first queue and answer a question, then shuffle on to the next cluster of interrogators and respond to another. All my practice evaporated. The only thing I had going for me was my medical knowledge from St. Alexius ~ I knew nothing about insurance and they all grasped that.

I was informed I'd hear from them within the week.

I didn't get a callback.

One of the few things I'd ever strived so hard for and I'd utterly failed. My lot was working for FCS and Nancy until I either reached retirement age or chopped her up with an axe.

Out of the blue a couple of weeks later, US Healthcare called and offered me the job.

The pay was exactly the same salary I was making at FCS, but I leapt at the offer. I didn't stop to question why it took them a fortnight to call. The next Monday when I told Nancy I was leaving, she was perplexed and disappointed. When the time came to tell Nancy how inadequate she'd always made me feel, I deflated. What was the point? Why bother? I was gone. Would I feel good about myself unloading on her? I lied and told her I was offered twenty-five cents more per hour. She apologized that she was unable to match the offer, but budgets, you know...Funny how they never tell you they appreciate you until you quit.

It felt strange leaving FCS. It had been a filler job all along, but I'd formed relationships. Unlike the hospital, I was on an even par with most of the people I worked with. They didn't wave their degrees in my face, because like me, nobody had one. They were working class; trying to pay their mortgages and attempting to scratch out a moment of happiness in the midst of their eight-hour slog. I was moving on to a new group of thirty girls I didn't know and I'd have to start all over again. And I was thirty-five, twice most of their ages. I was a mom who bought her clothes at the consignment shop and who had to count her pennies to buy a new pair of pantyhose. I figured, however, at least we were all in this leaky boat together. And if it didn't work out, shoot, I'd become an expert at sussing out the one or two jobs in the newspaper that fit my meager skills.

Musically, I'd become torn. At Farm Credit Services, I mostly tuned my portable radio to the local rock station. Part of that may have been that I liked the morning DJ, Bob Beck; part of it was that I wasn't ready to let rock go. When I'd turned away from country in the mid-eighties because it reeked, I became the quintessential MTV fan, and my sons shared my enchantment with Huey Lewis and Dire Straits. We bonded over pop music and baseball cards.

Country music, however, was harkening me back. Changing one's essence is ultimately a hopeless quest. One can change for a while, but we always come back to the person we intrinsically are.

Luckily for me, Eddie Rabbitt was still around:

One of the best country groups of all time, Highway 101:

A pristine country voice, Patty Loveless:

Mark Chesnutt will forever reside in the top five of my favorite artists:

Tanya Tucker and T. Graham Brown:

Gotta love Steve Wariner:

My lord, Marty Stewart:

Like Eddie, Ronnie Milsap was still hangin' in there:

 Some dude named Garth appeared on the scene:

Ricky Van Shelton:

When someone says "ninety country" (although no one actually does), this will be the song on the tips of everyone's brain:

My new career in health insurance commenced, with country music as a backdrop.

Stay tuned...

1979 ~ Back To Real Life

I had no misconceptions regarding what work would be ~ a series of dead-end jobs; maybe I'd eventually land one with tenure and I could coast my way to retirement. I really didn't want a job. I wanted to be a mom, but President Jimmy saw things differently. Being poor wasn't all that bad, but I hated having to charge basic needs, plus the hospital let me know my five dollar-a-month payment for my new son's delivery just wasn't going to cut it. That telephone conversation convinced me I needed to find a job. Before I became a mom my work life was scattershot at best. I'd tried the real world and didn't like it. Being a clerk-typist for the state, I found, didn't mean sitting in a cubbyhole and typing all day. I had to interact with customers, which I guess was the "clerk" part. I didn't know what it was called then, but it turned out I had social phobia, which is in essence a fear of making an utter fool of oneself. Whenever I heard the front door of the State Health Department creak open, I had to steel myself for the inevitable person-to-person interaction. In retrospect, I am convinced I didn't instill confidence in my customer. I would toddle off and retrieve a copy of their birth certificate and mumble, "two dollars". I think I also said, "thank you", because while I was a near-mute, I was perpetually polite. After little more than a year I'd scurried back home to work for my parents. I quit working all together in November of 1976 and nested.

By the summer of '79, the fiscal writing was on the wall. As we pedaled down the expressway in our tin-can Chevy Malibu, I gazed at the building being erected, with a big sign out front that announced, "Future Home of LaBelle's". I said, I'm going to work there. I don't know why; maybe it was the close proximity to home, basically a zip up one street and one zip down another. Possibly it was because the one skill I was confident I possessed was ringing up a cash register. Plus I still retained the naive certainty that this place would be all my hopes and dreams tied up in an azure package; a retail nirvana. And it was part-time.

1979 began nine years of inhabiting second shift, forgoing toddler's bedtime baths, snuggling with little towheads, missing all my favorite TV shows, But life is a series of have-to's. I couldn't place Lego sets and Fisher-Price parking garages under the Christmas tree without the money to buy them and without my ten per-cent employee discount.

LaBelle's was a catalog store, which no longer exists in today's Amazon world. Customers would wander about with a stubby pencil and a pad and write down the number of the item they wanted to purchase; then hand their paper to an associate who'd punch it into a "computer" and the bored guys back in the warehouse would fetch the item from an eight-foot high wobbly shelf and dump it onto the conveyor belt. My job was to grab a hand mic and announce, "Johnny Jamsicle, your order is ready at Register Three. Johnny Jamsicle, Register Three." Johnny would step up to Register Three and I'd ring him up.

Some nights were excruciatingly quiet. Especially Tuesdays. Nobody ever seemed to shop on Tuesdays. So I'd stand behind the counter in my high heels and eye the one person in the store longingly, willing them to order something. Truthfully, LaBelle's was quiet most of the time, except during Christmas season. I would, of course, be scheduled to work Saturday days, and Christmas was the only time the hours whizzed by.

When I had my yearly review, my manager docked me for not coming up with a product display, which I didn't even know was a requirement! I subsequently visited a travel office and gave the girl behind the desk a line about a school project, and talked her out of a vacation poster, which I pasted in the luggage department, along with the words, "Flights of Fancy". Casey, my manager, didn't understand the saying and argued that my word choice was wrong. "It should be flights of fantasy," she proclaimed. I tried to explain to her what a flight of fancy meant. She finally gave up the ghost and let me keep my display. I didn't even get a five-cent raise for all my effort. I did, however, learn a valuable lesson about dealing with morons.

I frankly didn't have much free time to devote to music listening, but I couldn't escape the fact that Kenny Rogers was everywhere. This dude who'd had a minor career with The First Edition in the sixties had reinvented himself as a precursor to Lionel Richie.

The number one song of 1979:

Kenny had five, count 'em, top twenty hits in '79. And that wasn't even his best year. I'm not sure why, but I rolled with the flow. I even saw him in concert once, sitting in the nosebleed seats in Duluth, Minnesota. It was a spur-of-the-moment impulse on my mom's part. We were there; he was there ~ why not?

There were better country songs in 1979; for instance, Eddie Rabbitt:

The Dirt Band:

Don Williams:

Waylon:

T. G. Sheppard:

The Oaks:

I had my Bang and Olufson component stereo I'd bought on credit and a stack of country albums. Sometimes I'd come home from LaBelle's in the dark and slip the needle on one of those LP's, quietly, as to not awaken the kids snug in their beds, and relax with a cup of instant Sanka. 

And think about the pitiful state of my "career".

Record Albums

The memory is a wonderful thing. We all remember the awesome albums, the "Help!" and the "Easy Come Easy Go".

We overlook the fact that we spent countless dollars throughout our lives on albums that were essentially worthless.When I was around thirteen and finally had $4.99 to purchase a record album now and then, my modus operandi was hampered by the fact that one of the only stores that was traversible by city bus was JC Penney. Penney's basement not only housed their booming catalog department but also bins of record albums. Unfortunately, the store management didn't want to take space away from the fiberglass drapery displays and shiny aluminum percolators, so the record racks were skinny. We had Loretta Lynn and George Jones, Melba Montgomery and, of course, Johnny Cash. If Alice and I showed up at just the opportune moment, we might snag a Merle Haggard. I had the damnedest time locating Waylon Jennings' RCA debut. So I bought a lot of stuff I didn't even want because I just wanted to buy something. If someone were to look at my record collection, they'd think, wow, she must be a big fan of this "Carl and Pearl Butler". No. This was what the store had.

I eventually amassed a decent collection of albums by artists I actually liked -- Merle, of course, Lynn Anderson, Faron Young. However, the records released by some artists I truly admired were awful. Tammy Wynette would stick two hits on an album, the first track on Side A and B, and fill the remainder with dreck; cover songs or vanity songs written by a distant relative or friend of the producer. Country albums weren't viewed so much as "artistic" as they were regarded as "$$". Rock fans wanted albums; country fans wanted the hits. It took Merle to change all that.

In the seventies, I bought Barbara Mandrell albums and a lot of Statler Brothers, some Gatlin Brothers; one by a new group called the Oak Ridge Boys; some gems like Gene Watson and a brand new girl named Emmylou. I was in love with Eddie Rabbitt. Albums got better, but I mostly dropped the phonograph needle on the hits, with a couple of deep tracks thrown in. Barbara Mandrell's albums, for instance, could be counted on to feature crisp clear renditions of her latest hits and a bunch of forgettable stuffing. There were artists who never quite garnered a lasting career, but should have, like LaWanda Lindsey. I also remember purchasing a disc by someone called La Costa. It turned out she was Tanya Tucker's sister. I was enamored of her album for a while. She had a track called "Best of My Love" that I really liked. The credits beneath the title read, Frey and Henley. No clue.

By the eighties, I knew what I wanted and what I wanted to buy. By then, at least, I had Musicland, which was one quick zip away from my house to the local mall. My sister sent me a gift certificate for a CD. I didn't own a CD player. So I bought one. The very first CD (free, thanks to my sister) I bought was "Keys To The Highway" by Rodney Crowell. I took it home, scraped off the shrink-wrap with my fingernail, pried open the hard plastic clasp with a kitchen knife, inserted the flat circle into my new player and stood back and let the crisp music caress my ears. The CD wasn't even that good, but that sound!

Thus began my collecting phase. I determined to buy every single George Strait CD and I did. But as much as I love George, every album wasn't a gem. Every once in a while George released one that made my heart soar, but frankly, I granted George a whole lot of leeway. Dwight was more dependable. Dwight was my "other collectable". The eighties for me can be summed up by the names George and Dwight.

By the nineties I had Mark Chesnutt and Diamond Rio and Restless Heart. One cannot go wrong buying an album by Mark Chesnutt.

And then I stopped.

I now have lots of digital albums that will dissolve like ether once my current computer dies. Now people buy "songs", which isn't a bad bet. Albums, aside from the Beatles and Merle, are money suckers.

My work is done.

1980 In Country Music...and Super Kid

It's hard to remember a particular year until one is reminded of the cultural touchstones of the day. By June 1 of 1980, I'd begun my new "career" as a hospital worker. It doesn't sound fancy, but it was by far the best job I'd had in my whole nine years of working life. Once my youngest child was old enough for me to feel safe leaving him in the distracted hands of his father, I'd begun looking for second shift jobs.

Retail came first. Please be nice to retail workers -- they get shitty pay and have to park a mile away in order to leave the prime parking spots for actual customers. On moonless nights in North Dakota in January, it's a long cold walk at nine thirty p.m. Of course, January is the dead time for stores, once all the unwanted Christmas gifts have been returned for store credit, so although one might be scheduled for eighteen working hours for the week, she will most likely get a phone call from her department manager at the last minute, informing her that "things are slow" and therefore she won't be needed that night. There was no vacation pay and certainly no health insurance, so I mentally had to calculate which monthly bill would not get paid on time.

The hospital, on the other hand, offered actual benefits. And "customers" weren't surly. They appreciated every single little kindness offered. And face it, the job was interesting. I was able to learn more than simply how to punch numbers into a cash register.*

*I learned something from every job I ever had. Don't discount life experiences.

 I would begin my shift at 3:30 in the afternoon, which left plenty of "kid time" during the day. My sons were four and two. We had no exciting "outings". We were poor, so a trip to the mall was our farthest journey, and it rarely ended well. Attempting to corral a toddler and a pre-schooler while browsing Woolworth's aisles only resulted in disapproving glares from store personnel. If I was feeling flush with cash, I'd purchase a '45 single from the record department and hope to make it all the way home without a tussle ensuing in the back seat, crushing my precious purchase to shiny black shards.

Cable TV was like manna from heaven, even though the fanciest channels available were WGN in Chicago and WTBS from Atlanta, which broadcast black and white reruns of James Garner's "Maverick" late at night. On June 1 something called a "news channel" debuted. Dave Walker and Lois Hart anchored its first newscast, which was memorable for Lois's hairdo. Imagine getting news anytime one wanted! What an alien concept! The channel called itself "CNN". Everyone said it wouldn't last; that it was a novelty. But we tuned in because it was new. 

Back home, my little brother had discovered something called a Rubik's Cube. It was a frustrating little box puzzle and thus "stupid". I hated that thing, but still I persisted in twisting it around, hoping a miracle would happen (it never did). 

Mom and Dad had bought a "VCR" and showed it off. I couldn't afford seven hundred dollars for an electronic gizmo, but I sure coveted theirs. My whole life I'd wanted the newest gadgets, because they would transform my life, and I scratched and clawed to get them. It wouldn't be too long before I bought a damn VCR, because I couldn't miss St. Elsewhere, which would be sacrilege, since I knew how hospitals worked!

I don't know why I attended movies with my mom. It's an alien concept to me, because Mom and I were never what you'd call bosom buddies; but we saw "Coal Miner's Daughter" together, which I've since seen approximately 10,000 times. (Did I mention we had HBO?)

Mom and I also saw "Urban Cowboy", which leads me (in a painfully roundabout way) to the top country songs of 1980.

Country music was dominated by Urban Cowboy. If one does not own the soundtrack album, they would not know.  Urban Cowboy and Kenny Rogers -- that basically sums up 1980. We country fans were on a quest to find something, anything, that would justify our faith in music. Country consisted of the old standbys and by those "new kids" who performed on the UC soundtrack...and by Eddie Rabbitt. 

And we actually tolerated songs like this:

Super Kid wanted badly to be a super-hero. He was four years old. He thus dived off an orange velvet La-Z-Boy rocker smack-dab onto the corner of the coffee table. And thus he broke his nose. I saw it happen in slow motion but was unable to stop it. A trip to the emergency room ensued. 

Thankfully, he was consoled by his all-time favorite TV show OF ALL TIME:

There were, of course, songs for us grown-ups, too.

And songs played on a PlaySkool record player, as rendered by the Chipmunks:

1980, to me, will be forever memorialized by Dolly Parton confronting Mister Hart; by Tommy Lee Jones; by a superkid breaking his nose, by Eddie Rabbitt and by Kenny Rogers and his white beard. By slender youth. By a chubby toddler mesmerized by a goofy LP recorded by Alvin and the Chipmunks.

By a faux-walnut paneled home and rooms separated by paper-thin walls. 

By a mother's heart-piercing love.

1981

By1981 I had settled into my new routine, working second shift at the hospital, which was the best job I'd ever had up to that point. As a dedicated scaredy-cat, I'd dipped my toe into the waters of a couple of unknowns -- a year in retail, another year as a government employee, until I stumbled upon my true calling.

My hard and fast rule was that I refused to accede the raising of my kids to a miscellaneous daycare worker. Thus, I was relegated to evening positions that involved the requisite changing of the guard -- a husband who came home from his day job at 3:00 and bluffingly assumed family responsibilities while I trundled off to my clinical night job.

I blithely assumed that a father would have his kids' best interests at heart -- until I came home one night at 10:00 and found the Christmas tree askew and its decorations oddly-placed. Disassembled and reassembled into a half-assed facsimile of the decor I'd lovingly put together but one day before. Apparently Dad had been engrossed in a telephone call with one of his friends while two toddlers laid waste to my painstaking bauble-hanging. Before I'd left for work that day, as the final scenes of the movie "Nine To Five" pranced across my TV screen, I'd admired my prodigious decorating skills, and had decided all was right with the world.

Everyone was asleep, so I didn't interrogate anyone, but two and four-year-olds tend to lie anyway. Trust me, little kids are natural-born liars.

I'd apparently semi-abandoned country music by that time, because the songs I remember from that year are almost entirely pop (or what we referred to as "rock").

For a rock pop fan in 1981, the offerings were awesome. I hate purists. I'm not even a purist and I, of anyone, have the bona fides to be one, if we're talking sixties country. I don't know what rock purists remember from that particular year -- The Who? I always hated The Who. The Stones? The Rolling Stones were already old by then, but they refused to pack it in. I never was a Stones fan, either. I've tried.

No, the best singles from 1981 are songs such as these:

(Still one of the best pop songs ever)

If anyone tries to tell you Hall and Oates are not sublime, they are wrong. Just wrong. 

I didn't even know who Bruce Springsteen was in 1981. I would watch the $20,000 Pyramid in the mornings (remember that?) It was hosted by Dick Clark. Some celebrity contestant -- I don't remember who -- was being interviewed by Dick. Clark asked the guy who his favorite rock artist was, and the dude replied that the best rock artist in the whole wide world was Bruce Springsteen. Dick said, "Well, that's your opinion. A lot of people would disagree with you." I was like, who? That was the first time I'd ever heard the name Bruce Springsteen. I still don't think Bruce is the best rock artist in the whole wide world. He's pretty good, though.

(I could give you the secret to why Springsteen's recordings are so good, but then I'd have to kill you.)

I think we'd gotten a special deal on HBO. At the time, HBO replayed the six same movies approximately ten thousand times. That was great if one really liked the movie. Ask me anything about "Nine To Five". Go ahead. Around that time, somebody (hopefully not Harvey Weinstein) convinced Neil Diamond that what he really needed to do was act. That somebody was sorely mistaken. I love Neil Diamond and I love, love George Strait, but neither of them should have ever taken one step in front of a movie camera. Nevertheless, "The Jazz Singer" became one of HBO's six featured movies, and I watched it and watched it again. Lucie Arnaz played the female lead. It was wallowingly schmaltzy, but it featured some good songs:

Two artists from 1981 would later go on to form a super-group. Here's Jeff Lynne:

In case you don't know, the other was George Harrison. George deserves his own damn post, and his hit from that year doesn't have a decent video. Don't take my omission as disrespecting George, because I respect him to pieces.

Country was fully represented in 1981. Those "purists" probably didn't appreciate these two hits, but they can go to hell. These two singles, especially the second one, will live on forever.

I awoke one cold December morning to my AM radio and a disc jockey saying words that seemed like an awful dream. I think he'd just played Ticket To Ride, and I thought, in my haze, well, that's a blast from the past. 

Then he said John was dead. 

I rolled over and flipped the volume dial on my radio. I still recall that green comforter tucked up to my chin and touching its white-etched flowers with my fingertip. 

And then he played this song. 

This song hurt so much because it was exactly, distinctly, the John who had transformed my life. From the tender age of nine, the very first time I'd heard him through my transistor speakers, John became my first love. 

I'd never lost anyone before I lost John. I was twenty-five years old. You don't lose somebody at twenty-five.

1981 was a good year in so many ways. I had two cute but incorrigible sons who romped around in blue-flannel pajamas. I loved my job. I was finally seeing a way out of crushing debt. Pop music was fun -- like music is supposed to be. 

Life doesn't really care how happy or sad we are:

Was Country In 1981 Really That Bad?

 Memories are strange, wondrous things. Sometimes a memory of a particular time in one's life is colored by a general "feeling"; perhaps a feeling of melancholy or boredom or apathy. At the ripe old age of twenty-six, I'd grown indifferent toward music. I'd actually begun listening to "oldies", which in that year consisted of fifties music I'd never heard the first time around. I know I'd grown cranky with country music, and it wasn't my fault. The production was sluggish -- soft tinkling pianos, a faint whiff of a violin; everything very quiet -- and producers were bending toward remakes of pop songs. Nashville wasn't even trying anymore; yet they expected me to buy their crap.

Granted, our country was as sluggish as the Nashville music scene, which didn't help. I might still be paying off the twenty-one per cent interest rate on my credit card purchases; I'm not sure. Anything I needed to buy -- for my kids or for the house -- essentially required a bank loan, which was nigh impossible to obtain, seeing as how everybody was defaulting so they could afford to fill their tanks with gas (thanks, Jimmy Carter). I could have done a better job running the country, and I was a dolt. Just when I was at my absolute poorest, our president was on TV lecturing me that it was my own damn fault, and that I just had a bad attitude. Just what I needed in my circumstances -- a stern lecture. He was like my mom. We had hostages in Iran, which Ted Koppel reminded us of every night on Nightline. "This is day four hundred and three."

MTV was created in 1981, but it hadn't hit my airwaves yet. Soon I would abandon country music for Dire Straits and Phil Collins.

What we remember from a particular year isn't necessarily what Google tells us to remember. In browsing the number one country hits from 1981, I find lots of gems. Why don't I remember those, instead of singles by Charly McClain and Sylvia and Crystal Gayle and Alabama? I don't think it's my fault. I blame my radio. It was as if the disc jockeys got together and conspired to play the absolute worst tracks over and over, because, frankly, they hated country and they needed to teach us a lesson. In hindsight, I turned away from country just as country was turning, and I missed the renaissance. I missed George Strait because of those damn DJ's. They kept feeding me, "Your nobody called today" until I found myself bent over the toilet bowl.

Here is a sampling of what the disc jockeys chose not to play over and over:

David Frizzell and Shelly West:

 Rosanne Cash:

The Oak Ridge Boys:

Eddie Rabbitt:

Anne Murray (sorry, no live performance video to be found, but I really like this):

Ronnie Milsap:

TG Sheppard (again, no live performance worth posting, but worth hearing in its glory):

Yes, Barbara Mandrell, when she was still country (when it wasn't cool):

This is what we (I) remember from 1981. Granted, I had a subscription to HBO and a second shift job, so I watched this movie approximately two thousand and fifty-one times in the pre-work afternoons, but the fact remains that this is what, like it or loathe it, will forever represent country music at that precise time:

Dolly Parton:

 

Country music in 1981 was better than I remember it, no thanks to my local DJ's. Truthfully, I would list at least three of these singles as classics. Which, once again, proves that my memory is woefully deficient and that Jimmy Carter messed with my brain.

I'm giving 1981 one thumb up.

Viva!

As a music sociologist, I try to understand popular music from before my time. For example, I now like Frank Sinatra. I'm a Big Band fan, which took no effort on my part, to be honest. I truly appreciate fifties roots music -- I love, love Jerry Lee Lewis; doo-wop is great; Buddy Holly was a man before his time; the whole Little Richard screamin' thing had a primal honesty. Carl Perkins doesn't get his due.

Elvis? I've really tried. To be honest, all of Elvis's popularity wasn't before my time. I remember "Return To Sender", which I, as a young child, misinterpreted as "Return To Cinda", which I thought was a derivation of the name "Cindy". My dad liked "Wooden Heart", but he was sentimental that way. Since my best friend, Cathy, and I, as obedient Catholic schoolgirls, attended only the Sunday matinees that our church bulletin labeled as "A" movies (although we really wanted to see the "B's"), we saw practically every stupid movie Elvis ever made, so I definitely remember this one (which wasn't bad, in the larger scheme of his expansive catalog):

Generally, however, when an Elvis song comes on my (Sirius) radio, my first thought is, "Is this a parody?" Elvis was one of the few artists who truly became parodies of themselves. I know the whole back story -- he was controlled by an opportunistic manager (who called himself a "colonel") who forced him to record dreck. And then, of course, there were the pills. However, I'm a big believer in controlling one's own destiny, and therefore, Elvis, to me, was complicit in the trashing of his own career.

This is the song that set me off tonight:

Sure, he's got "the look", but what's with the Bing Crosby buh-buh-buh's? 

At least "Return To Cinda" had something:

People say, well, if you knew him when -- but actually, that's not true. When was "when"? Hound Dog? "Blue Suede Shoes" was done better, and more honestly, by its writer, Carl Perkins.

Truly, we kids in the early sixties were just supposed to like Elvis. It was decreed. Elvis was "the guy", so we had to like him. No matter that Roy Orbison's voice soared like the heavens. Elvis was everywhere. He was on our movie screens. He was there, in black and white, on the twelve-inch TV in our bedroom. Elvis was a staple, like the wide-lined paper we were forced to write on, even though it was beige and ugly and scratchy.

I will, however, begrudgingly concede "Jailhouse Rock":

...even though it was "jailhouse" like 50's movies starring Sal Mineo were jailhouse. "Ooh, is he whipping out his comb? No! It's a switchblade! Look out!"

Maybe what bothers me about Elvis is that he was so fake. I've read that what he truly loved was gospel music. Then that's what he should have gone with.

The best Elvis songs were sung by others:

My older sisters loved Elvis. I would never denigrate their memories. But the Elvis I remember was fat and bloated, and yes, a parody. Sweaty. Elvis never sent a chill up my spine like the Beatles did. And he never once wrote a song. Elvis was the Steve Lawrence of popular music -- good for the old soft shoe and a straw-brimmed hat. 

I try -- really try -- to understand music that came before my time. Unfortunately, Elvis, to me, will always be a mixture of a sunglassed rogue pulling up on the beach in a white convertible, his eyes shaded by Ray-Bans, ready for a clambake; and a man squeezed inside a white spangled jumpsuit, performing half-conscious Karate moves.

The song by Elvis I always liked more than any other (no offense to Cinda) wasn't even a single. There's just something about:

He could sing, given a chance. But one makes their own chances in life. Elvis chose the money and the bennies. I think if he'd lived, he might have matured into his own man. There's no denying his talent.

I think I might have liked the man he would have become.

Best Country Albums - Part 2

Since my last post, I've thought about other "Best" albums and wondered if there were any from an era other than the nineteen eighties. I've determined that eras are rather unfair. After all, as I've noted before, country albums were once simply a collection of one or two hit tracks combined with cover songs. I don't know if producers were lazy or they suffered from "we've always done it this way" disease. Most likely it was because country fans bought singles and albums were an afterthought -- a  way to put a pretty cover (in the case of female artists) on the rack and convince shoppers to buy the ninety-eight-cent '45 of "I Don't Wanna Play House". I bought a lot of Greatest Hits albums way back when, because other LP's were disappointing. A few artists pushed back -- mostly artists from Bakersfield. Some Nashville acts, too, transcended the status quo. Not many.

I've thought about how I even knew that certain albums existed at the time, and I realize it was because of WHO radio and Mike Hoyer. Mike was the overnight DJ on WHO in Des Moines, Iowa; and around two a.m. he'd slap an album on his turntable and play it all the way through. Touring acts would also show up in Mike's studio and perform songs live. In the sixties, it was Mike Hoyer and Ralph Emery on WSM who were the keepers of the country flame. And Bill Mack on WBAP in Fort Worth. Those three. That's all. My radio signal rarely caught WSM and I'd lie awake until three a.m. to try to catch WBAP. WHO, though, always came through loud and clear. That's how I knew what was what with real country.

All that said, I've decided to isolate "best" albums by the times in which they were recorded.

The Sixties

Ten years in country music is a long-ass mile. A lot changed in the sixties. Are we talking 1961 and Jimmy Dean or 1969 and Conway and Loretta? The sixties should actually be divided into the almost fifties/early sixties and the Merle Haggard slash Dolly Parton era. Nevertheless, here are some albums that were most likely the "best" of that time.

Here's the only video I could find, but trust me, this album was a cornucopia of superb country (I mean "country") songs:

Burning Memories is definitely a "best". Ray Price's album is one of my very, very favorites. I'm guessing it was released in 1965, smack dab in the middle of the schizophrenic sounds that assaulted our tender ears. Ray's smooth tenor was a soothing balm. And yet it tore at our hearts. I can find no live performances of any of the awesome tracks from this album, but give this a listen:

There was a time when we cheered live albums. Why? Maybe because Nashville sucked the soul out of every song it deemed to record and live albums were real life.

This live album was real:

Merle did impersonations and Bonnie flubbed the lyrics to her song and Merle said, "that's all right".

Merle live:

In the fifties, Patsy Cline and Faron Young and some other country stars performed at Carnegie Hall. That was considered curious. Apparently New Yorkers were too snobbish to listen to country music. Most were and are. That concert was most likely viewed as a novelty; something for the sophisticates to giggle about the next day. I don't know that any live recording exists of that concert. I personally would have loved it -- but I'm from the Midwest, after all.

About ten years later Buck Owens took a chance and showed up at Carnegie Hall with his Buckaroos. It's impossible to understate the importance of Buck Owens to country music in the sixties. There were two competing factions -- the "Nashville Sound", watered down "listen to us -- we're really not country!" and Bakersfield. Bakersfield won. One could argue that if not for Buck Owens, there wouldn't have been a Merle Haggard. It's been posited that Buck stole his songs from unknown songwriters. I don't know the truth. Regardless, Buck Owens' claim to fame is that he created a "sound". Crunchy telecasters, drums not buried; not muffled. Drums keeping the beat as they should, for the two-stepping couples in the honky tonks. Heavy on the steel, thank you. Alcohol and tears go hand in hand, and nothing cries like a steel guitar.

Here is "the sound", from the Carnegie Hall album:

Before I finish out the best of the sixties, here is one album that I would consider a "best".

Lynn Anderson, before she scooted on over to Columbia Records, recorded on a little-known label called Chart. One could argue that the move to Columbia was the best thing that ever happened to Lynn. After all, that's the label on which she recorded Rose Garden. I would postulate that in the move Lynn lost her soul. In the sixties I wished I could sing like Lynn Anderson. She sang like an angel. Her new husband, Glenn Sutton, may have been chart-savvy, but he never brought out the best in Lynn's voice. 

This was her best:

Here is a sampling:

The Seventies

I seriously thought this was a sixties album. Well, it was on the cusp, released in 1970. Country duos began seriously with Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. They set off a whole seventies trend -- Conway and Loretta, Mel Tillis and Sherry Bryce, Hank Williams, Jr. and Lois Johnson. Suddenly duets were hot.

This duet album was the best:

This album had so many good songs, it's difficult to pick just one. YouTube has made it easy for me, however. There are only a couple of videos available. Here is one:

Ronnie Milsap was a product of the seventies, and he was huge. I saw Ronnie in concert with a couple of other artists I don't remember. That's how he dominated. Take a great singer, add some great country songs, stir in some piano and a whole lot of soul, and you have Ronnie Milsap.

Gary Stewart entered the country scene like a tornado. Who was this guy, and where did he come from? Suddenly he was just there. New country artists were rare. Country music was a continuum. George Jones had "The Race Is On" and then he morphed to "A Good Year for the Roses". Faron Young could never do better than "Hello Walls" and then he found a new producer at Mercury Records and soared, with songs like "Wine Me Up". But they'd always been there. I only vaguely remember the first recording by Merle Haggard, but it seemed he'd always been around. In the seventies new artists, brand-spankin' new, just showed up. All I had available to me was my radio. There was no YouTube or Pandora. Country TV was Hee Haw, if we could stand it. No Nashville Now. No CMT. 

And suddenly there was this guy:

Gary Stewart's story is a sad one. I prefer to remember his music:

Things that should not be forgotten are. It took a guy from New Jersey to remind Nashville what country music was all about. I was so parched for good music in the seventies, it was a revelation to find someone good. Really good. Eddie Rabbitt, like Gary Stewart, died young. But damn! We should not forget either of them. And Eddie? Well, if you love a rainy night or you're driving your life away, thank him.

Rocky Mountain Music was far above anything any country artist released in that seventieth decade.

And there you have it -- the sixties and seventies "best", wrapped up in one lonely blog post.  

I liked seeing Eddie and Gary and Porter and Ray again. Old friends. 

I miss them.