Reviewing The Top Ten Country Hits From This Week In 1975

 

Predictably, 1975 in country music was not a year for the history books. Scanning the Top Forty for the week of April 19 reminds me why I mostly gave up on country all together. I don't even recognize most of the charting singles. 

But was it worse than the country of today? That's what I'm here to find out.

Fortuitously, I'm not going to review the entire Top Forty; only the top ten. To do so, I have to teleport back to twenty-year-old me and review the singles as if I'm hearing them for the first time on the radio.

Three other simple rules apply:

• I am required to listen to the entire track before offering my critique.
• As I noted above, I am limiting myself to the Top Ten only. Believe me, even ten quickly become tedious.
• If I can't find a music video ("What's a music video?" I ask in 1975) I will use a video of the recorded song.

 My Source
 

 I'm ready if you are. 

 

#10 ~ She's Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles) ~ Gary Stewart

Immediately, I like the singer. He's got a southern country soul sound going on, and isn't afraid to use his vocal range. And he sounds nothing like any of the other artists currently on radio. The song itself is well-written. I like how the writer rhymes "doubles" with "troubles" and ties it all together in a tale about the man's pain, watching his woman betray him. And this Gary Stewart fella really sells it. This is an artist I'll be watching. He's got a future.

A

 

#9 ~  Have You Never Been Mellow ~ Olivia Newton-John

Am I looking at the country chart? I've enjoyed a couple of the singer's prior hits, but those were at least nominally country. This? It's not even good pop. Although Olivia is cute and could do well in, say, a movie musical. I don't review pop songs, so I'm only going to rate this as it relates to country.

D

 

#8 ~ (You Make Me Want To Be A) Mother ~ Tammy Wynette 

This is quite formulaic, sort of like I Don't Wanna Play House ~ very similar melody and cadence, complete with the Billy Sherrill signature background oohs and ahhs ~ but unlike the former song, it's oh, so bad. Perhaps Tammy is going back to the well, trying to recapture past glory, but wow, this was a bad choice. I'm not even sure what the song is saying. She's been trying out men and has now found one she'd like to procreate with? That's kind of...icky. I hope I don't have bad dreams about this track.

F

 

#7 ~ The Best Way I Know How ~ Mel Tillis

I hope it's not Pig Robbins doing the noodly piano on this, because I really like Pig Robbins. Jerry Chestnut is a master songwriter, having penned songs like Another Place, Another Time, A Good Year For The Roses, and It's Four In The Morning. This, though? Did Mel fish this out of Jerry's garbage? Why didn't he just record one of his own phenomenal songs? I'm tempted to blame the horrible production, but let's face it ~ this song is beneath both Jerry Chestnut and Mel Tillis.

F

#6 ~ (Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song ~ B.J. Thomas

I've loved B.J. Thomas's voice since Eyes Of A New York Woman. It's like warm honey. And unlike other pop pretenders, when B.J. decided to go country, he went country. One cannot deny the catchiness of this single. I have a feeling this one might define 1975.

A

 

#5 ~ Still Thinkin' 'Bout You ~ Billy Crash Craddock 

 

This isn't completely horrible. Just mostly. The first verse sounds like a song one could get into, but then the background soul singers come in, and suddenly the listener realizes the song has no chorus ~ it's semi-written. I don't even want to know who wrote it, because it'll probably be a songwriter I like and I'll be crestfallen. And don't try to sucker us in with the fiddles. It's too little, too late. I'm only going to bump this up a notch because it starts out okay.

D+

 

#4 ~ Roll On Big Mama ~ Joe Stampley

 

The song is okay if you like this sort of thing. This seems to be about a guy singing to his truck, which he's named "Big Mama". I don't know many truck drivers, but I don't see them singing paeans to their trucks. I could be wrong. The singer is a barely competent bar band vocalist, but apparently a lot of people like him. Maybe he has a winning personality.

 

C

 

#3 ~ Roses And Love Songs ~ Ray Price

 

I'm a big fan of Ray Price's earlier work; not so much his "For The Good Times" phase, but there is no denying his way with a line. He remade himself into a stylist after his honky tonk days, though I suspect this isn't really where his heart lies. This track lands in the sweet spot of Perry Como-like pop-country. It's not to my taste, but Price delivers it well. The song itself is cliche; like patting the "little woman" on the head, and in 1975 it may resonate with my mom (I doubt it), but not with me. I have to work, not stay home and bake cookies, so obviously I must have some skills other than sobbing over love songs. Dated message aside, the sound of this isn't grating, and the singer is a legend.

B-

#2 ~ Blanket On The Ground ~ Billie Jo Spears

Spears seems like a nice person. Her voice kind of reminds me of Melba Montgomery, and both got signed to major record deals despite mediocre talent. Spears' first hit, Mister Walker, It's All Over, was kind of a cousin to Harper Valley PTA, and in fact, she recorded Harper before Jeannie C. Riley did. Mister Walker was a bit more interesting than this one, but was delivered by a singer who didn't have the attitude to sell it. And that's the trouble with this song. The singer's personality doesn't match the song's message. But who am I to say? This single is a hit, after all. The song itself, while maybe trying to be edgy, is actually milquetoast. I wouldn't change the station if it came on the radio, but my mind would definitely wander.

B-

 

#1 ~ Always Wanting You ~ Merle Haggard

Just when I was wondering whatever happened to Merle Haggard, here comes this.

From the outset, the flamenco-like guitar and the low notes on the Telecaster immediately raise this track to another level. Then Merle's ambrosia voice along with, I'm assuming, Bonnie Owens' harmony, enters the room and is immediately intimate and warming. Haggard is truly a master songwriter. Amateur writers would do well to dissect his songs and try to discern how it's done. (Good luck there.)

It seems that Haggard has grown more introspective since his "fugitive" days (which were awesome, by the way) and this song fits his gracefully growing older persona. 

A

And there you have it ~ three timeless tracks and seven forgettable ones. Par for the country course. Actually, above par. How many weeks in history have three A's in the top ten?

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts On Country's "Greatest" Albums

This week Rolling Stone issued its edict coronating the one hundred best country albums of all time. They've done these lists before, but as much as I detest Rolling Stone (which used to be a music magazine) I can't dump on them too much this time around. They either managed to shake some older writers from the mothballs or they actually sat down and listened to a bunch of old albums, because they included some like this (#63), one of the best live country albums of all time:
 

 

 

As for more modern albums, they also honored "Ghost On The Canvas" by Glen Campbell (#88), which I fell in love with upon hearing the opening track.

 

 

 

And this album (#18!) is superb:

 

($62.93?? Good thing I already own it!) 

 

 

It was clear without even reading the article's preface that the article's contributors strove to only include one album per artist (with some exceptions), which is a little disingenuous, because I would easily place multiple George Strait and Dwight Yoakam albums on my list. I also question the albums by these artists they did choose, but taste is subjective.

 

One notable omission, which for a "hip" publication is head-scratching, is this:

 

 

In my late teens and early twenties I was a huge consumer of country albums (later CD's), and due to either the sparsity of choices and later, more disposable income, I bought a ton of clinkers. In an earlier post I even included a photo of my collection (misleading because the rows of CD's are two deep), and that wasn't even the entirety of it. It didn't include my stack of LP's or the boxed sets that are stashed under my bed. Not to mention hundreds of 45's. Yes, I still have all of them. 

 

But what I found, eventually, is that I return to certain titles when I want to hear some good music. 

Here are some of those:

(Good luck. Let me know if you can find it anywhere online.)

 

 

 

 

(C'mon Amazon. $33.49?) 

 

I know, I know ~ Red Headed Stranger and Will The Circle Be Unbroken get all the press in lists like Rolling Stone's, but frankly I listened to each of them one time and never again. 

 

And I know I could go on and on cataloguing my favorites, but I don't have an eidetic memory. 

 

Musical tastes are subjective, and sometimes you simply had to be there. But I can say without hesitation that you won't go wrong listening to any of my choices.

 

Really. 

 
 

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.

On The Cutting Edge ~ Country Music 1975

I don't know if I was obstinate or if I just liked what I liked.

In 1975, everybody was fixated on Rhinestone Cowboy and stupid-ass CB radios that no one actually owned except long-haul truckers. Sure, I bought some of the singles seizing the charts (I bought lots and lots of '45's, because they were one of the few things I could afford), but my tastes ran to more obscure, and by "obscure" I mean stone-country tracks.

I was newly married and non-pregnant, although I did possess a preternaturally pampered dog (my first baby). I was loose and carefree, so when my mom and dad proposed a car trip to Texas to visit my sister, I said, why not?

Long car trips sound romantic in novels and memoirs, but they're just basically....long. Kansas wheat fields shed their fascination after approximately five minutes. The most exciting part of a thousand-mile trip is the "Truck Stop - Two Miles Ahead" road sign. Ahh, bathrooms and a short stack of pancakes! One has to play it carefully, however ~ don't drink too much coffee or Dad'll be grouchy when you beg him to pull off at a rest stop just ten miles down the road.

Dad loved driving his jaundice-tinted Lincoln. Ever since he acquired actual money in his late forties, he treated himself to a new car every year when the leaves began to mutate and crumple. The Lincoln was a butt-ugly conveyance, but roomy! Four people (and one dog) could ride comfortably with room for about four more. In the front seat, Mom and Dad rarely conversed except when, after scouring the map, she'd yell, "Turn here!" and he turned the wrong direction, and she'd scold, "I said here! Here!" I mostly ignored the clamor ~ it was business as usual between them. We did a bit of backtracking on the Texas quest, but no real harm was done, except to Mom's blood pressure reading.

(lost)

Unlike the tin can I drove, the Lincoln at least had radio speakers in the rear window deck. Although FM radio was a "thing", Dad always tuned the car radio to the closest AM station in proximity. Listening to music through radio static is a lost art. One has to listen really closely.

This is a song I liked. Forgive the "elderly" David Allen Coe performance, but the only other live set I could find was even sweatier and substance-fueled:

Asleep At The Wheel was a big act in Texas, but in North Dakota, it was "Asleep at the what??" As we meandered further and further south, this song buzzed through the speakers a lot:

Dad always turned the volume knob on the radio as high as he could for this song, and I like it because I like my dad:

Recent Hall of Fame inductee Ray Stevens released a wondrous album in 1975 ~ Dad even had an eight-track cartridge of it, and Dad only owned four eight-tracks. I think I actually bought a few eight-tracks myself, but the technology was asinine. A song would abruptly stop right in the middle and one would have to eject the plastic behemoth and flip it over to hear the second half of the song. And by then, the mood was totally lost.

Here is a track from that album ~ no live performance to be found ~ but still...

The quality of this video is extremely poor, but Tanya Tucker was hot, hot in '75, and I liked this one:

BJ Thomas's voice is like honey; there is no denying. This definitely wasn't stone-country, but who could resist?

There were three brand-new voices in '75, and here is one:

Here is two (no live video performance to be found):

We made it to Fort Worth, Texas fully intact. My sister Carole made up the sofa bed in her den and took Mom on a shopping excursion to Kroger's. She pulled her coffeemaker off a high shelf and brewed up some Folger's for Dad each morning. My dog wasn't happy with Carole's dog and just wanted to get the hell out and go home (my dog was a bit of a snob). We sauntered over to a nearby lake and ordered catfish from a roadside stand (the absolute worst, most vomit-inducing excuse for "fish" I've ever had the displeasure of biting into. The hush puppies were good, though.)

As for country music, I mentioned there were three new voices in '75. Here is the best:

As unassumingly goofy as my dad was, I sure miss him. I'd travel down the road with him anytime.

1975 ~ More Life and Country Music

I write a lot about the sixties, because like most people, my teenage years were my most momentous.

Life, however, did not stop when the next decade began. If the mid-sixties were tumultuous, the early seventies were just as confusing; perhaps even more so. Unlike kids today who are twelve-going-on-twenty, I was nineteen-going-on-twelve. I was wholly unprepared for life, but impatient to get it started. I missed out on a lot of stuff in my teen years due to the jittery dysfunction of home life ~ things like how to grow up to be a regular person. I appropriated bits from my best friend's family dynamic and combined that with daydreams of how things were supposed to work.

I operated on instinct. I was trying to cram six years of learning into six months. Every little experience I tucked away for future reference.

My life in a nutshell:

• I graduated from high school.
• I got a job.
• I found a boyfriend.
• I got married.

Things went wrong from the beginning. 

My first "real" job (which means, not working for my parents) turned out to be an echo of the same queasiness I'd fought so hard to get away from.

My boyfriend (soon to be husband) was a mismatch from Day One. I knew it, but did nothing to stop it, because I needed to get away.

I (and by "I", I mean I) picked out our new home ~ a nice 14 by 60 mobile home parked on the sales lot that had black-and-white linoleum and harvest gold appliances and long-looped green shag carpets. I didn't even know one had to pay an electric bill or a gas bill or lot rent. Or pay money for food. My parents didn't have love, but they had money. Thus, while my mom insisted that I purchase my own clothes for school, I never had to lay out one thin dime for anything except my reel-to-reel tape recorder and my JC Penney component stereo.

I took my teenage bed to my new marriage home and someone (in-laws, I believe) gifted us with a tufted Sears sofa. We filled in the other missing pieces with particle-board end tables and a round cardboard "bedside stand" that looked great as long as it was draped with an FW Woolworth table topper.

I quit the crazy State job after nine-or-so months and informed my parents I would now be back working for them. I can't believe they let me, but they had other fish to fry at the time, like my dad going berserk on booze and my mom trying to find a way to offload him onto somebody who'd lift her burden.

It wasn't all daisies and cumulus clouds working for Mom and Dad. I cleaned motel rooms. The weird thing was, I liked it. I liked working alone. It was the first time I'd ever been left with nothing but my own thoughts. It was heaven! I didn't have to answer to anyone. I had my portable radio that I carried with me from room to room, and I lived a life that I couldn't quite describe or put my finger on, but it felt like freedom.

1975 was my bridge year. I wasn't yet pregnant ~ I was still technically a kid. Life held possibilities, although I'd kind of smothered those by choosing to marry the first guy who asked me. My dream life, however, was completely awesome.

And the music on my radio was magical.

It's not so much that the music of 1975 was notable, but some of it was:

I didn't even like this song so much, but I remember it:

These were songs that, when I talked to the people in my life, they could not relate to, but they nodded and pretended they understood. My mom liked Conway Twitty and my dad didn't like anything except "Paloma Blanca". My husband was a go-along, get-along kind of guy who didn't understand this whole music thing, but mollified me.

BJ Thomas had captivated me in 1968 with his "Eyes Of A New York Woman", and now he was singing country. Country fans were as snobbish as rock fans, except country was more like a secret club. Even in '75 one did not advertise that they liked country music. To admit it would subject oneself to a cultural shaming. So, "we" disdained any artist who appropriated country -- John Denver, especially; but also Olivia Newton-John, even though we secretly sort of liked them. To me, BJ Thomas sounded country, and "the sound" was prime.

There was a new guy who appeared on my radio. He reminded me a bit of Jerry Lee, and he played piano like Jerry Lee Lewis, too. Die-hard country fans know authenticity when we hear it. Gary Stewart was authentic. It makes me sad to watch Gary's videos, because life did not turn out well for him, but he was, for a brief moment, a star. And he deserved it.

Another guy who showed up in...well, technically, 1974...but was huge in '75, was Ronnie Milsap. I always think of Gary Stewart and Ronnie Milsap in the same parcel, because they (contrary to what you may have been told) were the the most shimmering stars of 1975.

Female singers didn't spring up like male singers did. The ratio of male country artists to female is approximately 95 to 1. Really -- make a list.

I was at home, kneeling on my green shag carpet, fiddling with the dials on my console stereo, when this voice piped through the radio speakers. I was puzzled. She wasn't Dolly, nor Loretta. I didn't know who the heck she was, and I knew everybody. I didn't know her because she was new. Soon to be "not new". I rushed down to my local Woolworth's store and purchased, for $3.99, her album called "Elite Hotel".

Everybody thought Ray Stevens was a fool, including Ray Stevens. He was a novelty act, albeit a clever one. At my rancid State job in 1974, I was subjected to "The Streak" approximately 20,152 times on the radio. But Ray could do other stuff, when he set his mind to it:

 

It's difficult to describe the pop culture of the mid-seventies to someone who was not there. We had our radios and our TV's, and that's it. The big three networks would only feature country artists who weren't too "country", "Hee Haw" aside (CBS would soon purge that program). The only place we'd ever see country artists was on variety shows, but they were all abuzz with Jim Stafford and, of course, novelties.

Here are the top two country singles of 1975. You can guess how I felt about them:

I didn't begin to like Glen Campbell until somewhere around the 2000's. As for CW McCall, well, we don't hear a lot of covers of "Convoy", do we? And just for the record, nobody had CB radios. Nobody.

Music was my lifeline in 1975. I was adrift and didn't even acknowledge it. Like all of us, I sauntered through my days focused on inconsequential things. Life hadn't exactly turned out right, try as I did to make it so. All I had that made any sense was music, and I don't dwell on that time. I hurt for the semi-person I was then.

Maybe that's why I don't pen a lot of posts about the seventies.

1975 And Me And Country

1975 was a bridge year for me. I'd experienced life in the real working world and found I didn't care for it. I was playing at being married but didn't completely grasp the concept. Shoot, I was twenty. Nobody should ever -- ever -- get married at age nineteen. In the seventies, though, it was expected. To be honest, I wasn't even quite nineteen when I got married. I became pregnant in early 1976, so nineteen seventy-five was the last time I lived life in a semi-independent state. I'd gone back to working for Mom and Dad, not so much because I'd failed in the outside world, but because I was more comfortable working alone -- without the drama. Yes, I was cleaning motel rooms, but I had my portable radio that I carried with me from unit to unit, and that was all I needed. Alice had moved on. She worked for the Bank of North Dakota, and frankly, things were never the same with her once I changed my life status by getting hitched. In my defense, at least I found a husband who wasn't two decades older than me, and my marriage lasted far longer than her ill-fated coupling.

Musically, I was alone. It's funny how one gloms onto music based on what others like or buy. Nineteen seventy-five was the first time since 1964 I actually had to rely on myself to choose what music to like or not like.

Not that the music was necessarily good, but one plucks the best from the paltry offerings bestowed upon helpless listeners by the local DJ. It's a misnomer that pop culture wasn't as pivotal in the seventies as it is now. In fact, it was probably more crucial, because there was so much less access to it. One would stay up way past one's bedtime (if they had to get up at six a.m. to get to work) just to see a particular artist on The Tonight Show, because this might be our one and only chance. Record it? On what -- my reel-to-reel? We endured a lot of sickly-sweet variety shows, sat through Gallagher's "comedy" act, simply to see ABBA lip-sync one song. I suffered through Hee Haw for the musical vignettes. Choice? There was no "choice", unless one "chose" to get up off the sofa and flip the dial on the TV to CBS or ABC.

Radio was the same. We had a country station. ONE country station. You took what you got, heard the same pre-recorded local news stories every hour on the hour. Found out that it was "partly cloudy" without even venturing outside whichever room we were currently sanitizing the toilet of, with our scrub brush and a can of Comet.

It's interesting to learn which singles hit the top of the charts in '75 -- and which ones didn't. Funny, the ones I remember best are the ones that didn't. The ones that did, I don't care if I ever hear, ever again.

Like this one:

I remember that Mom and Dad were enamored with this song and I don't know why. Three-chord songs can be great -- shoot, Merle Haggard even recorded a two-chord song that was extraordinary. But a three-chord song needs a bit of oomph -- something to break up the monotony. Freddy Fender's single didn't have that, unless one counts the tink-tinkling of a tiny sad guitar.

This next song would be good if it hadn't been sung by Conway Twitty. Readers of this blog know that I just never got on board with Conway. I can't put my finger on why exactly. People are people; some like chocolate; some detest it. Again, Mom (especially) loved Conway Twitty. Ish. But that was Mom.

I never gave the song a second thought until I watched George Strait perform it in concert. Then I thought, wow, this is a good song! (It's all about the singer, folks.)

Dolly Parton was recording odd things that had queer melodies. I guess it was a phase. "Jolene" was bad enough, but "Bargain Store" was worse. I won't subject you to any of these, but since she charted at number one with the thrift shop ditty, I felt an obligation to mention it. I essentially gave up on Dolly once she parted ways with Porter.

Just like now, even at age twenty I gravitated toward "country" songs. You know, there's country and then there's "country". There's a difference. True lovers of country music know.

I loved Gary Stewart the first time I heard him (and saw him). I was always drawn to artists who were a bit different; intriguing. Those who I wondered, "what's up with this guy?" Gary Stewart didn't have a classic country voice. It was a bit high for the rugged country stalwarts of the time. A tenor, I guess. Of course, I love Faron Young, who was also a tenor, so perhaps my ear is attuned that way. I also appreciated that he played piano. Gary had a sad life, and it's kind of a punch in the gut to know how it all ended. I saw Gary Stewart in concert once, from my perch in the nosebleed seats of the Civic Center. I'm really glad I did.

I don't know why he's not playing piano here, the way I remember him, but here is "She's Acting Single":

I'm not going to wait until the end of this post to feature the song that defines nineteen seventy-five for me. Writers (good writers) would say, save the best for last, but the song has been on my mind. There was this new guy, someone whose name I'd never before heard, that apparently my local DJ really liked, because he played this single a lot. No, it wasn't classic country. Yes, it was good -- captivating. I remember wheeling my maid's cart to the next room down the row and hearing the intro to this song squawk out of my radio; then hurrying into the room with my portable and flipping up the volume:

To me, Gene Watson is like Mark Chesnutt -- sorely underestimated. Except to those of us who know, really know country. If you want your guts ripped out, listen to "Farewell Party". I can't believe that "Love In The Hot Afternoon" only reached number three on the charts. I could have sworn, and that long-ago DJ could attest, that it was a number one -- with a four-decade bullet.

In 1975 I detested John Denver. John Denver was everything that country music wasn't. And to top it off, the stupid CMA rewarded him with the coveted Entertainer of the Year statuette. For what? Yelling, "Far out!"? I mean, come on. I don't know what exactly John Denver was -- my husband's friend could perhaps illuminate, because he loves the guy. My friend Alice also told me, in our sole telephone conversation in '75, about how she was "into" John Denver, and my brain registered, "okay?"

My hatred has since softened, as all hatred naturally does as the years tick by. Guys (and gals) I once detested, I've learned, actually have something to offer. One needs to knock that chip off their shoulder and truly listen. And I will admit (now) that this song had something:

Okay, hello? I just realized that Roger Miller is playing fiddle here, and Glen Campbell is strumming the banjo. What was this? Some kind of country super band?

Another artist I think I saw once live really dominated the early nineteen seventies. I'd first heard Ronnie Milsap in 1974, with his Cap'n Crunch song, and he subsequently had hit after hit after hit. 

This is one of his best:

The first time I remember hearing BJ Thomas was around 1968, with "Eyes Of A New York Woman". His was a voice I tucked inside my pocket and pulled out when I wanted to hear a good, country-pop, but mostly (come on) country singer. 

This song was a number one in 1975, and you know it's catchy. Give it up! I even bought a Chipmunks album for my toddler son sometime around 1980 that featured this song. And divining music critic that he was at age two, he gave it two chubby thumbs up:

So, you can have your Outlaws and In-Laws and Jessie's. Oh, and don't forget your Tompall's. 

That's not what 1975 was for me. And since I was there, I have a say in the matter.

Oh, that picture at the top? Yea, I found this girl by accident. Maybe a snippet of a song played on my local station, and maybe I thought, hmmm, she sounds good! This gal was an album act. One could not experience Emmylou Harris without listening to a full album. "Elite Hotel" was the first of many Emmylou albums I would buy. 

The thing about Emmylou is, she didn't forget. She brought back the old, reveled in the new, but cherished what came before. I like that. Everything isn't new. Sometimes it's old and the old is a treasure. Maybe you just forgot to listen the first time.

Buying Country Albums Was An Exercise In Futility

...yet I bought them.

Most people probably can't relate to my particular musical circumstances. I was one of the diehard country fans in the nineteen seventies who was not enamored with Johnny Cash. That left me options that were paltry. Johnny Cash was a persona. He wasn't a country artist; he was a folk singer. His three-chord ditties could be done by anyone -- heck, even I did them and I was a putrid guitar player. His songs were boom-chicka, boom-chicka, boom-chicka, boom-chicka. That's it. If it wasn't for the man that Cash was, he probably wouldn't have even gotten a recording contract. Country music, to me, was twin fiddles, steel guitar, and a voice that cried. I was a purist in a sea of muddy productions that yearned to be "relevant", which wasn't the allure of country music at all.

Looking back, John Denver was probably more country than the so-called country artists of the era. The Eagles were more country than the country hit-makers. No wonder Olivia Newton-John won Female Vocalist of the Year at the 1974 CMA's.

I liked Connie Smith, Faron Young, Merle, Johnny Rodriguez, and Gene Watson. In my early twenties, I was a fossil.

The new gal, Barbara Mandrell, had potential. There's no denying she was cute. She was tiny with huge hair. She could actually play an instrument. She liked real country, until she didn't. By the time she was sleeping single in a double bed, I was over her. Before that, though, she did songs that were "updated" country -- still country, but bowing to the hipness of the nineteen seventies. I wanted to be hip, too, so I decided Barbara would be my new go-to girl.

She did songs like this:

And this:

So I bought the Midnight Angel album. It had one good song, and that was the title track. That was my life of buying country albums, yet I persisted. It was apparently important to have that album cover on one's shelf. 

I bought Dave and Sugar. That's a relic of the seventies, if ever there was one.

Country albums were a retail lie. Stick the number one single on it and the rubes will buy it. Three dollars and ninety-nine cents in the bank!

The only artist who was making actual albums in the seventies was Merle. 

You can't count "Wanted:  The Outlaws". That was a slapped-together conglomeration of outtakes, the brainchild of a prescient record producer.

Certainly there were some other stellar albums released during the decade.

...but sadly, very few.

If one was to purchase albums, to, I guess, have on their shelf (singles were so much more prudent -- no waste -- and by the seventies, marked down to eighty-nine cents), here are some of the better bets:

Folks who don't know think the seventies were Kenny Rogers and Willie and Dolly. In fact, those artists were "almost eighties". There was a long-spanning decade between Tammy Wynette and Janie Fricke. One had to root out the Crystals and the Sylvias from the Gene Watsons. And trust me, there was a world of difference. If only for Gene Watson, the seventies were worth the pain.

Music is music is music. The vast majority of it is bad. We need to remember the jewels.

I still don't know what I'll ever do with my Barbara Mandrell albums, though.

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.

Saturday Night Special - Piano Man, Part II

Last Saturday night's special featured Jerry Lee Lewis on the piano, doing a great country classic.  So, in the spirit of piano men, here is the late great Gary Stewart, and "Drinkin' Thing":