A Look Back At Country Albums ~ 1969

(I used to subscribe to this ~ it had song lyrics!)

By 1969 I could afford to buy albums. Up 'til then I'd been solely a singles gal, because I was penniless. Of course, I was barely a teen, so jobs were hard to come by. Due to family circumstances, however, my mom frequently enlisted me to man the motel office (during the times she was off looking for my dad). Travelers were taken aback by finding a little girl waiting to check them in, but I just did what needed to be done ~ shove the heavy metal bar across the credit card swiper, tear the little side receipt off the registration card and hand it over, answer the beeping switchboard, make change for the Coke machine.

Mom reluctantly determined that I needed to be paid for those nights, when I really needed to be doing homework, so my paying wage became seventy-five cents per hour. Before too long I had enough money saved to buy an album!

Sometimes albums were the only means of obtaining songs I really liked, because our little town's selection of country singles was limited to the top ten. At least JC Penney's basement had a middling country album offering. Often my tastes were dictated by my best friend Alice's inclinations. I was still a relative country music novice; still feeling my way around this new musical world. I liked Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, and Charley Pride (which essentially sums up sixties country music), but I was keen to spread my wings.

There was a pretty new gal on the scene, a beehived blonde who had teamed up with an old guy with a pale pompadour, and this was the album I bought by this duo:

There had been occasional duet pairings before Porter and Dolly, but none so successful or influential. In the "actual" country music world (as opposed to the faux New York/Hollywood lexicon), they were superstars. Any skim of country music charts from the late sixties will reveal a multitude of hit records by one or the other, or both.

In that vein:

 

 Snigger if you will, but Carroll County Accident was an enormous hit. Granted, Alice and I weren't enamored with it ~ we made up our own, politically incorrect lyrics. But it could not be avoided on AM radio or ignored.

Then there was:

The album cover included a distant shot of Dolly's real-life husband, Carl Dean; the one and only time Carl allowed himself to participate in Parton's musical world.

I fell in love with the sweet voice of Lynn Anderson sometime around 1967. She'd begun moving away from her mom's penned songs (although Liz Anderson was no slouch ~ she did write "Strangers" after all) and was still signed to Chart Records until 1970.

This was an album of covers, but Lynn sang the hell out of them.

No live video, unfortunately:

Not my favorite Hag album, but with few exceptions (see below) I always bought Merle Haggard LP's. I did like this one:

Here's one I didn't buy, and my reasoning is this (if I can remember): I'd heard the single ad nauseam and I didn't need a live version of it. I liked studio recordings, although I never bought this as a single, either. Looking back, I think I had an issue with the title song. At fourteen I was far from sophisticated, but the track seemed almost mocking, and I wasn't on board with that. As for live Haggard albums, "The Fightin' Side Of Me" ranks up there with my favorites of all time, so I had no bias against live recordings.

 

 

I also didn't buy this one, and again I will explain. Johnny Cash is the hip country artist that non-country fans always cite. Granted, he had a network TV show in '69 that featured acts that rarely got television exposure, and he had a great gospel group performance (thanks to the Statlers) at the end of each episode. But real country fans weren't real Cash aficionados. All his songs sounded the same, with their thump-thudda-thump beat, over and over.

And speaking of overplayed songs, what could top this?

These last two will get all the kudos, naturally undeserved, but I choose to remember the LP's that touched me as a fourteen-year-old kid, newly seeping herself in country music.

Ahh, fifty years. 

Really?

My Musical Requirements

Sometimes I think artists are under the misconception that fans are here to serve them. No ~ you entertain me.

I have the option to not listen to you. It's easy ~ click on a YouTube video; click off. I've done it so often, my mouse finger is arthritic.

There are universal elements to a good song. I understand the temptation to serve one's ego ~ I'm a songwriter, too. And all that is a-okay, if one is recording in their basement. I have no illusions that anyone will like my own personal treasures; but then again, I'm not sending them out into the world. The only people who profess to like obscure meditations are either geeks or posers.

I'm not sure if professional songwriters fall in love with each of their songs or if they're manning an assembly line, but there is a glut of sub-par songs floating through the ether. Give me a lined tablet numbered one through one hundred, and I could sum up the entire essence of popular music. I'm really not a curmudgeon; I've simply lived long enough to have heard it all.

I've tried (really tried) to get on board with the new and semi-new artists written about on the go-to country music site Saving Country Music, but what's missing with these artists is that certain zing to the heart. Intellectually, I can appreciate some of the new efforts, but who listens to music intellectually? I might as well crack out a math book. And no matter how many people tell me I should like John Q. Country, sorry ~ I make up my own mind.

I miss the days when I caught half a new song on the radio and couldn't wait 'til the DJ played it again. Maybe music has lost its magic. Or it just isn't that good anymore.

Back to my musical requirements:

Heart ~ Don't pretend that you believe what you're singing. Really believe it. Ask Randy Travis. Ask George Strait.

Play it like you mean it ~ Damn, people! Are you afraid of musical instruments? They're really not scary; they're an integral part of this thing called "music". Don't give me a strummy acoustic guitar ~ kick it in the ass. See:  Dwight Yoakam.

Be universal ~ I don't want to hear about you; I want to hear about me. Give me something that relates to my life.  See:  Merle Haggard.

Do something different ~I can write verse-chorus, verse-chorus in my sleep. It'll take more than that to grab my attention. Surprise me. Surprise might be the most important element in distinguishing a banal song from a stupendous one. See: The Honeycombs, the soaring falsetto of Roy Orbison; the intro to "California Girls".

Combine these four elements and I'll fall in love.

Heart:




Play it like you mean it:





Be universal:

 
 
Something different:


 

Do that and I'll join your street team. Don't do that and just leave me the hell alone. I've heard it all, remember.

And now I commence numerating my one hundred essential songs....

Sixty-Four Years of Music ~ Taking a Sharp Turn

Kids are very durable. Flexible ~ sort of like Gumby. The first time a bad thing happens, they freak out, but freaking out night after night is exhausting; so intuition eventually kicks in. It's amazing what a kid can disregard while remaining keenly attuned to her surroundings. It becomes a way of life. I'm not certain that my sense of hearing is sharper than most people's, but it's damn good. It's all those years of practice. Inevitably, bad things would happen at night, because that's when a drunk manages to stumble home. Night is when the screaming brawls occur.

There was a time in my life when I could fall asleep easily. That ended around age eleven and I've been cursed with insomnia ever since. Every little floor creak, even with foam plugs shoved inside my ears, startles me. It's the "fight or flight" phenomenon. My dad was a falling-down, albeit happy drunk, while my mom was enraged, spewing sailor's epithets, her fingernails clawing his face. At ten o'clock at night, with an early morning bus to catch,

I essentially ignored the rows and tried to fall back asleep like my younger brother and sister had done quite effortlessly on the bottom bunk. Still, I had to be on guard for that moment when my mom would scream, "Call the sheriff!" and I would have to slide down from my second-story tower and stumble to the telephone and lie that my dad was assaulting my mother, when in fact, he was deliriously content on his makeshift bed on the shag carpet, and she was the one who was dangerously homicidal.

This new reality began right at the time I'd been uprooted from the only home I'd ever known and plopped down in the middle of the parched prairie with no friends and no lifelines ~ because life would be "better" here.

My pop singles soothed me for a time. If I cranked up the volume enough, I could almost drown out the screaming. Then a completely unexpected thing happened ~ I made a friend. When kids meet other kids, the primary topic of conversation (at least then) was music. "Who do you like?" "What's your favorite record?" I expected to hear The Beatles or at the very least The Monkees, but Alice said, "I like country music." Well, this was an unanticipated response. Country music? My parents owned a Ray Price album and a Buck Owens album. I also knew who Bobby Bare was. That, in a nutshell, was my encyclopedic knowledge of country.

Becoming friends with Alice was like jetting across the ocean to a foreign country for the first time. I had to forget everything I'd ever known and take a crash course in Esperanto, otherwise known as twang. I sat cross-legged on the floor of her living room while she spun records by people I'd never heard of once in my life. Granted, she had some very obscure tastes, like Carl Butler and Pearl (as they were booked) and Porter Wagoner, who wasn't at all good until he teamed up with a blonde bee-hived little girl singer.

The most revelatory artist Alice introduced me to was named Merle Haggard, who was brand-spankin' new on the scene, but definitely had a certain something I could get on board with. This Haggard guy's recordings were heavy on Telecaster, bass, and crying steel. His music reminded me a bit of my parents' Buck Owens albums, only with far superior singing and heart-searing harmonies. This was someone I could claim as my own and stamp myself a country fan. Thank God. Because I was worried I wouldn't like anybody and then I'd lose my new friend as quickly as I'd found her (or, more accurately, as she'd found me).

Adaptability is innate. Once you discover something, then you discover other somethings. The first thing I discovered without Alice's help was Waylon Jennings.

There was a new guy who was being played on the radio (I'd since switched my allegiance from KFYR to KBMR) and both Alice and I liked this song. Later we heard rumors about him that couldn't possibly be true, because he was stone country:

As for female singers, there were a few, but she was the ultimate:

Although this new gal was pretty good:

Yep, I'd become immersed. And it didn't take long. Eventually I saved up my pennies and bought that red acoustic guitar in the window at Dahmer's Music and Alice came over and taught me how to form chords. Now I could play along with my favorite Haggard and Pride songs.

I became even better at drowning out the scuffles happening outside my bedroom door. I'd found a reason to soldier on.

Country music turned into everything for me. Until it wasn't. Until it disappointed me.

But that would take a few years....

1968 ~ Caught Between Two Musical Worlds

I was thirteen in 1968, transitioning between seventh and eighth grades, which was kind of a dead zone, really. Long gone was the heady anticipation of graduating from elementary school, yet I had a million years to go (it seemed) to finally transition to the new high school building and be "grown up".

My junior high was probably one of the oldest buildings in my little town. Back in 1910 or so, it had served as the high school ~ black and white portraits of stern long-ago high school principals adorned its sanitarium-grey walls. From the outside it resembled a prison.

And yes, this was our gymnasium (minus the fallen plaster, which would have been dangerous for playing dodge ball):

I had to take the city bus to get (almost) to school, because the school district had not yet established bus service all the way out to my home (in its defense, there were only seven kids who lived in my neighborhood). Last stop on the city bus route was the old Prince Hotel, which was one of those post-World War I hostels that featured tufted burgundy armchairs with gold buttons, as well as spittoons in its lobby; and housed derelicts and Spanish-American war veterans who from their vestibule repose liked to ogle adolescent girls; and its lone desk attendant was older than death and just as lively.

The school's dress code prohibited pants (for girls, I mean), and our dresses were audaciously short; so on minus twenty-degree winter mornings, I'd alight the city bus at the Terror Hotel and commence my six-block tramp along slippery sidewalks in my mini-dress, faux-rabbit coat, plastic knee-high snow boots and no hat (hats were for sissies), clutching my US history and earth science textbooks and three spiral notebooks.

All to frost-bittenly arrive at a place I didn't want to visit for six-plus hours, but an argument my parents (such as they were) were not of a mind to debate.

My only saving grace was that I had a best friend, albeit one who crazily loved country music (one has to take their best friends wherever they find them). A year or so before, I was grooving to The Rascals and Three Dog Night, and now here I was, taking a crash course in the idiosyncrasies of honky tonk.

By now I pretty much got it. I'd figured out who I liked (Merle, Waylon, Tammy) and who I didn't (Glen, Conway, Sonny James). I'd long known who Buck Owens was, but I also learned about new artists like David Houston and Dolly Parton.

Unfortunately, 1968 was a weird year in country music. The worst singles hit number one, while (now) classic songs languished far below on the charts.

My best friend Alice and I agreed that this song reeked. I've always hated political songs, especially those that preach (and which ones don't?) Our main objection to this single, however, was that it was barely country. That, and the fact that it was played on the radio all the time. "Stab 'em in the back, that's the name of the game" ~ we enjoyed making fun of that line. Plus the whole, "Daddy hates Mommy and Mommy hates Dad" really didn't need to flow out of my speaker. Unless my speaker was spewing my own personal reality.

And this song garnered way more fame than it deserved. Again, there are so many things to hate about this song, but the old standby, "overplayed" is number one. I never realized until I studied more of Tom T. Hall's songs that he rarely wrote choruses. Sure, he had refrains from time to time; but I think the absence of a chorus has caused his songs to not age well. Listeners like something they can latch onto. Most people who sing along to the radio mess up the verses comically, but they always land the chorus.

Great songs like this only reached #10. Marty Robbins was a conundrum ~ difficult to pigeonhole. On the one hand, he truly loved his western ballads, and on the other, he could be truly soulful. It seems Marty never once gave an insightful interview, so fans will never know why he wrote the songs he did, or if he even ever thought about it.

I came to appreciate this song later. At the time I frankly wanted twin fiddles and steel guitar.

And this was only number twelve? I won't get into the whole history of me and Merle and this song, but you can read it here. If I hadn't looked at the 1968 charts, I would have sworn this was the number one single of the year.

Twenty-one? Really? Tammy had appeared on the scene in 1967 and had many hit singles before alas, "Stand By Your Man" became both a phenomenon and a punchline in '68. In hindsight, one can pinpoint when a promising career began to stagger downhill, although it's not Tammy's fault that she wrote a song everyone latched onto. The same thing happened with Lynn Anderson, who I loved until "Rose Garden" vomited onto the scene.

Regardless, number twenty-one is good:

I found a new favorite singer in '68. I feel like whenever I post a Faron Young live performance, I have to apologize. Faron was a superb singer, but a real drag to watch live. I somehow convinced my dad to drive us up to the State Fair one year to see Faron in person. Dad, and surely Mom, didn't want to go, and sitting in the bleachers during his concert, I wanted to crawl under my seat and hide in embarrassment. It wasn't (I don't think) that Faron was tipsy; I just think he didn't give a damn about singing a song straight. Maybe he'd been around so long, he said, "screw it". But trust me, his live performances and his recordings were eons apart. Nobody was better in that era.

This single wasn't from 1968, but I think David Houston deserves a mention. Nobody remembers him now (well, I do), but David Houston was huge. Not only did he have many top solo singles throughout his career, but he recorded hit duets with both Tammy Wynette ("My Elusive Dreams") and a newcomer, Barbara Mandrell. In 1968 alone, he had four top one hundred songs. As life marched on, I sort of forgot about David Houston, until I learned he had died at age fifty-eight from a brain aneurysm. Houston is one of those artists that this blog is about, because some of us don't forget.

Country duos suddenly became a thing around 1967-1968. There had been duets before, but I don't think the CMA's had a category for Country Duo before these two folks got together  (before then it was "Vocal Group", which was rather awkward when only two people were involved). Then, suddenly, duets were everywhere. I remember hearing a song on the radio for the first time and saying, "I think that's Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty!" And thus duos were off and running. 

But it was these next two who dominated:

Here's another one of those forgotten artists ~ Wynn Stewart. Wynn was a pioneer in the Bakersfield Sound. Buck liked him; Dwight plays him on his "Bakersfield Beat" Sirius channel. I liked him, too, and my dad really liked him. Dad thought this next song was the bomb. It's not from '68, but Wynn had two top one hundred hits that year (and props to this video featuring the awesome Don Rich):

This is most likely my favorite song from 1968. Mom had shipped my little sister and me off to Texas to stay with my big sister while things were "disheveled" at home. I loved it there and didn't want to come back. We'd stay up 'til the early morning hours playing Scrabble, drinking Dr. Pepper, and listening to Bill Mack on WBAP. Johnny Bush was a newcomer and there was a lot of talk that he was trying to be the next Ray Price. I didn't care ~ I loved this song, and I still love Johnny Bush. Unfortunately, I can't find a decent live performance video, but here's the song in all its glory:

Overall, I wasn't too sad to leave my pop world behind ~ it was simply an adjustment. I liked the stability of having a friend with a semi-normal family, and I'd thrown my heart into country music. There was so much to discover ~ like traveling to a foreign country for the first time. In '67 I was still on the fence about music. By 1968, country had claimed me.

Over-Rated Artists

(Just kidding!)

Tonight as I was clicking around my favorite channels on SiriusXM, it struck me that some artists are perhaps misguidedly exalted. Famous for being famous. Celebrated not so much for their music but for their persona. 

Everyone has their own list, and some people will detest me for my choices, but they're mine. And I'm not saying I loathe these guys; I'm just saying they're perhaps a pinch over-rated.

No one loves Bruce Springsteen as much as Bruce Springsteen does. I tried to read his autobiography, but it was so bloviated and precious, I gave up. His cloying exertion to come across as a "real writer" exhausted me. I don't want to be cognizant of an author's writerly struggles ~ I have enough of my own.

I was watching the 10,000 Pyramid sometime in the mid-seventies, and Dick Clark was doing the requisite celebrity interview. Some actor who I've forgotten (as has everyone else) was asked by Dick who the best rock singer was. This guy said, "Bruce Springsteen"; a name I'd never once in my life heard. Dick said something like, "A lot of people would disagree with you," and this flash in the pan responded, "Well, they'd be wrong." The actor in question was clearly from New Jersey. There's something about people from New Jersey ~ they're very sure of their opinions and that their judgements are the correct ones.

I've got nothing personal against Bruce Springsteen ~ he had his best success in the eighties when I was watching MTV, although I'm sure he would disavow those hits, because he's rather above it all, ACT-ually. My only point is that, taken as a whole, his catalog is sub-par. I do like this one, though:

Rolling Stone Magazine love-love-loves Johnny Cash. I'm not entirely sure why, but he did wear a black waistcoat, so there's that. As someone who was heavily steeped in country music in the sixties, I can tell you with certainty that Johnny Cash was not at the top of any country fan's playlist. The truth is, all his songs sounded almost precisely the same. Folsom Prison was a remake of a song he'd originally recorded in the fifties on Sun, and even in 1968 it still had that thump thump thumpety thump, like every single Johnny Cash song in history. The good news is, even I could play that intro on the guitar, and I was a shitty guitar player.

Someone with actual talent:

I do like this song, though:

My meager knowledge of the nineteen fifties confirms for me that music was putrid until Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis came along. I guess there was Perry Como and some chick singing about a doggie in the window...and maybe The Percy Faith Orchestra. The fifties were a staid time, so I can forgive the teens of that era for falling (hard) for someone who had even a semblance of spark. And granted, my perception is colored by the caricature he became, but I never understood Elvis.

I'm puzzled, much as my dad probably was when my older sisters swooned over the grainy black and white image on our TV screen when Elvis serenaded a hound dog on The Steve Allen Show. I'm torn about that appearance, because TV variety shows all the way through the nineteen sixties liked to make fun of rock/pop artists; and in this case the aim appeared to be to humiliate the future king. I'm not on board with that. I guess Steve didn't like Presley usurping Eddie Fisher's popularity.

Nevertheless, I don't "get" Elvis. Maybe it was real, but his on his singles he always sounded like he was posturing...embellishing. The only time I remember him sounding real was on a hit from 1965, "Crying In The Chapel", which also convinced my dad that this dude maybe wasn't so bad after all.

Even leaving aside his Vegas period, Elvis's RCA works were...odd. I don't know if he was popular because of the visuals, because his recordings were badly produced (sorry, Chet Atkins). The mark of a true artist is that you don't have to see them to recognize their artistry. I'd never laid eyes on the Beatles when I heard, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" on my AM radio.

However, I like this one:

These are my top three. There are others, to be sure, but I've probably offended enough people for one night. Maybe I should do a post about the most under-rated artists of all time, but that would be very lengthy ~ actually it would go on forever.

50 Years of Country Albums ~ 1968

I was thirteen in 1968, so you do the math. I was at that desperately awkward stage ~ I'd somehow managed to slither through seventh grade with only a moderate amount of embarrassment, but it was a struggle. Thirteen-year-olds are like alien beings who must learn how to simulate the movements of a human without an instruction manual. It's a wonder most of us survive past our first decade of life.

I bought multiple tubes of Maybelline concealer in an attempt to mask my zits. To complete my look, I slathered green eye shadow on my lids and liberally applied Cover Girl ivory-tone liquid makeup not only to my face, but my neck as well, so I had perpetual grease stains on the collars of all my polyester dresses. I thought I looked neat.

I pulled on pantyhose each morning and a pair of plastic kitten-heel pumps. I hiked up my half-slip to ensure it didn't peek below my thigh-high skirt. My hair was a disaster. I hadn't yet grown it out and thus was yet to endure the nightly torture of brush rollers with plastic pins jabbed into my scalp. I didn't know how to style hair, so I essentially let my mop do whatever it deigned to do. I did have long bangs that unfortunately obscured my carefully-applied lime eye shadow, but had the fortuitous benefit of camouflaging my forehead pimples.

I grabbed my geography and math textbooks and my spiral notebooks and Bic pen and padded out to await the bus. I was never cool and I painfully knew it. All I could pray for was to be was unnoticed. I think I actually prayed for that.

My only savior was music.

Musically, I was still torn between the pop songs played on KFYR AM and the chosen genre of my new best friend, Alice. Alice was unapologetically a country fan and didn't give a damn who knew it. Unlike me. I did my best to cloak my country proclivities by pressing my transistor up against the bus window and flooding the column of cocoa bench seats with Judy In Disguise. I didn't talk to anyone on the bus and certainly no one talked to me, but John Fred and the Playboys conveyed the desired message.

I had dipped my toe into albums in '67 and by 1968 had garnered quite the collection ~ if twenty is a collection. Granted, I had no means of income other than birthday money, and albums cost a whole three dollars and forty-nine cents. But I did my best.

Historically, few of the 1968 albums I owned have made any "best" lists, but you know, it was country. Country albums weren't exactly concept-driven. I feel a need to explain why none of Merle Haggard's '68 LP's made a home in my row of cardboard treasures. I already owned a tri-fold "Best of Merle Haggard" disc that contained all one could wish for, plus I didn't wait for new albums to be released ~ I needed those '45 singles immediately. So if I had a couple of dollars for an album, I wasn't going to waste it on something for which I already owned the prime track.

Critics (and you know how smart they are) will say that "Live At Folsom Prison" by Johnny Cash is one of the very best country albums of all time. Well, I never was a Cash fan. I found his music simplistic and monotonous. Rolling Stone Magazine loves the Johnny Cash mystique; the hell with the actual music. If I never hear Folsom Prison Blues again, my life will be a success.

Here's what I did buy:

How could one go wrong? "Best Of's" were a poor girl's dream. I knew all the songs were good, and as a bonus, the album included "Buckaroo", which was the only song I ever learned how to pick on a guitar.

Okay, this is performed by Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives, because I can't find a decent video of Don Rich:

Like almost all country albums of that era, this album was filled to the brim with covers. So, I'm just going to go with the big daddy of songs:

This was the second duet album by Porter and Dolly, but not their best. "Porter Wayne and Dolly Rebecca" far outshines it. There was a fascination with this new girl singer in '68 ~ we hadn't seen or heard anyone like her before.

There was not one original song on this album! Not even one hit single. I don't know what the people at RCA records were thinking, but if you're going to release an LP, you might want to have one original song on it. With that in mind, I'm just going to cheat and show a video of one of Pride's actual hits:

I don't think I actually owned this album, but Alice did and we played it at her house over and over. Again, we didn't know what to make of this brash young blonde, but we knew she had something goin' on.

Again, "greatest hits" ~ how can one go wrong? I was always equivocal about Loretta Lynn. She'd been around since I was a tyke and saw her perform at Panther Hall in Fort Worth, Texas. I truthfully still haven't made my mind up about Loretta. I wouldn't go out of my way to play any of her tracks, but she paved the way for other, better female country singers, so...

That about sums up my album purchases from 1968. Not really a "classic" among them, but nobody knows at the time or even gives a damn what will endure. 

I do know, however, that this will:

Transitions ~ 1969 In Music

I "graduated" from junior high in May, 1969 and transitioned to Mandan Senior High that September. I was grown-up! Shoot, I was fourteen going on fifteen! On my way to freshman renown!

Richard Nixon had become president. I'd pissed off my dad by tacking my eighth grade history project (a campaign placard) up on the wall right outside the kitchen door ~ "This Time Vote Like The Whole World Depends On It ~ Nixon/Agnew". Dad was reliably perturbed and baffled. I think he literally scratched his head as he alighted the stoop. My work was done!

That summer odd things happened. Teddy Kennedy killed a girl and the Manson Family killed a bunch of people in gruesome ways. Woodstock happened and most people didn't give a shit. My best friend Alice and I went to the Mandan Theater and saw "Butch Cassidy" and "True Grit". We learned that Glen Campbell was a terrible actor and that Paul Newman still had the bluest eyes under the sun.

Oh yea, there was some kind of "moon landing" that summer. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday night, which was really bad scheduling. Plus the optics weren't good. It was hard to make out what exactly was going on. I did park myself in front of our console TV, and I think my dad was there, too. Maybe Dad was more impressed than I. I didn't grasp the enormity of the event, but I was fourteen. I was more excited anticipating the next "World of Beauty" kit that would land in my mailbox.

(I hope it has white lipstick!)

I'd abandoned rock and roll. But old habits died hard. I still had one foot in AM radio, but mostly, thanks to the influence of my new best friend, I became immersed in country music. 

I was still aware of certain '69 hits, like this:

And this song, over and over:

 

This was catchy:

I liked this one because I watched Hawaii Five-O every Thursday night at nine p.m. on CBS television (Book 'em. Danno):

But frankly, the number one song of the year was one my seven-year-old sister really liked, because it was a cartoon. This is where pop music was in '69, as much as one wants to wax nostalgic over "Get Back" and "Lay Lady Lay":

On the home front, life had settled into a routine. Dad was sober "sometimes";  Mom was a harpy, mostly. I retreated to the room I now shared with my adolescent sister and spun records on my (still) battery-operated turntable. 

TV was supreme. After all, that's where I basked in Hawaii Five-O and Medical Center, and that's where I found the Johnny Cash Show on ABC TV. 

1969 was Johnny's year. He was insidious. Johnny, with his black waistcoat and his Carters and Statlers and his Carl Perkins and Tennessee Three climbed inside one's brain matter and made himself at home.

But, try as he might, Johnny could never supersede the artist of the sixties, or basically of ever; Merle:

Glen Campbell had his Goodtime Hour on CBS. It was a summer replacement for that subversive Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. I was so oblivious I didn't know the Smothers Brothers were incendiary. We tended to overlook the political screeds, because they appeared nightly on the network news, and focused instead on the comedy. 

Glen Campbell, on the other hand, was an artist I despised. Fortuitously, I later came to my senses ~ but it wasn't entirely my fault. Glen played the hayseed role so well, he was one of the prime reasons I disavowed any familiarity with country music anytime I was pinned down about my musical tastes.

"Hi! I'm Glen Campbell!" he piped up through the cornfield. If it hadn't been for John Hartford, I would have clicked my TV dial to whatever medical drama was playing out on NBC. 

It didn't help that Glen insisted on recording Jimmy Webb songs, although this one, in retrospect, is not bad:

My musical tastes ran more towards:

As a (bogus) CMA member, I voted for this next song as Single of the Year. Freddy Weller had once been a member of Paul Revere and the Raiders, whose posters from Tiger Beat I had tacked to my bedroom wall. I didn't actually like Paul Revere and the Raiders, but I thought Mark Lindsay was cute, with his ponytail. 

This Joe South song didn't win, despite my best efforts. 

Nobody (but me) remembers Jack Greene, but he had the number one song and Single of the Year in 1967, with "There Goes My Everything". 

In 1969 he had an even better song (as Ricky Van Shelton can attest). 

Porter Wagoner actually had a career without Dolly Parton, believe it or not. Alice and I sat cross-legged in her living room and played this LP (and made up our own lyrics to the song (that are NSFW):

Transitions, yes. Confusion, yes. 

Music was my lifeline. And I was just trying to get by.

That Year My Dad Forgot About Me

I've always liked bars. Not sterile hotel "bars", which are essentially lobbies with bottles of booze, but real honky tonks. An observer of life could do no better than to grab a corner table in a tavern, order up a Miller on tap, and sit back and watch.

When I resided on South Fourteenth Street, I one night found a little nook a couple blocks up the cracked sidewalk. It had a juke box and a dart board and a bunch of people who'd somehow staggered their way in. The establishment was tucked inside a skinny crevice between two white-brick factories, one skip past the Burlington Northern railroad tracks. That's why I liked it. It was out of the way; a private spot that only the absolute best alcoholics knew about. That's how a bar should be, if it was to call itself a respectable bar.

I've had a couple of bars in my life. There was my Uncle Howard's bar, Triple Service, where I lived when I was nine years old, and where I was introduced to the ways of life. Then there was The Gaiety, my dad's place. The Gaiety was a bit too fancy for me -- its outside sign had a cocktail glass with an olive bouncing out of it. The Gaiety, though, had all the accouterments of a proper bar. It was dark and musty. It was off the beaten path. Only the best drinkers could find it. And thus it was exclusive.

As a kid, I could make myself at home inside The Gaiety anytime I wanted. I was thirteen, so I didn't make myself at home there too much; only when I was bored with riding my bike around the big circle that surrounded Mom and Dad's motel. I had recently learned how to play guitar, and I knew that The Gaiety had a little stage with a microphone, and I was kinda bored one day, so I decided to stop in and give the regulars a show; demonstrate my prowess with forming C and E chords. It was summer and the July sun had already baked my skin and nobody fun was around to hang with.

And that day I just needed to spill and to give a big FU to my dad.

See, my dad was never around. We'd almost forgotten about him. Honestly. We were bewildered the couple of times he staggered through the kitchen door. I'd once known my dad, but now I had no idea who he was. And he sure didn't know me. He actually didn't even know I was in the room. The Gaiety was only twenty steps away from our little apartment, but for Dad, it was like being banished from heaven and thrust into Purgatory to have to deign to step inside our little family dwelling. He only did it out of a woozy sense of obligation. Mom no longer cared if he showed up at all, my little brother and sister treated him like a visiting stranger, and I chose to ignore him. I was damn sure not going to show him how much it hurt me. Not that he would have noticed. Unlike the little kids, I'd known Dad as a hero; the man who'd taught me about music because he loved it so much.

And now he'd betrayed me. Everything that came before was a lie. You couldn't trust anyone, because people flat-out lied. They portrayed themselves as one thing, but they weren't that. And they didn't care.

I'd been carrying around a giant suitcase of resentment for two years. Granted, I now had a best friend, but friendship and guitars didn't wipe out the hell Mom and Dad had put me, a kid, through. Snubbing my parents was only a band-aid. It would take me about thirty years to rip the band-aid off. Lucky I didn't know that at the time.

Clad in a sage blouse with tied straps and corduroy shorts; barefoot, I walked in the back door of the Gaiety, nonchalant; carrying a big beige acoustic guitar with steel strings. Somebody had left it in a motel room (people were always leaving stuff behind and I was always confiscating that stuff). I hadn't yet saved up enough dollars to buy that red Stella I'd been salivating over in Dahner's Music's window. That cream-colored behemoth stung my fingers, but I'd long ago learned to strum through the pain.

I turned the knob on the amp that powered the microphone, pulled up a backless stool, sat down, bent the mic stand toward me, flipped the pick out from between the frets of my guitar and began my show:

Granted, I hated that song, but it was a crowd-pleaser.

This song wasn't from 1968, but it was an old standby, and I figured the drunks would like it:

An impromptu lounge performance would not be complete without this next song. As an added bonus, I knew all the chords:

Merle really knew how to reel the hard-core drinkers in. I knew this one would be gold:

It wasn't easy to sing all the parts of this song, but I plunged on ahead:

I didn't sing any "women" songs, because I knew I wasn't a good singer. I understood my limitations. Nevertheless, I put on a really fine show. Trouble was, all the sports-shirt wearing patrons kindly ignored me, including the guy behind the bar who was fizzing up drinks -- my dad. I didn't even get a smattering of applause. I got NO applause. Granted, the after-work guzzlers were no doubt puzzled about why some random pre-teen had shown up to give a performance, but the polite thing would have been to clap, at least half-heartedly. 

I don't remember ever being embarrassed by my kids. They were never brazen like I was, admittedly. But even if they had been, I would have offered an "attaboy". Courage deserves its own reward. My dad pretended like he didn't know me. 

I, for one, was satisfied with my one-woman show. In the moment, I chose to ignore my complete lack of acknowledgment. I hefted my freakish guitar out the back door I'd come in, carried it back to my room, and lay down to take a nap. 

I'd like to ask Dad what it was about that day that dismayed him. Maybe it was that I infringed on his lair. Maybe he sauntered off to The Gaiety to get away from troublesome burdens, like his family. Maybe I was wrong to infiltrate, but I was thirteen and full of piss, and I needed to do this.

Dad, you may be interested to know that I took my three chords and eventually wrote some songs of my own -- one, in particular, about you. 

You never know what a kid might turn out to be.

I Remember 1970

In 1970 I was fifteen and carving out my own, independent life. Things had been bad at home for about four years, and I was frankly tired of it -- tired of being mired in the constant physical and verbal battles between my mom and dad. Too, by fifteen I'd acquired the best thing that ever happened in my life -- my own room. My mom and dad owned a motel, which was the thing that started our lives on the unremitting slide off a slippery cliff. On the plus side, a motel in the sixties meant a ready supply of unoccupied rooms; a fact that I seized upon in order to whine and cajole my mom into finally giving in and agreeing to let me move out of the closet-sized room I shared with my little brother and sister and the bunk bed shoved up against the wall, and into Room Number One, which was a bit further than hollering distance away from our tiny "living quarters" behind the sliding door of the motel office.

My new living arrangements were sublime. I didn't eat, so I was able to avoid family dinners, if we actually had them. What I actually remember is my brother and sister being fed once we'd arrived home from school and my mom grazing throughout the evening. Dad wasn't around. He was busy working on his hobby -- getting drunk out of his skull and passing out anywhere he could find a safe place to land.

I had a best friend and hobbies of my own -- music! And smoking. I'd learned how to chord on a guitar a few years before and by now I was pretty proficient at the basics -- A, D, G, E, and sometimes B (if needed). The callouses on my fingertips were well-developed. If there was such a thing as tuners back then, I was unaware of them. I'd bought a '45 record Buck Owens had issued (I think with one of his songbooks), "How To Tune Your Guitar". That record was my "guitar tuner".  I locked myself behind the locked and chained door of my room and listened to country records and strummed along with them...and sang. Nobody could hear me anyway, so what the heck? I became pretty good at singing harmony, as long as I had the record to prompt me.

I'd latched onto country music because Alice (my best friend) was a die-hard country fan who was also the featured vocalist in a local country band. By 1970 rock was a faint memory and I knew all the top country artists and had developed my own tastes, rather than simply mimicking what Alice liked. I'd discovered all-night country radio, WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, with DJ Mike Hoyer. WHO had the strongest signal. I loved Bill Mack from WBAP, too, but a Fort Worth signal was only audible in the wee small hours. Ralph Emery? Forget it. The night had to be crystal clear and the moon full before I could ever get WSM to be more than a crackle on my radio. Mike Hoyer was my guy. He also played full albums, around two in the morning. (Yea, in the summer, I stayed up and waited for them).

In 1970 we country fans were still worshiping the old guard. It would take about three years before new acts would arrive on the scene and take over. Country music moved at a slow pace.

Don't get me wrong; the old guard was excellent -- Merle, Ray Price,Tammy, Marty. If one was to name the greatest country artists of all time, these four would make the top five...or at least top ten. Merle was hitting his stride in 1970, becoming recognized as a musical phenomenon. If one were to scan his career, however, Merle's best recordings came before '70. The same with Ray and Tammy and Marty Robbins. They were all "mid-career" by that time. But there were other artists, too.

David Houston first hit it big with a song that in 1967 made me cringe. I was twelve and at that awkward stage at which my dad had the car radio tuned to country music and I was held hostage if I ever needed him to traverse me anywhere. David Houston sang about being "almost persuaded" and I knew it was kind of dirty, but I wasn't sure why. Hearing a song about s-e-x at age twelve with your dad in the car is the ultimate nightmare. Nevertheless, David Houston went on to record several tracks that became hits, and by fifteen, I was okay with the story lines.

David Houston lived a short life. He suffered an aneurysm in 1993 and passed away. He was a huge star in the late sixties/early seventies, an artist who would have continued to carry on.

Here is his 1970 hit (very few live performance videos exist of David, mainly those in which he performed duets with Barbara Mandrell, so appreciate this for its music):

And then, of course, there was Merle:

My memories of Ray Price will always be tied up with my dad. There was a time when my dad was my hero, back before the "bad things" happened. Childhood memories are like a hand print on one's brain. They're stamped there for perpetuity. "My" Ray Price was a singer of three-part harmony songs and twin fiddles. The Ray of 1970 was a sort of a betrayal. 

I didn't like this song. I do now. I like it "sort of". It's a Kris Kristofferson song. Kris Kristofferson, at one time, was the most prodigious songwriter in country music. He's no Merle, but he's different. Kris said things that nobody else said in quite the same way. If I was to emulate anyone, as an amateur songwriter, Kris would be the one.

For The Good Times:

Charley Pride is an artist who appeared seemingly out of nowhere. I first became aware of him in 1967 (?) with "Just Between You and Me", which is one of the most excellent country songs ever written. He was just a guy on the radio who sang good songs. By the time Alice and I attended the immortal Merle Haggard concert in 1968, we'd learned that Charley was Black, so we weren't shell shocked when he took the stage as Merle's opening act. Granted, it was odd for a Black man to sing country music, but if he was country, we were okay with that. 

By 1970 we'd settled into a state of comfort with Charley. The production values on his recordings could have used some improvement, but he was still recording good songs:

Johnny Cash had a network TV show on ABC, and Alice and I watched it with religious fervor. I wasn't even a Johnny Cash fan. I was more fascinated by the Statlers. who sang harmony and by Carl Perkins who, by then, was relegated to a backup player in Cash's band. The most memorable thing I remember from Johnny's show was a song called, "I Was There" that featured the Carter Sisters and the Statler Brothers; a gospel song that those in the know label "call and response".

"Sunday Morning Coming Down" was yet another Kristofferson song. I was in my second year of Spanish, so I actually translated this song into the Spanish language as an exercise. I can't listen to this song without hearing, "no fue mal". 

I love Marty Robbins. The first concert I ever attended, when I was five, was a Marty Robbins concert. My mom took me. I have no recollection of how that came to be. I didn't even know my mom liked music. I'm guessing the concert venue was the Grand Forks Armory. I have a vague memory, like a dream, of Marty strumming a teeny guitar. That's all I remember, except for after the show, when Mom tried to cajole me to go up and get Marty's autograph. I was mortified at the prospect and I flatly refused. I note that she didn't get an autograph, either.

I got the opportunity to see Marty again, sometime around 1980, this time in Duluth, Minnesota. We were on vacation, with -- what do you know? -- Mom and Dad. I also had two tiny boys by that time. Not as tiny as the guitar Marty liked to play, however. By then, I wouldn't have been too embarrassed to get Marty's autograph. I would have been sort of embarrassed, but I still would have done it, had we not been perched in the nosebleed section of the auditorium. By the time all of us made our way down to the floor, Marty was no doubt back on the bus, zooming down I35 on his way to the next stop on his tour schedule.

Marty Robbins was a helluva entertainer. I, as a rule, don't like a lot of goofing around by the artist I've paid dollars to see. But Marty was funny. Not in a "canned jokes" kind of way, but in the way he interacted with his audience. He was one of the few artists I've seen (and I've seen many) who seemed to actually enjoy performing. Most of those I've seen treat a live performance like a paycheck they're begrudgingly obliged to dance for. (Randy Travis is an exception to that rule.)

This is, by far, not one of my favorite Marty Robbins songs, but heck...it's Marty:

On the other hand, there are a handful of artists I never connected with. I never could quite figure out Conway Twitty. The blue-haired ladies loved Conway. Of course, they also loved Elvis. Maybe when I'm eighty I will grow an appreciation for Conway Twitty. I'm keeping an open mind. I can't put my finger on what it was -- he did have some good songs. And his early recordings with Loretta Lynn were damn good. 

I attended a concert in my hometown around 1992 - 1993. It was a three-fer:  Vince Gill was the main act, for me at least. Also on the bill was George Jones. And then there was Conway. I'd seen George Jones and Tammy Wynette in 1968 when they were still flirting and hadn't yet left their respective spouses. Strangely, Tammy's then-husband played backup for her on that show. Well, it was country music...

So, after Vince did his set and George did his, I decided it was time to leave. I didn't stay to see Conway. Shortly thereafter, Conway died. I kind of regretted I hadn't hung around long enough to see him perform. I felt a tiny bit guilty, disrespectful.

Conway (nee Harold Jenkins) had his biggest, bestest, hit in 1970. This song defined his career:

Speaking of career-defining songs, I guess 1970 was the year for that. I could recount my attendance at a Loretta Lynn concert...okay, I will.

I was, I will guess, nine years old. My sister was getting married. She'd moved to Fort Worth, Texas, to be near her fiance, who was a Texan. Dad, Mom, my little brother and little sister and I had taken the long car trip from Minnesota to Texas in our trusty Ford Galaxie, the car Dad was so proud of. Amidst all the wedding festivities, we all attended a concert at Panther Hall. Panther Hall was distinctly Texan. Long, long dining tables, where one was seated next to complete strangers. The entree was steak. Just steak. One did not get a choice in the matter. It was steak. Waiters hovered about. Our waiter asked me what kind of dressing I wanted on my salad, and I said, "none". "No salad?" he asked. "No, no dressing.". Yes, I ate my lettuce plain. I did not like foods then. I might have liked toast. 

Panther Hall was "dry", or something. One had to bring in their own booze. The waiters would serve "mix", and patrons would mix their own drinks with the whiskey they'd brought in with them. 

The featured act was Loretta Lynn and her band. I hazily remember hearing, "You Ain't Woman Enough", but I frankly was too focused on my lettuce to pay much attention. Somebody in our party went up after the concert and got Loretta's autograph. I remarked, upon spying the signed photo that it looked like it said, "Buffalo Lynn". Loretta apparently did not have good handwriting. 

In 1970 Loretta released her autobiographical single. I had some issues with the song, such as how she sang "borned" instead of "born". Additionally, the song was rather tedious. It was essentially a recitation of everything that had happened to her in her life, with no chorus. Also, she sang that at night they'd sleep cuz they were "tarred". Regardless, eventually a movie was made of the song and the book that followed, which began my longstanding infatuation with Tommy Lee Jones.

Coal Miner's Daughter:

These songs were not number one hits, but they bear mentioning, because, well, I like these guys...

Jerry Lee Lewis:

Buck Owens and Susan Raye:

Sorry, no live video, but I really, really liked this song...

Del Reeves and Penny DeHaven:

Here's David Houston with Barbara Mandrell, before Barbara became the precursor to Reba McEntire in the desperate claw to become relevant in the world of pop. Barbara Mandrell was so cute then. I wanted to be her:

No one should doubt how iconic and influential this duo was in the late sixties/early seventies. They were the golden fleece all duos yearned to snatch.

Porter and Dolly:

The first time I heard this next song on the radio, on a staticky signal out of Iowa, I fell in love. It was the perfect country song, sung by the best country singer in the world. I didn't know Tom T. Hall had written it, and I was surprised. Tom T. was the Harper Valley PTA guy, the guy who never felt a chorus was necessary to a song. I really, really loved Faron Young, but he was a troubled soul. I talked my dad into driving us up to the State Fair to see Faron in person, and I felt ashamed I'd forced him to make the trip. Faron was possibly drunk; or if not drunk, simply a bad performer. The concert was disillusioning. I didn't know then that Faron had problems and that it took him a while to get a good recording. I only knew the records themselves. I still love him, though. I don't care how many takes he had to do to get it right. I only care that I am in love with Faron's songs.

Sorry (or maybe not sorry) that there is no live performance video of this track:

This post has gone on forever, and it could go on for miles more, because 1970 is perpetually stamped on my brain.

I will end with this....

Lynn Anderson showed up on my adolescent radar by way of Lawrence Welk. My folks watched that ABC show religiously. I was beguiled by Lawrence's accordion player, who I thought was in the navy, because the V that crossed his chest looked like a navy uniform. I hadn't yet begun my accordion lessons, so I apparently thought Myron Floren somehow balanced that behemoth instrument between his hands; an unsuspecting strongman. (Yup, the V was the accordion straps, I, a short while later learned.)

Lynn was from North Dakota -- Grand Forks, to be exact -- just like me! In truth, she was born in North Dakota, but raised in California. However, that minuscule connection convinced Lawrence to hire her for his show. Lynn possessed the sweet voice of an angel. Truly. I loved Lynn's voice. Unlike the country fan latecomers, I knew Lynn Anderson before she moved to Columbia, when she was but a wannabe star contracted to Chart Records. 

To me, the move to Columbia spelled the downfall of her career, but of course, others would say, what in the world are you talking about? She had her biggest, career-defining hit at Columbia!

Yea, she did; that's true. But tell me; how many times are you willing to listen to this song?

Nevertheless, it was the giant song of 1970. Thank you, Joe South. I guess.

Lynn Anderson:

I'm guessing this has been the longest post I've ever written. I have lots to share about 1970. It was kind of a watershed year for me in many ways; ways I don't necessarily like to recall.

I gave the year short shrift, though. It was pretty awesome -- at least in the annals of country music.