1988 - don't want folks thinkin' that I'd steal ...

Maybe I was getting a little ahead of myself crowing about how the “new traditionalists” were taking over. Of course things never really change that abruptly in country music.  Sure, Highway 101’s awesome, rootsy “Somewhere Tonight” might’ve carried over into the first week of 1988, but Exile was waiting in the wings with the weightlessly catchy easy listening of “I Can’t Get Close Enough” right afterwards. Dan Seals, despite looking good in a cowboy hat, was still more James Taylor than George Jones and “One Friend” is as obvious an example as any. Ronnie Milsap was still typically slicker than owl shit, plus snoozier than usual on “Where Do the Nights Go.” KT Oslin had clearly already cracked the door open for earthy female folkies because Kathy Mattea scored her first #1 with “Goin’ Gone.” I generally like Mattea but I’m not sure why that one captured the zeitgeist.

Things perked back up for a bit. Restless Heart was plenty slick but “Wheels” landed on the right side of upbeat and breezy, not forgetting that even country-pop needs a pulse. Rosanne Cash, after years of proving she didn’t need to ride her famous dad’s name or image, finally paid direct tribute to the old man with a beautifully realized cover of “Tennessee Flat Top Box.” And despite the industry tide finally turning against the veteran stars as the ‘80s wrapped up, Merle Haggard scored a #1 befitting a legend with the winsome, jazz-laced “Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star.” It was a 34^th and final #1 hit, setting a record for the moment (Hag and Conway Twitty were back-and-forth on this for a long time) and soon followed by a slide down the country charts into the nostalgia circuit. 

Haggard would continue to be a solid live draw and as respected-elder as it gets pretty much up to his passing away in 2016; what he had as an artist couldn’t be duplicated but it sure as hell resonated. In the ‘80s he was sharing the charts with younger folks like Strait, Travis, and more we’ll get to later in this entry that wouldn’t have sounded the same without his influence; if anything, his influence would be even more pronounced on not only the next round of genre-defining superstars but also on the fledgling alt-country movement cropping up in its shadows. Even if you reductively narrow it down to the songs he took to #1, Haggard’s embrace of his own complexities – tough and tender, mean and warm, repentant and proud, conservative and iconoclastic - left a footprint like none other in American music. A highly successful, enduringly famous man who somehow never forgot what it was like to be poor and desperate, and could put that to words like no one else.

Tanya Tucker was one of the few folks around who could summon up a comparable does of gut-level grit, which could anchor a song as sunny as “I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love” from drifting into church-camp guilelessness. A trio with the relatively obscure Paul Davis and Paul Overstreet, it’s a kindhearted little number about the common thread of selflessness between romantic, paternal, and divine love, a bit cloying if you’re not in the mood for it but it means well. Alabama was still going strong and would be for a while; on “Face to Face” they brought KT Oslin along for the ride for a rare duet. It’s almost too earnest to count as sexy, although Oslin’s hearty delivery gets it over the line. Randy Travis picked up his usual tempo for the hearty, humorous swing of “Too Gone Too Long,” and Ricky Van Shelton slowed his way the hell down for the morose but empathetic "Life Turned Her That Way.” Recorded in past decades by Little Jimmie Dickens and Mel Tillis, it held up well to the test of time, largely forgotten but well worth a dust-off.

The Judds went back to blues-inflected grooves with “Turn It Loose,” kind of generic but Wynonna’s committed lead vocal gives it some spark. Reba McEntire sidestepped her usual anthems of domestic heartache for the annoyingly bouncy “Love Will Find It’s Way to You,” a variety show country (remember VSC?) time filler if there ever was one. George Strait went full heartache on “Famous Last Words of a Fool,” another Dean Dillon gem worth its weight in whiskey-soaked regret. It was a nice one-week break before Eddie Rabbitt dialed up the VCS knob to eleven on “I Wanna Dance With You,” a number so aggressively chipper I guess it just burned right through the other side of my memory bank. 

KT Oslin continued on her welcome but improbable roll with “I’ll Always Come Back,” another self-penned touchstone of grown-up romance and charm. She may have been later to the party but she was certainly of a piece with longtime chart ruler Rosanne Cash, who joined up with her then-husband Rodney Crowell on “It’s Such a Small World.” Not to be confused with the aggravating Disney ride soundtrack, this was the first single off of Crowell’s landmark Diamonds & Dirt album, which would briefly hold a record for the most consecutive #1s off of a country album. Crowell might’ve seemed like an offbeat choice for a sudden mainstream solo push: as a songwriter, he’d been scoring cuts on big albums since the mid-‘70s, backing up cohorts like Emmylou Harris and his wife Cash as a bandmate and producer, and gradually accumulating a reputation as one of the best and most distinctive writers this side of Kristofferson. But although this phenomenon has largely disappeared in the sheen of youthful glamor and limited competencies that is modern country-pop, for decades it was pretty common in Nashville for someone who’d been kicking ass in the shadows for a decade or two to get called up to the big leagues. With Crowell it certainly ended up being a good bet, at least in the short term. 

Highway 101 continued to be torchbearers for modern honky tonk, punching up with the gritty goodness of “Cry, Cry, Cry,” equal parts toughness and despair. Eddy Raven went more genial with “I’m Gonna Get You,” a catchy bit of country-pop brought back down to earth by some nice Cajun-inflected fiddles. A Lafayette, Louisiana native, Raven’s knack for working bits of Cajun sound and imagery into his work made him more distinctive than the average journeyman country singer and gave him a niche avenue to explore when the hits eventually dried up. Kathy Mattea continued to play the hot hand with maybe her most-remembered tune, “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.” She might’ve been more coffeehouse folkie than honky tonk angel, but the indelible tale of a soon-retired trucker and his lady love was about as country as it needs to get.

Earl Thomas Conley continued his subtly winning ways with “What She Is (Is a Woman in Love),” giving his own pen a rest to borrow one from the great Bob McDill, who was probably already kind of missing Don Williams having big hits. Randy Travis’ hot streak continued unabated with the classic “I Told You So,” a hooky but layered lament about reaping what one sows. Like “Forever and Ever Amen,” it scored a then-rare two-week run on top. And then it was time for a first run at the top for The Desert Rose Band with “He’s Back and I’m Blue.” A crew of roots-rock veterans out of California headed up by no less a luminary than Chris Hillman, a former Byrd and Flying Burrito Brother, their noble mission to bring those old bluegrass and Bakersfield influences full circle back to the top of the country charts proved successful for a little while. They’d already come close a couple of times with subtle bangers like “One Step Forward,” but this sweet little slow-dancer with lots of earthy harmonies scored them a #1.

Tanya Tucker continued to be on a bit of a comeback roll; “If It Don’t Come Easy” had a bit of that VSC razzle-dazzle but Tucker’s lived-in, committed vocal kept it down to earth enough. Alabama never lost enough momentum to need a comeback; “Fallin’ Again” was a slight departure from the soft-rock stuff they’d been drifting towards on their singles, sounding in structure and production like an earnest Bob Seger knockoff. The earthy side of arena rock served them well; the song didn’t have much of a hook, but the sound holds up great. Rosanne Cash continued to class up the joint; “If You Change Your Mind” isn’t one of her best-remembered hits, but it does bring to mind mid-period Beatles with its melodic tightness, lyrical economy and unforced sweetness. Vern Gosdin – one of the very last examples of a hard-country vet getting a relatively late-life run at the charts – grizzled up the joint with the wry Ernest Tubb nod “Set ‘Em Up Joe.” Ricky Van Shelton was right on his heels, grabbing that hard-country torch and lighting up the mournful waltz of “Don’t We All Have the Right,” a ruefully clever obscurity from the legendary Roger Miller. If the younger crowd that the New Traditionalists were roping in started getting into Ernest Tubb and Roger Miller, noble mission accomplished.

Time for a trio of eye-themed songs. George Strait took an inevitable trip to #1 with one of his loveliest ballads, “Baby Blue.” A tender triumph in any context, it got extra resonance with fans who were aware Strait’s teenage daughter had passed away in a car accident in 1986; it’s clearly more of a song about romantic loss than family love, but all the same it echoes. Speaking of things retroactively given more gravity by tragedy … Keith Whitley scored the first of a remarkable, almost game-changing run of #1s with the indelible “Don’t Close Your Eyes.” A young singer who’d come up on the bluegrass scene, someone saw a solo artist goldmine in the handsome, curly-headed kid with the angelic twang. He’d already reached the top ten a couple of times but once the Bob McDill-penned number about a forlorn lover wishing his girl would quit treating him like a second choice landed in his hands, it made for an undeniable masterpiece. Rounding out the eye songs for now, Restless Heart scored one of their most memorable hits with “The Bluest Eyes in Texas.” Another Eagles knockoff, more or less, but then again I’m not sure how you make a harmony-driven pop-country-rock mishmash without echoing the Eagles at least a little. Can’t say they didn’t do it well.

Eddie Rabbitt went full-on oldies-cover and, true to form, he looked outside the country field for it. “The Wanderer” was an early-60s hit for Dion, a catchy little anthem celebrating one’s own studliness with a vaguely bluesy swagger (meanwhile, “Runaround Sue” was a slut I guess). Rabbitt’s version made sense; most of the once-young listeners of early rock & roll had probably migrated over to country radio by this point anyway, probably scandalized by the likes of Madonna and Motley Crue and Prince and whatnot ruling the pop-rock roost. Rodney Crowell had bits of influence from lots of genres, but typically back then he channeled it into intelligently-penned but unmistakably country numbers like “I Couldn’t Leave You if I Tried.” It’s not exactly retro, but it’s not hard at all to imagine Buck Owens or George Jones singing it 25 years prior. You could say the same for Highway 101 and “(Do You Love Me) Just Say Yes,” equal parts radio-sweet and roadhouse-tough. The band’s been a bit lost to history but they were really on to something for a while there.

Eddy Raven drifted back into the Jimmy Buffett vein (I’m not complaining … I like vintage Buffett a lot) with “Joe Knows How to Live,” a vaguely tropical and wryly funny tale of an envy-inspiring work buddy who’s romancing honeys down in Mexico on his PTO. Not saying a generic love song isn’t plenty sometimes, but it’s nice to hear specific little slice-of-life tales like this in the mix … Tom T. Hall, the king of that sort of thing, had been off the charts for a while now of course. Dan Seals went a bit more intense than usual – which is to say, still at least a little breezy – on “Addicted,” an empathetic number about a hard-luck gal’s love life. Earl Thomas Conley went a little dreamier than usual, cleverly accomplished by bringing in the great Emmylou Harris (who had mostly fallen off the charts at this point) for a duet on another Bob McDill classic, “We Believe in Happy Endings.” It had been a top ten hit for Johnny Rodriguez a decade prior, but Conley and Harris pretty much took it and ain’t giving it back. It’s not an obvious pairing, but it sure was a worthwhile one. Randy Travis remained in the new vanguard of constant chart presences; “Honky Tonk Moon” was almost Leon Redbone-esque in its sleepy retro charm, although Travis wasn’t one to let novelty or irony seep into his sincere affection for classic country.    

One of the young artists who’d squeezed into the big-label mainstream alongside Travis was Dwight Yoakam. Compared to Travis’ courtly approach, Yoakam must’ve seemed like a bit of a gamble: his main allegiances were to the harder-edged Bakersfield country sound, the bluegrass of his Kentucky birthplace, the cowpunk wildness of the L.A. nightclubs where he caught on as a live act … pretty much everything but the commercial country-pop of the ‘70s and ‘80s, in other words. But as noted in a recent entry, there were elements in Nashville looking for edgier young artists poised to earn younger fans and critical respect for a genre that was often pigeonholed by the mainstream as formulaic middle-aged entertainment. Edgy and traditional weren’t mutually exclusive goals for Yoakam, and once he got his shot seemed to come to the table pretty fully-formed; he’d scored a few exciting top ten hits before “Streets of Bakersfield” notched him an unconventional #1. A poetic hard-luck tale written by Homer Joy, Yoakam roped in his ultimate hero (and Bakersfield icon) Buck Owens to duet on a song he’d recorded himself decades prior; it was an affectionate move but also kind of a risky one, in the sense that Owens had been somewhere between forgotten and sidelined for years by then. Audiences were more likely to remember him hosting cornball Hee Haw episodes instead of dominating the Billboard charts and influencing the Beatles. But Dwight remembered, and had the aesthetic nerve to frame what must have been a dream duet with trebly Mexican-inflected guitar licks and the dreamy spark of Flaco Jimenez on Tex-Mex accordion. All these choices, and the down-to-earth brilliance of the lyrics, just add up to one of the greatest three minutes of music ever put to tape. Yoakam has never stopped making great music but I’m not sure if even he has ever topped this one.  

Nobody else in 1988 was gonna top it either but the rest of the year was pleasantly stinker-free. Tanya Tucker’s sweet, wholesome for-better-or-worse song “Strong Enough to Bend” gained some depth from her usual flinty delivery. The Oak Ridge Boys’ “Gonna Take a Lot of River” had more spark than might’ve been expected from a middle-aged harmony group, buoyed by some chugging Cajun instrumentation. T. Graham Brown, best known for working up a bluesy sweat, sounded somehow both soulful and effortless on the warmhearted “Darlene.” Rosanne Cash was a regular visitor to the top of the charts by now, but it’s still pretty impressive that she got there again with a song as lyrically ambitious as “Runaway Train.” Tight, dynamic, and conventionally beautiful as a record, it’s still a densely lyrical poetic meditation on … well, I’m not sure, but it all sounds really poignant. It was written by folk music veteran John Stewart (of the Kingston Trio, not the Daily Show guy) but it also sounded like what Cash would be turning to a year or two later. She’d always been one of the smarter, more progressive voices in the country chart room, and was about to take a turn for the even more introspective and esoteric.   

Ricky Van Shelton sounded simultaneously warm and heartbroken on “I’ll Leave This World Loving You,” a fine little anthem of one-sided romantic commitment. Reba McEntire went all torchy on the similarly regretful “I Know How He Feels,” an outside-looking-in take on an ex’s new love. George Strait took things back in a relentlessly cheerful direction with a cover of the old Tommy Collins/Faron Young mover “If You Ain’t Lovin’ (You Ain’t Livin’),” wonderfully packed with folksy little couplets about gravy trains and four-bit cigars that I’m glad weren’t lost to history. Restless Heart steered things back to wistful with probably their best song ever, “A Tender Lie.” It had their usual big production and pillowy soft-rock harmonies, but it also managed to capture the sort of humility and heartbreak that great country music deserves. Of course, Keith Whitley could muster up that sort of soul in his sleep; “When You Say Nothing at All” might be an unambiguously sweet number about lovers so well-matched they’re borderline psychic, but Whitley’s indelible twang gave it even more dimension. An undercurrent of past hurt and struggle, enough bitter to make the sweet all the better. He already sounded like a man who’d definitely lived some life, a voice that you sure wished would’ve lived a much longer one.

THE TREND?

It didn’t happen all at once, but it’s sure starting to look different here isn’t it? I’m not into doing mathematical deep dives so I’m not going to calculate the average age of the chart-topping artists here versus a couple of years prior, but a lot of longtime names are conspicuous by their absence (Willie, Dolly, Jones, Kenny, Twitty) and a lot of new landmarks are being laid down by ridiculously promising talents like Keith Whitley and Dwight Yoakam that make the likes of Strait and Reba seem like the old guard by comparison. Granted, some of the “newbies” are music biz vets getting repurposed for a run at the charts (Rodney Crowell, Desert Rose Band, KT Oslin) but they still felt fresh enough in the moment; meanwhile, one Bakersfield legend is notching the last of an astounding run of hits (“Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star” sure sounds like a curtain call) and another is more or less reminding people he's still alive with a quick cameo on a chart he used to dominate. The country-pop warhorses like Milsap and Rabbitt are kind of on their last legs as pretty much every new face that hits the chart seems more connected to the classic country of bygone eras (also note the covers of Johnny Cash, Faron Young, and um … Dion?) than anything they did. I bet it seemed like a youthful takeover of the genre was almost complete; I wonder if they knew it was really only getting started?   

THE RANKING

1. Streets of Bakersfield – Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens
2. Don’t Close Your Eyes – Keith Whitley
3. Runaway Train – Rosanne Cash
4. When You Say Nothing at All – Keith Whitley
5. It’s Such a Small World – Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash
6. Baby Blue – George Strait
7. Tennessee Flat Top Box – Rosanne Cash
8. Famous Last Words of a Fool – George Strait
9. Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star – Merle Haggard
10. I’ll Always Come Back – KT Oslin
11. If You Ever Change Your Mind – Rosanne Cash
12. Too Gone Too Long – Randy Travis
13. Set ‘Em Up Joe – Vern Gosdin
14. A Tender Lie – Restless Heart
15. I Couldn’t Leave You if I Tried – Rodney Crowell
16. Honky Tonk Moon – Randy Travis
17. Do You Love Me (Just Say Yes) – Highway 101
18. I’ll Leave This World Loving You – Ricky Van Shelton
19. He’s Back and I’m Blue – The Desert Rose Band
20. Strong Enough to Bend – Tanya Tucker
21. Don’t We All Have the Right – Ricky Van Shelton
22. Joe Knows How to Live – Eddy Raven
23. I Told You So – Randy Travis
24. We Believe in Happy Endings – Earl Thomas Conley and Emmylou Harris
25. Cry Cry Cry – Highway 101
26. If You Ain’t Lovin’ (You Ain’t Livin’) – George Strait
27. Darlene – T Graham Brown
28. What She Is (Is a Woman in Love) – Earl Thomas Conley
29. Bluest Eyes In Texas – Restless Heart
30. Life Turned Her That Way – Ricky Van Shelton
31. Addicted – Dan Seals
32. I Know How He Feels – Reba McEntire
33. Gonna Take a Lot of River – The Oak Ridge Boys
34. Fallin’ Again - Alabama
35. I’m Gonna Get You – Eddy Raven
36. I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love – Tanya Tucker with Paul Davis and Paul Overstreet
37. One Friend – Dan Seals
38. Wheels – Restless Heart
39. If it Don’t Come Easy – Tanya Tucker
40. The Wanderer – Eddie Rabbitt
41. Turn it Loose – The Judds
42. Face to Face - Alabama
43. Where Do the Nights Go – Ronnie Milsap
44. Goin’ Gone – Kathy Mattea
45. I Can’t Get Close Enough – Exile
46. Love Will Find It’s Way to You – Reba McEntire
47. I Wanna Dance With You – Eddie Rabbitt

DOWN THE ROAD ...

As alluded to in the last entry, we're getting to a point where most of these songs are too new to have prominent cover versions knocking around out there; a half-dozen or so of the 1988 hits are covers already. However, around the early '90s there was a wave of tribute albums to various acts, perhaps capitalizing on the big mainstream country boom; most of these were to the boomer-friendly likes of Merle Haggard, the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd etc. Given the tragically premature finality of Keith Whitley's career, his legacy warranted a 1994 tribute. It was a bit of a mishmash, with covers mixed in with previously-unreleased Whitley demos and a couple of songs written specifically for the project, but it was decently high on starpower with Alan Jackson, Mark Chesnutt, and Joe Diffie alongside other heavy hitters of the moment. But the biggest spotlight was reserved for Alison Krauss, a prodigal bluegrass artist who'd been on the verge of busting out of that particular niche for a mainstream run; her tender, angelic cover of "When You Say Nothing at All" was just the tipping point she needed. To her credit, she never really bent to the mainstream all that much; her moment in the radio-friendly spotlights basically just raised her profile enough to ply her usual trade to bigger audiences, win a few dozen Grammys, collaborate with superstars like Robert Plant and Dolly Parton, and just generally kick musical ass in her own unassuming way.

THE 10+ CLUB - Buck Owens

• Total # of #1s: 21
• First #1: “Act Naturally” (1963)
• Last #1 (for now!): “Made in Japan” (1972) as a solo, “Streets of Bakersfield” (1987) as a featured artist on a Dwight Yoakam record
• Best #1: “Love’s Gonna Live Here” (1963)
• Honorable Mentions: “My Heart Skips a Beat” (1964), “I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail” (1964), “Think of Me” (1966), “Open Up Your Heart” (1966)
• Worst #1?: “Johnny B. Goode” (1969) (this is an awesome Chuck Berry song, a musical landmark if there ever was one, but the Buckaroos’ phoned-in version of it is pretty flat considering what they were capable of)
• Best also-rans: “Under Your Spell Again” (1959), “Above and Beyond” (1960), “Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)” (1960), “Together Again” (1964)

This is one of those cases where the lens of a #1 hits discussion paints a more incomplete story than usual. It sort of looks like the story of an artist who caught on in a big genre-dominating way but perhaps got overexposed or ran out of inspiration and fell out of favor. That would eventually be a prevailing trend of course, in the more youth-friendly turn-and-burn culture of country radio since the late ‘80s or so. But back in Buck Owens’ day, anyone who got that big had a head start on staying that way for decades (see Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty, Charley Pride etc.)

But there’s more to it, of course. Buck Owens seems to me like one of those guys that was a great artist almost by accident, a guy caught up in the business end of music, putting in the hard work of getting good enough at writing, playing, and performing to be a real-deal money-making pro. He wasn’t a pretty boy or obvious fount of charisma, but he did assemble one of the tightest and most distinctive bands in music history (the Buckaroos, of course) and record some of the most emotionally resonant country singles of his or any era. I don’t know how much of it was deliberate innovation and how much of it was working with what he had to make something he was satisfied with, a Dust Bowl kid swearing he’d never be poor again and in the process authoring the “Bakersfield Sound,” creating one of the first hugely successful alternatives to standard Nashville country. Influencing pop-rock legends the Beatles and The Byrds to the point that they spent part of their peaks covering his songs. That’s not just impressive, that’s enormous.

Owens was probably moved by practicality more than the average lofty-minded artistic innovator. He was often as shrewd as he was gifted, buying up radio stations and nightclubs in what might be called a vertical integration strategy nowadays. His choice to sign on as host of Hee Haw, which has been derided for decades as a cred-killer for an artist who might’ve had much more left to give, probably to Owens just seemed like a savvy sidestep to a low-pressure gig amusing millions of fans for a no-doubt healthy ongoing payday. Then again, it’s not like Owens was incapable of being ruled by sentiment: hosting Hee Haw likely torpedoed his artistic growth much less than the motorcycle accident death of his Buckaroo right hand man and best friend Don Rich in 1972. Owens didn’t (and probably couldn’t) talk about it right away, but later he’d go on record with the toll that took on his love and joy for creating music. I imagine Owens enjoyed bantering with Roy Clark week in and week out on Hee Haw, but his real best buddy and closest collaborator clearly left a void with his untimely passing, to the point that more-inspired work just wasn’t in the cards.

By the time I was old enough to pay attention in the early ‘80s, a lot of Buck’s onetime contemporaries were still having radio hits, whereas if you weren’t watching Hee Haw Owens seemed as bygone as Hank Williams or Bob Wills, despite still being very much alive. Looking it up on the internet wasn’t an option of course, you’d just have to wait until you got old enough to go record shopping and even then have to do a little digging in the old-stuff bargain bin (or my own grandparents’ record collection). My patience and curiosity were rewarded, of course. I was digging for gold.

1987 - through transcendental meditation, I go there each night ...

Despite whatever I might’ve said in that “trend” section for 1986, keep in mind that while the Nashville music business may show strong hints of cohesion and collusion, there are still enough competing visions going around to ensure that change happens slowly and not unilaterally. After Hank Jr. and co. rode out a rare two-week run at the top coming into 1987, next up was Michael Johnson, one of those lifelong cross-genre dabblers that some elements in Nashville just can’t get enough of. He’d done everything from Broadway to a folk trio with a young John Denver, and here he was burning up the country charts with an admittedly beautiful acoustic number called “Give Me Wings.” If he was opportunistic, at least he gave as good as he got.

Reba McEntire remained an eminent chronicler of domestic dramas with the can’t-move-on anthem “What Am I Gonna Do About You,” a question sort of answered by the Judds’ follow-up “Cry Myself to Sleep.”  It’d be easy to piece together a half-dozen or so hit singles that suggest the Judds were more or less a white-blues act in the Bonnie Raitt vein that just happened to go country instead of pop.  Just like Dan Seals (and Michael Johnson) were pop-folk guys that found their way there; Seals’ “You Still Move Me” was subtle, straightforward, and lovely enough to earn its keep.  Gary Morris toned down the usual leather-lung belting for a nicely low-key number called “Leave Me Lonely,” which I don’t remember at all from back then but it sounds nice enough today.  Dusty dobro fills and a last-call vibe that suits him well.

Ronnie Milsap celebrated his 30^th #1 with “How Do I Turn You On,” a very ‘80s slice of slick pop that I don’t think you could even call country-pop.  No weight or depth to this one, it’s just sort of there.  Crystal Gayle’s “Straight to the Heart” had some ‘80s brassiness (there’s a strong whiff of the J Geils Band’s “Freeze Frame” there) but a little more meat on the bone; it’s catchy enough that I’m surprised I forgot it. It was her 18^th and final #1, the end of an oft-overlooked run although Gayle is alive and well and touring today.  Unlike some of the folks who notched their final #1 in ’86 (Twitty, Conlee, etc.) Gayle took a pretty steep drop down the charts, never even cracking the top ten again, and it’s hard to say for sure why.  We were still a couple years shy of slightly-older folks getting booted off the top end of the chart en masse.

Earl Thomas Conley still had a few more hits left in him; “I Can’t Win for Losing You” was in his usual soulful, offhandedly intelligent vein and succeeded accordingly.  Conley was great at crafting and choosing songs and had a fairly distinct sound; maybe he was just an image consultant away from being an enduring icon instead of just a long-running success story.  Lee Greenwood at least got to be the patriotic-song guy for the rest of his and our lives; pleasant trifles like “Mornin’ Ride” were better than some of his overwrought stuff, but not the sort of thing to lodge you in the cultural memory. 

S-K-O is definitely the sort of act that quickly escaped the cultural memory, a trio of Nashville songwriters (Thom Schuyler, J. Fred Knobloch, Paul Overstreet) that MTM Records decided to run up the flagpole as a recording act, notching a #1 hit with the generic cuckold anthem “Baby’s Got a New Baby” and fading back out when Paul Overstreet decided he was better off as a solo act (if nothing else he had the best name by far).  Restless Heart didn’t sound all that different from S-K-O but were in it for a longer haul, scoring with the wildly just-okay “I’ll Still Be Loving You.”  Steve Wariner gave his middle-of-the-road ballad a little more personality, unoverwhelmed by harmony singers on the warm, breezy “Small Town Girl.”  Even the stone-country likes of George Strait got a touch yacht-rock on the always-welcome “Ocean Front Property,” which worked in a bit of ironic island rhythms in an extremely rare case of Strait deploying irony.  Alabama was as sincere as ever with the pillow-soft country-pop of “You’ve Got the Touch,” even if this sort of material made it seem like they were losing theirs. 

The Bellamy Brothers, on the other hand, were picking up speed, at least in terms of artistic ambitions.  Most of their past #1s leaned on good-natured sex humor and breezy sort-of-tropical rhythms, and they were pretty great for the most part despite occasional aesthetic bad taste (their 1987 album was called Country Rap, for starters, and the title track is a lame attempt at exactly what that entails).  So there was a lot of overlap with the Jimmy Buffett aesthetic, although the Bellamys were the ones who could actually take it to the top of the charts; then again, Buffett gradually built a billion-dollar gimmick empire while they’re playing county fair gigs, so I guess we can call it even.  But like Buffett, the Bellamys were better songwriters than the gimmick sometimes let on, and “Kids of the Baby Boom” was a conscientious, well-thought-out exploration of the ups and downs of their whole damn generation.  That’s a lot to put on a four-minute country song, but it never buckles under the weight of it: it’s a winner.  They’d always sprinkled topical and idealistic material amongst the deep cuts of their albums, but this was the first (but not last) time they rode it to the top of the charts.

Dependably ornery and awesome Waylon Jennings hadn’t been to the top without his Highwaymen buddies for awhile, but found himself back there with “Rose in Paradise,” a dark little ballad that found Waylon’s voice holding its own spectacularly against some updated production that still retained his signature Telecaster bite.  T. Graham Brown might’ve drawn more from the likes of white-blues legend Delbert McClinton than Waylon & Willie, but he had plenty of swagger (laced with some healthy empathy) to punch a barroom anthem like “Don’t Go to Strangers” over the top. Not that you needed swagger – Michael Johnson remained sentimental as all get-out and soft-rocked all the way to the top again with “The Moon Is Still Over Her Shoulder.”  It was his last #1, typically lovely and tasteful, and he’d chart a couple more similar tunes (“That’s That” is a particularly good one) before pulling a disappearing act.

Perhaps loosely inspired by the success of the Highwaymen project, Warner Bros Records teamed up longtime famous friends Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris for an album simply called Trio.  Similar to most of the Highwaymen, they were only a little past their commercial prime, still big names and undiminished talents, and inarguably better harmonizers than Kris Kristofferson.  The old Phil Spector chestnut “To Know Him is to Love Him” was ripe for a reboot and the Trio did it as beautifully as you’d expect.  The whole country-legend-supergroup thing would be revisited occasionally in the decade or two to come, but it wouldn’t get this kind of commercial or critical foothold again, although a year later a pack of classic rockers that are well worth your time would try out the concept as The Traveling Wilburys.

Younger artists that leaned rootsy were still at least occasionally in demand; the folk-oriented O’Kanes scored their only #1 with “Can’t Stop My Heart From Loving You,” a nice bluegrassy number.  Jamie O’Hara would drift back into the workaday Nashville songwriter ranks and Kieran Kane would be a notable figure as the alt-country and Americana genres cropped up in left field.  Devotional love songs were really having a moment; the Oak Ridge Boys went big-ballad on “It Takes a Little Rain (To Make Love Grow),” and Dan Seals kept his peak going with the brisk, breezy “I Will Be There.”  All decent tunes, but the year’s biggest success story (devotional love song or otherwise) was up next with young buck Randy Travis and “Forever and Ever, Amen.”  Written by the ever-dependable Don Schlitz and Paul Overstreet, it was an upbeat, baritone-twangy, lyrically-charming blend of sweet talk and folksy humor that apparently hit all the right nerves for late-‘80s country listeners: it sat atop the country charts for three straight weeks in an era where that just didn’t happen anymore. If Randy Travis wasn’t already in the new vanguard of household-name country stars, this one cemented it for him.

Earl Thomas Conley departed from devotion with the subtly clever “That Was a Close One,” a love-em-and-leave-em narrative that intentionally doubles as a recipe for loneliness.  George Strait’s timeless “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” was plenty subtly clever and even more charming and catchy; it’s a hook so obvious and cool that it’s surprising it took until the late ‘80s for anyone to get around to using it, but it’s fleshed out by amusingly offbeat lines about transcendental meditation and no shortage of rhyming Texas towns with women’s names.  Strait was batting a thousand and I’m not certain he’s ever stopped.  The Judds went back to the blues-infused country well for the smoky come-on of “I Know Where I’m Going,” clearly as influenced by Bonnie Raitt as by the Lorettas and Dollys of the world.  Steve Wariner came cruising back in with “The Weekend,” splitting the difference between breezy and pensive while ruminating on a fling he wished would’ve lasted a little longer.  Sort of like how classic-rock vets Steve Winwood and Phil Collins were scoring on the era’s pop charts, Wariner was good at injecting some emotion into MOR arrangements, a bit slick for some tastes but not entirely bloodless.

Ronnie Milsap departed a bit from his usual slickness with “Snap Your Fingers,” riding a spare bass groove for the first verse before punching things up (a little too soon, in my book) with a horn section.  It’s more Rat Pack than yacht rock, I don’t remember it at all but now I think it’s one of his better hits.  Reba McEntire went low-key and pensive with “One Promise Too Late,” one of those almost-infidelity vignettes that are pretty much a country music subgenre (Reba herself has several).  Michael Martin Murphey went more optimistic on “A Long Line of Love,” a sweetly wholesome promise of romantic devotion using family history as collateral.  It’s funny how Murphey’s short line of mainstream country success was almost a lark, a little time-killer between his edgy “Cosmic Cowboy” years in Austin and the devotedly rustic actual-cowboy music he’d champion after the hits dried up. The dude won Best New Male Vocalist at the CMAs over George Strait … that’s some Sam Bowie stuff right there, except I don’t know if Sam Bowie ever dabbled in cool niche subgenres.

Restless Heart kept the easy-listening-hybrid wing of country going with the admittedly catchy “Why Does it Have to Be (Wrong or Right),” where the only link to traditional country is the unnecessary parentheses.  Hank Williams Jr., much to his credit, took things in a more vibrant direction when he colored outside the stone-country lines; “Born to Boogie” was an old-school rock & roll shouter in the Little Richard tradition, refitted of course with Bocephus’ usual nods to personal history and self-mythologizing, and it totally smokes.  As per usual in the ‘80s country charts, there was an immediate course correction back to soft-rock genrelessness with Exile and “She’s Too Good to Be True.”  I know I pick on these guys and generally dislike their approach, but they do sound better slowing things down a bit.  It’s not a landmark tune or anything, but it’s worth a slow dance if you’re so inclined.  It was a bit of a landmark I guess when two of the kings of easy listening crossover, Kenny Rogers and Ronnie Milsap, joined forces on the polite romantic rivalry of “Make No Mistake, She’s Mine.”  Kenny was an old hand by now at spicing his own material up with brassier female counterparts like Dolly Parton and Dottie West, whereas Milsap tended to yacht solo (at least on his hits), possibly because most people couldn’t match his vocal firepower.  But Kenny was up to the task, and I’ve got a soft spot for duets that make actual thematic sense without getting too gimmicky, so I like this one.

I don’t remember the Oak Ridge Boys “This Crazy Love” at all but I’ll take Wikipedia’s word that it was their 15^th #1 hit. And it’s good, a big hearty beat and a touch of wocka-wocka electric guitar underpinning some smart rhymes and the usual gospel-inflected harmonizing.  Dan Seals scored again with the jangly but regretful “Three Time Loser,” a self-penned mover that continued to give country-pop a good name.  The Forester Sisters leaned more traditional on the sweet but slight “You Again,” the fourth and final #1 from a modest quartet of harmonizing sisters that didn’t have a ton of glamor or distinctiveness but were talented and smart with their material choices.  Probably their most memorable tune, the salty and humorous “Men,” would crack the Top 10 in 1991 but that’d be about it for them chart-wise.

Rosanne Cash still had a little left in the tank; not that she couldn’t write top-drawer stuff herself, but she got an ace loaner from John Hiatt with “The Way We Make a Broken Heart” that was so tuneful and emotionally intelligent it sounded like she wrote it herself.  Nitty Gritty Dirt Band weren’t shooting for literary grace with “Fishin’ in the Dark,” but it was a super-memorable, tightly-produced chunk of country-rock goodness.  Another entry in the genre of songs that are totally about sex but pretend to be about something else (fishin’, perhaps), it’d be their last trip to the top, followed by a handful of top tens concluding with 1989’s fittingly titled “When It’s Gone.”  As with Michael Martin Murphey, their run at the charts was just one chapter in a multifaceted career anyway.

Another reminder that #1s don’t tell the whole story: we haven’t mentioned Eddy Raven since 1984, when he’d had his last #1 with the Jimmy Buffett-esque “I Got Mexico.”  But he’d had numerous top tens three years before and three years since, good stuff like “Right Hand Man” and “Operator, Operator,” and I’m not sure what makes “Shine, Shine, Shine” a better bet than those but here it is.  A good-natured little groove, it sparked a nice run of recurring #1s for a talented regular-dude singer who’d been making music since the mid-‘60s by this point. Fellow down-to-earth lifer Earl Thomas Conley notched his 14^th #1 with “Right From the Start,” which felt a little lightweight and phoned-in by his standards, although he was on enough of a roll I guess it didn’t matter. George Strait’s “Am I Blue” wasn’t one of his richest numbers either, but as an update of the classic Western swing sound it was one hell of a snack for his band; for years I thought it was a cover of an old Bob Wills number but apparently it was penned by David Chamberlain and Strait’s version is the only one of note.

“New-traditionalist” artists were definitely carving out a moment that would only expand soon enough.  The Judds briefly ditched their bluesier inclinations for the dreamy country balladry of “Maybe Your Baby’s Got the Blues” (ironic?). Randy Travis stretched out syllables with his distinct baritone purr on “I Won’t Need You Anymore (Always and Forever),” mightily capitalizing on the attention “Forever and Ever Amen” brought upon him. Steve Wariner’s guitar picking was always worth some attention too, and “Lynda” showcased it as well as any. Generically upbeat on the surface, a closer listen reveals some quirkily clever lyricism. Back to the hard country stuff: Ricky Van Shelton benefited from the business’ renewed interest in timeless approaches, especially as delivered by good-looking young people. He was more Strait than Travis, just a touch of twang in his sturdy baritone, and he could sell the hell out of something as mournfully sharp as “Somebody Lied.”    

And the rest of the year would more or less follow the trend: Reba McEntire scored a serious winner with “The Last One to Know,” nailing every mournful note without veering into showoff territory, trusting a great song to almost sell itself. It was penned by Matraca Berg, who’d prove to be the go-to songwriter for the next decade-plus of singers looking for smart, emotive material with a distinct female perspective to it.  Then again, some folks like K.T. Oslin would just write their own. Oslin wasn’t a country purist; already middle-aged by the time she broke through, she’d done everything from playing folk gigs with Guy Clark to featuring in Broadway musicals. But she had a sharp, empathetic songwriting approach that was eminently relatable to her own demographic – a huge portion of the country radio audience, still – and good enough to transcend it.  “Do Ya” was equal parts sweet and salty, a come-on tempered with self-reflection.  It was followed by Highway 101’s first #1, “Somewhere Tonight,” a cross-generational co-write by no less than Harlan Howard and Rodney Crowell. Powered by the aching, gritty twang of lead singer Paulette Carlson, it was 1987’s last reassurance that country music’s future was in the capable hands of relative youngsters that hadn’t forgotten its past.

THE TREND?      

I bet at the time it felt like the whole “new traditionalist” thing was hitting its hard-earned peak, and perhaps not a moment too soon if the venerable likes of Conway Twitty, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton etc. were finally losing steam. George Strait, Reba McEntire, and the Judds all seemed to fit the movement and they were continuing to crest; newbies Randy Travis, Ricky Van Shelton, and Highway 101 certainly fit the bill too. And its not like the folks who’d wandered in from other genres were mucking things up, people like Dan Seals and KT Oslin and Michael Johnson were making smart, resonant stuff that earned its place. I bet a lot of discerning fans (not to mention the artists themselves) had high hopes that this new round of flagship artists was taking over. But in retrospect, although some of them were far from done, as a whole they were largely just setting the table for an even bigger wave just a couple of years down the road.

THE RANKING

1. All My Ex’s Live in Texas – George Strait
2. Kids of the Baby Boom – The Bellamy Brothers
3. The Way We Make a Broken Heart – Rosanne Cash
4. Somewhere Tonight – Highway 101
5. Forever and Ever, Amen – Randy Travis
6. I Won’t Need You Anymore (Always & Forever) – Randy Travis
7. Ocean Front Property – George Strait
8. The Last One to Know – Reba McEntire
9. What Am I Gonna Do About You – Reba McEntire
10. To Know Him is To Love Him – Dolly Parton/Emmylou Harris/Linda Ronstadt
11. Do Ya – KT Oslin
12. Fishin’ in the Dark – The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
13. A Long Line of Love – Michael Martin Murphey
14. Give Me Wings – Michael Johnson
15. Rose in Paradise – Waylon Jennings
16. Born to Boogie – Hank Williams Jr.
17. You Still Move Me – Dan Seals
18. I Can’t Win For Losin’ You – Earl Thomas Conley
19. Don’t Go to Strangers – T Graham Brown
20. I Know Where I’m Going – The Judds
21. Somebody Lied – Ricky Van Shelton
22. Am I Blue – George Strait
23. Maybe Your Baby’s Got the Blues – The Judds
24. This Crazy Love – The Oak Ridge Boys
25. Can’t Stop My Heart From Loving You – The O’Kanes
26. Lynda – Steve Wariner
27. Small Town Girl – Steve Wariner
28. Shine, Shine, Shine – Eddy Raven
29. Snap Your Fingers – Ronnie Milsap
30. Cry Myself to Sleep – The Judds
31. The Moon is Still Over Her Shoulder – Michael Johnson
32. Make No Mistake (She’s Mine) – Kenny Rogers & Ronnie Milsap
33. Why Does it Have to Be (Wrong or Right) – Restless Heart
34. That Was a Close One – Earl Thomas Conley
35. Three Time Loser – Dan Seals
36. I Will Be There – Dan Seals
37. I Know Where I’m Going – The Judds
38. Right From the Start – Earl Thomas Conley
39. It Takes a Little Rain (To Make Love Grow) – The Oak Ridge Boys
40. The Weekend – Steve Wariner
41. One Promise Too Late – Reba McEntire
42. You Again – The Forester Sisters
43. Leave Me Lonely – Gary Morris
44. You’ve Got the Touch - Alabama
45. I’ll Still Be Loving You – Restless Heart
46. Mornin’ Ride – Lee Greenwood
47. How Do I Turn You On – Ronnie Milsap
48. Baby’s Got a New Baby – S-K-O

DOWN THE ROAD ...

We're starting to get to the part where these songs aren't old enough to have been dusted off for revival by anyone more prominent than your local dancehall cover band (not saying you shouldn't check those guys out) so we're having to wrack our brains a little more on this section. On the upside, this gives me a chance to talk about Jerry Jeff Walker, a personal favorite and longtime dweller on the fringes of country music who doesn't come up often in a discussion of #1 hits but influenced multiple generations of budding songwriters and musicians, especially in his adopted home state of Texas. In the long victory-lap phase of his career, he recorded a few themed albums like 1998's Cowboy Boots & Bathing Suits, a stripped-down lark that sort of imagined what it'd be like if Jerry Jeff had followed an even more similar muse to his old pal and collaborator Jimmy Buffett. The 1987 Michael Johnson hit "The Moon is Still Over Her Shoulder" (written by country-pop maestro Hugh Prestwood) wasn't the most obvious thematic match, but it's sentimental dreaminess was welcome nonetheless. 

1986 - in your rhinestones and your sequins ...

Buckle in, folks.  We’re still in the era of having a new #1 every week; The Judds carried over from the last week of 1985 with “Have Mercy,” but that’d be about it as far as multiple-week runs at the top go for a full year and a half.  Lots to cover, and not to spoil it too much but a lot of this stuff has been mostly forgotten for good reason.

The year’s second hit, “Morning Desire,” isn’t half bad.  Only a little whiff of cheese, by Kenny Rogers standards, it’s a sincerely smoky number about wanting to hang around and make love instead of going to work. Relatable enough, even if it’s not one of the first dozen or so songs you’d think of if you think of Kenny Rogers.  Dan Seals, meanwhile,, scored himself a career high with “Bop.”  ’86 was going to be a big year for Seals; he’d had the #1 hit duet with Marie Osmond the previous year, and had a nice run on the pop charts as part of England Dan & John Ford Coley in the late ‘70s.  Repurposing himself as a country singer might seem cynical, but keep in mind that in the wake of folks like James Taylor and The Eagles, down-to-earth pop with strong country undertones was a pretty successful genre in itself; when the famously fickle larger pop-rock universe abandoned that trend, those artists still had bills to pay.  Don’t get me wrong, I still think “Bop” sounds like lame-ass boomer nostalgia, but man that song was all over the place, and Seals’ voice is by far the best part of it.  Retroactively it’s hard to believe it was only #1 for one week.

“Never Be You” was Rosanne Cash at her usual smart, slinky awesomeness, penned by no less a future rock god than Tom Petty.  “Just in Case” was chart newbies The Forester Sisters at their usual pleasant okayness, penned by no less a whatever than a couple of the 50 or so members of Exile. Juice Newton was still proving to be an industry survivor, dusting off an old Elvis throwaway called “Hurt” and giving it her gushy, big-hearted all.  Then we get “Makin’ Up For Lost Time (The Dallas Lovers’ Song)” from Gary Morris and Crystal Gayle – penned by Morris and fellow schlock king Dave Loggins – a bit of big-production generic pop tied in with the red-hot Dallas primetime soap opera.  Variety-show pop crossover Marie Osmond crashed the country chart party next with “There’s No Stopping Your Heart,” the video of which awakened an enduring crush in 9-year-old me. She still looks really good in those commercials you see on Fox News sometimes. The song’s just OK and could’ve just as easily been a Pat Benatar tune on the pop charts. So could the synth-heavy “Think About Love,” as tackled memorably by no less a superstar than Dolly Parton.  Steve Wariner had a pillowy-soft country-pop hit called “You Can Dream of Me” in between the two, so among his other accolades Wariner can say he was in between the 1986 versions of Marie Osmond and Dolly Parton. You can dream, indeed.

Then things get even more country-pop blah for awhile. Exile had a lot going on in “I Could Get Used to You,” with the combo of lite-funk and vaguely island-y inflections, but it still didn’t amount to much.  Dukes of Hazzard pinup John Schneider scored another trip to the top with “What’s a Memory Like You (Doing in a Love Like This)” and it’s not half bad, just kind of dreary, true country in spirit but without a Vern Gosdin-level vocalist to elevate it.  Lee Greenwood emoted his way through “Don’t Underestimate My Love For You,” trying to depict emotional struggle I guess but sounding more like he was having a hard time hitting the notes of a song that was scarcely worth it.  Broadway dude Gary Morris was up to the vocal dynamics of “100% Chance of Rain,” but it sounded like the result of an overly complicated songwriting exercise that didn’t leave much room for actual human emotion amid all the fancy chord changes and choppy lyrics.  Fortunately, Alabama swept in to show everyone how to nail that country-pop balance with the relatively cool and straightforward bounce of “She and I.”  That was also one of the most fun music videos of the era, with Teddy Gentry rocking a hipster beret/no-headstock bass combo and a genuinely hilarious parade of quirky character-actor couples strutting their stuff in between clips of the band tastefully rocking out.

Ricky Skaggs, who hadn’t hit #1 for awhile but was still totally in the mix, brought things back to undeniable country with the fiddle-sawing “Cajun Moon.”  Anne Murray dragged it back (politely, probably) to ill-defined monogenre with “Now and Forever (You and Me),” but as almost always, she landed on the tasteful side of things; it’s not without its shimmery charm.  Earl Thomas Conley scored one of his better ones with the grateful, self-deprecating “Once in a Blue Moon” and the Judds notched another signature song for themselves with “Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Ol’ Days).”  It seemed like kind of a sop to the seniors in the audience, a sweet little singalong about how past generations had a better grasp of morality, responsibility, and common sense than these damn dissolute kids nowadays.  I’m not usually one to buy the premise that deep-rooted societal ills are recent inventions, but I still like the song OK.

Hank Williams Jr. – who knows a thing or two about complicated heritages – was feeling nostalgic for something even older than his daddy’s catalog, cutting a warm, spare take on the old Fats Waller joint “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and doing it so convincingly you kind of wish he’d put out a Stardust of his own.  Kenny Rogers broke weird with “Tomb of the Unknown Love,” an incongruously jangly number about jilted lovers turning to murder, better than some of his other ‘80s output but its odd that it made it to #1.  Reba McEntire’s “Whoever’s In New England” seemed like a sure bet from the start, a perfectly produced portrait of admirably non-murderous jealousy, informed by modern big-production pop but firmly in the classic-country storytelling tradition. Like everything else that year, it only got one week atop the mountain, but to young me it seemed like this was the one that cemented her as the bonafide star that she still is.

Ronnie Milsap went back to the nostalgia well, at a point where he’d had hits long enough to theoretically be nostalgic for himself.  His take on the Tune Weavers’ old chestnut “Happy, Happy Birthday Baby” was sweet and straightforward enough, and by this point the oldies’ influence was probably running at a stronger current among country artists and audiences than it was on the rock & roll side of the dial.  Steve Wariner was hitting his stride with “Life’s Highway,” a warmly positive nugget of easy-to-follow philosophy.  The Forester Sisters, sort of forgotten by this point, continued to have a banner year with the smitten-kitten anthem “Mama’s Never Seen Those Eyes” breezing by pleasantly enough until Willie Nelson brought some gravity to the charts with “Living in the Promiseland.”  A cover of a song by lesser-known outlaw-country songwriter David Lynn Jones, it was a warmhearted, vaguely progressive ballad hoping for a little more peace, charity, and optimism in the world.  It kind of split the difference between Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA album and “We Are the World” (which Nelson also guested on), both of which were pretty recent smashes at that point.   

Dan Seals told a tighter-focused, more-specific story on “Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold),” a beautifully evocative number he co-wrote and delivered like his life depended on it, a winsome ballad of a single-dad cowboy trying to raise a kid on the road minus her rodeo-queen mama who moved on and couldn’t care less.  It gets at the complexity of lingering affections and deep disappointments, and Seals’ clear lonesome tenor is there for it every step of the way.  Lee Greenwood’s “Hearts Aren’t Made to Break (They’re Made To Love)” can’t hold a parenthese to it … not bad, just a little bland.  You could say the same about Judy Rodman’s “Until I Met You,” which I don’t remember at all but apparently was an old Loretta Lynn song refurbished into a sweet little country-folk vehicle for Rodman, an industry lifer who finally got a moment in the spotlight and was entirely back out of it a couple years later, working in production and songwriting.

The next few #1 singers wouldn’t be fading from the scene any time soon.  Randy Travis, in his own modest low-key way, was about to become a sensation. A onetime juvenile delinquent with a pretty wild backstory, he’d grown into at least being able to do an impression of a gentlemanly, uber-twangy baritone crooner, and a quirkily handsome one at that.  And unlike the crossover wannabes who’d hogged an undue share of the charts for well over a decade, Travis couldn’t have gone pop with a mouthful of firecrackers.  Listen to one line of any Randy Travis song and you’ll know that twang’s not gonna just wash off.  Kind of nasal in the Willie Nelson way, but deep and rangy as barrel-aged George Jones, he was every aging country purist’s dream wrapped in a package their kids might dig too.  He’d taken a brief run at a recording career in the late ‘70s, but as far as anyone cared, 1985’s Storms of Life was his debut album. “On the Other Hand” had been released earlier in the year but stalled out quick; when his second single, “1982,” cracked the top ten the table was better set for not only a re-release of “On the Other Hand” but really, the whole turn-of-the-decade country boom.  The song itself is a trip, in its own way.  A guy affectionately telling his paramour that he needs to get on back to his wife because that’s the right thing to do, which sort of seems like deciding you’re gonna unring a bell but it’s still a hell of a song.  

Fellow hard-country youngster George Strait, already well into it at this point, sounded much more convincingly repentant on the morosely compelling “Nobody in His Right Mind Would’ve Left Her,” yet another example of masterful songwriter Dean Dillon’s catalog fitting Strait’s heartfelt but un-showy delivery like a glove.  The Judds were more or less carrying a traditional-country torch alongside Strait and Travis (and John Anderson and Ricky Skaggs, although they were already slipping chart-wise) and “Rockin’ With the Rhythm of the Rain” had plenty of rootsy charm to go around.  Not much depth, but sometimes catchiness is its own reward.  I don’t know how much artistic control John Schneider was insisting on – he modestly refocused on acting pretty much the second his country music career lost momentum – but he kept things pretty firmly in the traditional-country vein with stuff like “You’re the Last Thing I Needed Tonight,” which ended up being his last #1.

“Last #1 song” was about to be a bit of a trend, though it’d still be a few years before anyone over 40 landing high on the chart would start to seem like a miracle.  TG Sheppard scored his last of 14 #1’s with “Strong Heart,” a pretty generic little devotional ballad that didn’t really play to his old-time swagger.  The venerable Don Williams scored his last #1 with “Heartbeat in the Darkness,” where some light-funk synth action felt like a pretty naked plea for modern relevance (the album was called New Moves), although to Williams’ credit his warm, winning personality remained intact.  He sounded more like a gracious older artist sitting in with a younger band than some cynical lifer trying to get one more lap out of a dead horse; glad to say Williams still had a few more years of at least top tens in him.  Even wilder, though, was Conway Twitty scoring what would be in retrospect his 35^th and final #1 hit with “Desperado Love.”  Despite having some of the usual ‘80s sheen, it was charming enough to be worthy of his talents; he’d have even better hits in the years to come, and was cracking the top 10 into the early ‘90s.  He was still a fairly recent chart presence when he passed away of unexpected but natural causes in June of 1993, only 59 years old.  It’s going to be weird to not bring him up repeatedly in every column going forward.

Reba McEntire still had more than plenty in the tank, of course.  “Little Rock” was more sass than substance, sort of a “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” update about a rich man’s wife deciding he’s bad at sex and affection so it’s time to ditch the diamond ring (the titular little rock).  I bet the wives of some of the industry honchos could relate, but it seems weirdly chipper and self-satisfied.  Back to the last hurrahs … John Conlee scored his 7^th and final #1 with the variety-show bounce of “Got My Heart Set On You,” another catchy but kinda-empty number that couldn’t hold a candle to his empathetic best work.  He was about to take a steep slide back down the charts, although to his credit he remains an in-demand live performer even on the backside of 70.    

Ronnie Milsap had been riding the charts even longer than Conlee but still had a healthy handful of #1s left in him.  “In Love” was an obvious detour from the retro bent of his last couple of hits, about as generic a slice of ‘80s easy listening as one could ever hope for.  Janie Fricke followed John Conlee’s suit by scoring her seventh and final #1 with “Always Have, Always Will,” a slightly-retro torch tune, sung with gusto but a bit hokey around the edges.  She and Conlee filled kind of a similar niche in their heyday; new acts in the late-‘70s with distinct voices and relatable, unabashedly suburban middle-aged vibes.  Even the lovely Fricke wasn’t presented as glamorous, and while they both drew off of traditional country they didn’t try to pass themselves off as rustic survivors in the Merle Haggard or Loretta Lynn vein.  And while they probably both had more to offer, they at least stuck around long enough to help define the era, and memorably enough to still be marketable live acts on the road decades later.   

Eddie Rabbitt and Juice Newton were both doing their damnedest not to fall out the back themselves, covering a song spawned by the soap opera Days of Our Lives knowing damn well there was probably some significant demographic overlap.  As country-pop cheese goes, it’s pretty memorable, a candlelit earworm for the ages with Newton’s gushy delivery bringing out a little extra spark from Rabbitt.  Newton would continue the trend of singers notching their last #1, while Rabbitt still had a little of that Milsap stamina in him. 

Tanya Tucker, meanwhile, was enjoying an all-too-rare comeback story.  The onetime teen sensation hadn’t had a big hit in ten years by 1986; her relationships with older artists like Glen Campbell and Merle Haggard had been Music City gossip fodder (although the men were somehow never called out on their questionably legal bullshit) and she’d spent a few lost years in L.A. trying to go pop-rock.  She was still well shy of 30 in ’86 but had the backstory to give a lament like “Just Another Love” some extra gravitas, not to mention the voice to give an upbeat ditty enough grit to put it over the top.  Happy to report that she had another decade-plus worth of hits in the tank and is widely acknowledged as a legend today, if you didn’t already know.   

You can’t spell Crystal Gayle without “Cry,” and her version of the 1951 Johnnie Ray hit was a typically classy slice of retro balladry.  Her chart run was uninterrupted relative to Tucker, but it was about to wrap up along with the rest of the era-definers we’ve already mentioned.  Exile was going to stick around a short while longer, like it or not, and to be fair some of those future hits would be better than the weightless “It’ll Be Me.”  One of them would be their mission statement: “Keep it in the Middle of the Road.”  I wonder if they were in on the joke on that one.  Randy Travis took a much dustier road, scoring another promising nod to country music’s new directions with the ruefully clever details of “Diggin’ Up Bones,” a lonesome number about sifting through the souvenirs of a busted marriage.  Like a lot of Randy Travis songs, it’s hard to imagine any other voice giving it the gravity it deserves.

Restless Heart, by contrast, tended to sound pleasantly anonymous.  They were more about the harmonies than the personality, and “That Rock Won’t Roll” was the first of several big hits that landed somewhere in the continuum between Alabama and Exile, a less-decadent echo of The Eagles country-pop-rock multiplatinum mishmash. Fun fact: Verlon Thompson was briefly the original lead singer for Restless Heart; he was done by the debut record, but if you were ever wondering if there was a Restless Heart-Guy Clark connection then there you go. Genre-hopping collaborators Marie Osmond and Paul Davis wandered back to the country charts for another score with “You’re Still New to Me,” which is plenty cheesy around the edges but nicely detailed in the writing and country enough that it’s not hard to imagine Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn making a little more out of it. Not to grade on a curve, but the usually-reliable Alabama came off a bit ridiculous with a song called “Touch Me When We’re Dancing,” which sounds like the title of a joke record from a Will Ferrell movie.

George Strait was a better steward of his own talents as 1986 drew to a close, going to the Dean Dillon well again with the mature hurt of “It Ain’t Cool to Be Crazy About You.” If you’d like a lesson in how to craft a sophisticated melody and still maintain an air of hard-country soul, listen closely. T. Graham Brown proved to be a promising #1 entry, with the soulful blast of “Hell and High Water.” Brown had been knocking around the bar circuit and making ends meet with commercial jingles for years at this point, and Capitol Records finally made a bet on pushing him as a radio artist. He didn’t have a dominant run or anything, but amidst all the whitebread crossover stuff it was nice to have someone obviously rooted in blues and soul to spice things up a bit. Plus he has a son named Acme Geronimo Brown, which is awesome.

But what’s unintentionally comical is how, closing out a year in which every damn week had a new #1 hit, the last two were efforts to see how many vocalists you could squeeze into one song (not counting the likes of “We Are the World”).  Both of the Bellamy Brothers and all four of the Forester Sisters had a hit sextet (har har) with the ironically named “Too Much is Not Enough.” The circumstances being amusing doesn’t mean the song sucks; it’s breezy, bouncy and likeable, a nice ray of sonic sunshine for a late December. You could say the same for the only-slightly-ornery “Mind Your Own Business.”  Hank Williams Jr. was well past his childhood days of being more or less forced to copy his dad’s old songs, but remained a fan of tackling them on his own terms.  This time his own terms entailed enlisting as eclectic a crew as you’d expect to hear on an old country record: fellow outlaw country legend Willie Nelson, burgeoning country superstar Reba McEntire, in-his-prime rock star Tom Petty, and sort-of-famous prosperity gospel preacher Reverend Ike, for some reason. I seriously doubt they crammed them all in the studio at once, but they all brought their own burst of personality to a timeless Hank Williams song and rode it to #1 as 1986 turned to 1987. Considering all the watery mess we had to wade through to get there, I’m gonna call that a victory.   

THE TREND?

Even looking at that subjective top ten down there, you might get the hint that ’86 was kind of a weak year. Never sorry to see Willie and Dolly, but that’s not their best work. Strait, Seals, Reba and new kid Randy Travis sweeten the pot, albeit with some fairly morose stuff. And once you ease outside the top 15 or so your tolerance for whitebread crossover filler gets severely tested. To be fair, Nashville seemed to realize this was becoming a problem: if you somehow made it through the whole article, you’ll see that plenty of longtime chart presences notched their last #1 hit in 1986. Not that the likes of John Conlee and Janie Fricke were the worst offenders or anything, but young fans that wrote that stuff off as their parents’ music might notice. As a reminder that lists of #1s don’t tell the whole story, keep in mind that the insurgent Randy Travis was the most conventionally-appealing of a whole eclectic raft of youngsters that the major record labels were betting on around this time: Dwight Yoakum, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, and k.d. lang were getting hired for the sort of quirky artistic visions that would’ve gotten them quickly dismissed in a less adventurous time. Earle dubbed it “The Great Credibility Scare,” a small pile of country-radio newbies that even a jaded rock critic or budding music snob could love, eschewing mainstream pop appeals for deeper roots and weirder routes. You won’t see much of this reflected at the top of the charts just yet, but the ground was shifting underneath it and things were arguably about to take a turn for the better.                 

THE RANKING 

1. Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold) – Dan Seals
2. It Ain’t Cool to Be Crazy About You – George Strait
3. Nobody in His Right Mind Would’ve Left Her – George Strait
4. Living in the Promiseland – Willie Nelson
5. On the Other Hand – Randy Travis
6. Whoever’s In New England – Reba McEntire
7. She and I – Alabama
8. Once in a Blue Moon – Earl Thomas Conley
9. Think About Love – Dolly Parton
10. Never Be You – Rosanne Cash
11. Diggin’ Up Bones – Randy Travis
12. Hell and High Water – T. Graham Brown
13. Mind Your Own Business – Hank Williams Jr. (with Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Tom Petty & Reverend Ike)
14. Heartbeat in the Darkness – Don Williams
15. Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Hank Williams Jr.
16. Too Much is Not Enough – The Bellamy Brothers and The Forester Sisters
17. Just Another Love – Tanya Tucker
18. Life’s Highway – Steve Wariner
19. Hurt – Juice Newton
20. Bop – Dan Seals
21. Morning Desire – Kenny Rogers
22. Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Ol’ Days) – The Judds
23. Desperado Love – Conway Twitty
24. You’re the Last Thing I Needed Tonight – John Schneider
25. Rockin’ With the Rhythm of the Rain – The Judds
26. There’s No Stopping Your Heart – Marie Osmond
27. Cajun Moon – Ricky Skaggs
28. What’s A Memory Like You (Doing in a Love Like This) – John Schneider
29. You Can Dream of Me – Steve Wariner
30. Until I Met You – Judy Rodman
31. Cry – Crystal Gayle
32. That Rock Won’t Roll – Restless Heart
33. You’re Still New To Me – Marie Osmond with Paul Davis
34. Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers) – Eddie Rabbitt & Juice Newton
35. Makin’ Up for Lost Time (The Dallas Lovers’ Song) – Crystal Gayle & Gary Morris
36. Just in Case – The Forester Sisters
37. Always Have, Always Will – Janie Fricke
38. Touch Me When We’re Dancing - Alabama
39. Hearts Aren’t Made to Break (They’re Made to Love) – Lee Greenwood
40. Strong Heart – TG Sheppard
41. Mama’s Never Seen Those Eyes – The Forester Sisters
42. Little Rock – Reba McEntire
43. Tomb of the Unknown Love – Kenny Rogers
44. Now and Forever – Anne Murray
45. Happy Happy Birthday Baby – Ronnie Milsap
46. Got My Heart Set on You – John Conlee
47. 100% Chance of Rain – Gary Morris
48. I Could Get Used to You – Exile
49. It’ll Be Me - Exile
50. Don’t Underestimate My Love For You – Gary Morris
51. In Love – Ronnie Milsap

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Modern country artist Cody Johnson came up in the kinda-scruffy environs of the Texas bar-band country scene alongside the Randy Rogers Band, Josh Abbott, Wade Bowen et al but he expanded his reach to become a first-call favorite to the rodeo circuit crowd and, eventually, a major-label awards-winning mainstream country star of sorts. Some might consider him a bit retro - he's young enough that Garth Brooks and mid-90s George Strait would be retro in his book - and his healthy respect for recent-past country stars led to a collaboration with fellow rodeo-rooted singer Reba McEntire ("Dear Rodeo") and a solo acoustic cover of her "Whoever's in New England." It might not have been the most obvious '80s country smash for him to take a run at but it held up fine in all the stripped-down, gender-flipped panache Johnson could give it.