1960 - the short list

With the ‘60s counter-culture just around the corner, Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” kept it’s fatally beautiful death grip on the charts into February before yielding to a mournful but decidedly lower-stakes successor, Jim Reeves’ “He’ll Have to Go.”  A master class in dreamy yet mature baritone vocal control, Reeves’ most-remembered hit was a closer cousin to the crooner balladry of Frank Sinatra than the hillbilly laments of Hank Williams.  It was an early glimpse into the “countrypolitan” approach that would grow in dominance as the country music industry increasingly wrote off the younger generation as lost to rock & roll and decided to double down on the easy-listening aspects of the genre, hopefully winning over some new shares of the adult listeners that were shaken off of pop radio by those damn noisy kids.  Unlike some of those 1959 oddballs, its crossover potential made total sense; it went as high as #2 on the Hot 100 and still resonates.  A cheating song from the POV of the cheated-upon – or, to be fair, maybe just a potential suitor about to lose his spot – it’s almost weird in its sense of mature reserve, with Reeves’ gift for suitably coloring the edges with a timeless kind of hurt.

Hank Locklin’s “Please Help Me I’m Falling” took over from Jim Reeves’ monumental 14-week run at #1 with a 14-week run of its own.  It’s similar in tempo, just as melodically solid and subtly poetic, but key differences here: for one, this time the narrator’s on the verge of doing a little cheating himself, and he doesn’t feel great about it.  Also, Locklin’s tenor twang is in no danger of being mistaken for a smooth Rat Pack type: it’s all guilt-ridden hillbilly here, pop charts be damned.

So with about seven months taken up by those slow-moving (if evergreen) laments, Cowboy Copas’ “Alabam” (which took over for a five-week run in late August) must have sounded like “Hey Ya” blasting out of the speakers when it hit.  1960 country music’s slightly-belated song of the summer, it’s a catchy bit of boom-chicka-boom vignettes from a guy who was already a couple decades into the music career that would be unfortunately overshadowed when he and fellow kind-of-forgotten star Hawkshaw Hawkins were killed in the same plane crash that took Patsy Cline three years later.  It choogled back down the charts a few weeks later to make room for “Wings of a Dove,” an explicitly gospel waltz from established hitmaker Ferlin Husky that became his signature song and probably nestled in nicely with the more religious-specific Christmas tunes as November turned to December (and it hung in there well into January and made a brief February resurgence in the top spot).  It was less a repetitive, simplistic precursor to what would eventually become Christian pop-rock and more of a piece with country-gospel classics like “Amazing Grace” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”  Specific in its imagery and sweet in tone, it’s probably one of the few country classics of its day that hasn’t garnered many barroom covers, even though those sneakily propulsive drums and impassioned background singers give it more kick than you probably remember.  Give this one a fresh listen.

THE TREND:

Long stays at the charts for a small handful of dominant songs: two downbeat laments about adult cheaters, one hillbilly-folk choogler, and a good-natured Christian waltz tune.  All good stuff in retrospect, especially if you’re inclined to like country music, but also: you get a strong sense that any youth-driven record sales or request-line calls had migrated en masse to hang with the cool kids in the rock & roll section.

Also kind of interesting that none of these guys, despite the long chart runs, would likely be considered among the Top 25 or so country artists of anything other than their specific era.  Jim Reeves would probably come the closest, but of course it didn’t help that he and Copas’ lives were cut short by air crashes within a half-decade.  Husky and Locklin would go on to live long and seemingly happy lives but aside from their signature works seem somewhat lost to history.

THE RANKING:

1. He'll Have to Go - Jim Reeves
2. Wings of a Dove - Ferlin Husky
3. Please Help Me I'm Falling (Hank Locklin)
4. Alabam (Cowboy Copas)

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Unfortunately we won't get to discuss the late Hal Ketchum in this column much; "Small Town Saturday Night" might've been one of the bigger songs of the '90s but it somehow never quite tippy-topped the Billboard chart. So I'm gonna salute the guy while I can, a country-folk maestro with a hugely soulful and distinctive voice (not to mention a trailblazer for prematurely-gray dudes everywhere). RIP good sir, thanks for the tunes, even the occasional covers.

1.