Just call it nineteen-sixty-Buckaroo, folks.
Well,
let’s not oversimplify. Taking a look at
the rundown, it was just generally a good year for country music, and a banner
year in particular for one of its new favorite sons and innovators. “Love’s Gonna Love Here” kept the top spot
clamped down from mid-October 1963 to early February of 1964 after a tumultuous
supercollider of a chart year. He
must’ve stepped out for a smoke break, because Marty Robbins swung in and
grabbed it with a sonorous lament called “Begging to You,” a nice vocal
showcase as usual but not on the level of his past chart-grabbers. Stonewall Jackson, faded but resilient,
jumped back into the fray with the story song “B.J. the D.J.” that probably did
a little better at radio than it deserved thanks to making a disc jockey the
protagonist instead of just a means to an end.
#1 was still kicked back to Robbins after a week though.
Speaking
of slightly-faded, Lefty Frizzell – already a bit of an august presence, having
scored most of his hits in the pre-chart-consolidation days – made a comeback
with the rustic loveliness of “Saginaw, Michigan,” a solid-enough story song
that gets extra points for not only being Lefty’s actual first #1, but also
repeatedly rhyming Michigan with fisherman.
Having finally grabbed that brass ring, the honky-tonk innovator held it
for all of March before Johnny Cash’s hilariously ornery “Understand Your Man”
kicked down the door, put its dirty boots up on the kitchen table, and hung out
throwing cigarette butts on the floor and stealing Bob Dylan melodies for a
month and half before sauntering off into the late-spring heat for another case
of beer.
And
somebody had to clear that table, because it was Buck Owens time again. Already firmly established as a chart
presence, Buck was probably just showing off by hitting #1 with the spry,
swinging “My Heart Skips A Beat” for a few weeks before slowing things down a
bit by charting #1 with the heart-rending “Together Again” and, lest he leave a
crowd unhappy, just sticking “My Heart Skips A Beat” back up there for a
four-week encore. The implication that
the slower song’s run in the middle was analogous to, say, a heart skipping a
beat? Too damn cute, Buck. Settle the hell down.
If
he had to step aside for someone it might as well have been Roger Miller, just
a wild young pup at the time, grinning and scatting his way through the unforgettable
“Dang Me” for his first #1. Anyone who
might’ve filed him away prematurely under Sheb Wooley-esque novelty songs had
another thing coming; they’d know that in time, but it was already a good sign
that “Dang Me” dug its heels in for six weeks, the rare novelty song that
everyone still wanted to hear repeatedly a month later. “Roses are red and violets are purple/sugar’s
sweet and so’s maple syrup-pull …” Yeah
that holds up. Holds up real nice.
At
some point Jim Reeves called seniority on these rowdy kids; “I Guess I’m Crazy”
hit number one and leisurely camped there with its unintentionally ironic title
for seven weeks, an autumnal audio companion to falling leaves I suppose. It’s a bit tepid, but even great Jim Reeves
songs are kind of on the tepid side … the pervasive baritone guitar notes
distinguish it a bit, though. If it was
making you sleepy, Buck Owens was charging right back in with “I Don’t Care
(Just As Long As You Love Me),” which might sound tame to kids these days but
could rock a house from Bakersfield to Nashville back then. When it finally took a breather around
Thanksgiving, Connie Smith slipped in for her first #1 hit “Once A Day.” Clever and sorrowful, lilting and punchy, it
struck a few nice balances to close out the year and gave the future Mrs. Marty
Stuart a signature song that could last the rest of her career.
THE
TREND?
Well,
the trend is that Buck Owens & His Buckaroos were hot-shit chart-dominators
that only left a little room to breathe.
Other titans like Marty Robbins, Jim Reeves, and Lefty Frizzell (despite
his notable milestone) were seeming a little tame by comparison: to truly hang,
you had to bring some heat, whether it was Johnny Cash’s hyper-masculine
swagger or Roger Miller’s reckless, kinda-daft originality. Owens might not have re-invented fire with
the Bakersfield sound, but he certainly had a spark that not everyone was
capturing, and he was richly rewarded in the moment.
THE
RANKING
- Understand Your Man - Johnny Cash
- Together Again - Buck Owens
- Dang Me - Roger Miller
- My Heart Skips a Beat - Buck Owens
- Saginaw, Michigan - Lefty Frizzell
- I Don't Care (Just As Long As You Love Me) - Buck Owens
- Begging to You - Marty Robbins
- Once a Day - Connie Smith
- I Guess I'm Crazy - Jim Reeves
- B.J. the D.J. - Stonewall Jackson
1.
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