1959 - don't leave the farm, son ...

The first proper year of a consolidated Billboard country music chart – charmingly bearing the now-outdated name “Hot C&W Sides” – started off with 1958’s leftover #1 hit “City Lights” by Ray Price.  The then-young Texas crooner and his band The Cherokee Cowboys made their name with a stripped-down, barroom-friendly sound that drew whatever sense of luxury it might’ve had in the early days from Price’s supple, sturdy baritone.  The twang was all in the fiddle and trebly guitar licks; as a singer, Price’s resonance and diction had more in common with the polished voice of a Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby than the hillbilly drawl of an Ernest Tubb or Hank Williams.  Penned by future chart presence Bill Anderson, the song’s lament of a good ol’ boy spiritually lost in the empty decadence of big city nightclubs would be a recurring theme for decades. 

Taking over January and most of February was Jim Reeves’ “Billy Bayou,” not as enduring of a number but another case of a smooth, relatable crooner giving a bit of uptown air to a straightforward stripped-down country track.  Catchy and full of regional signifiers but low on emotional resonance, it eventually gave way to Johnny Cash’s “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.”  Keeping the Western side of the equation relevant, it’s sort of an ornerier and higher-stakes answer to “City Lights” but this time, instead of an ongoing dissolution the protagonist meets a quick and violent end; either way, the message seems to be something along the lines of “don’t stray too far from the farm if you want to live long and well.”  Long #1 streaks briefly ended with Johnny Horton’s “When It’s Springtime In Alaska (It’s 40 Below),” sort of a twist itself on the theme: this time the country boy goes somewhere even more exotic in search of adventure and finds a quick, violent, and remote death in a frozen honky-tonk.  No less a future legend than George Jones then took over the perch from mid-April to mid-May with his first #1 “White Lightnin’,” and this time the country boy found plenty of adventure closer to home courtesy of the local moonshiner.  As propulsive and guitar-driven as any of the rockabilly numbers of the day, it was a rare blast of joy in a chart year that was leaning pretty dark.

Taking over from Jones and hanging on through late July – and crossing over to the all-genre Hot 100 #1 – was Johnny Horton with “The Battle of New Orleans.”  It was still pretty damn jaunty but thematically couldn’t have been more different: this time the country boys were at war, taking it to the British in 1814 with squirrel guns, muskets, and (if the narrator is to be believed) a fucking hand-held alligator.  Over 150 years removed from its subject matter, it was all glory and clever turns of phrase, a celebration of American pride and Southern resourcefulness, martial drumbeats spiked with catchy banjo licks and folksy descriptions of a bunch of defeated Brits who “ran through the brambles and they ran through the briars, ran through the bushes where the rabbits wouldn’t go.”  The only hit that could overtake it after 10 weeks sounds like a bit of a companion piece; Stonewall Jackson’s “Waterloo” had snippets of military-grade drumbeats and a historical theme, going back and forth between using Napoleon Bonaparte’s storied defeat as a metaphor and referencing it directly.  It’s as fatalistic as it is catchy, not exactly evergreen but an intriguing mix of folksiness and awareness that country songwriters nowadays probably wouldn’t attempt, much less master.

“The Three Bells” by the Browns echoed “Battle of New Orleans” in the sense of having a ten-week reign at #1 coupled with a shorter one atop the Hot 100.  A translation of the French folk-pop song “Las Tres Cloiches” that had been a pre-Billboard hit for Edith Piaf a decade earlier, it sounded like it bore some historical weight itself, in the sense that the narrative sounded like it could’ve happened 200 years ago or last week.  A warm and sentimental tracing of a man’s life through birth, marriage, and death at a presumably ripe old age, it was as much a gospel tune as a folk or country song, with an autumnal vibe that no doubt fit the season of its run. 

Faron Young’s “Country Girl” swept in like a bitter late-fall wind with lines like “then one day you learned too much, and it poisoned your sweet mind.”  Seemingly mostly upset that he bought the shoes and clothes that she was stepping out on him in, it’s a petty and non-descript blip on an otherwise-booming year for the genre (Young would have bigger and better hits eventually of course).  Ray Price took his spot back with a much more pathos-laden lost-love lament: “Same Old Me” epitomized the contemporary basics of the genre with its bittersweet fiddle-and-steel-guitar and honky-tonk backbeat, even if the decades have somewhat eclipsed it with even better Ray Price songs. 

1959 would wrap up on a note both more iconic and crossover-friendly.  By modern standards – hell, even by the standards of a decade or so later – it’s hard to fathom that the nationwide pop charts would be overtaken in one year by a hillbilly war ballad, a nursery-rhyme-ish adaptation of a French ballad, and a mariachi-fueled gunfighter broadside, but that’s exactly how Marty Robbins and “El Paso” wrapped the year up.  Between the brisk waltz tempo, the heady rush of Mexican guitars, and Robbins’ heavenly tenor narrating a sorrowful tale of lust, violence, and justice, it’s pretty astounding to think of what it must’ve been like to hear the saga of the hapless young cowboy, besotten into trigger-happy jealousy by the “wicked Felina” (to be fair, as far as we know all she did was share a drink with some other doomed vaquero) blasting through the radio with fresh ears.  It’s run at the top would extend into 1960, and its life as an unimpeachable classic might outlive us all.

THE TREND?

A disparate handful of tunes that don’t particularly resemble each other taking turns reaching out and taking over the pop charts by means that are a little hard to imagine nowadays.  Also, fair warning to all those good ol’ boys and the “country girls” they love: maybe don’t leave the farm.

THE RANKING

1. El Paso - Marty Robbins
2. White Lightnin' - George Jones
3. The Battle of New Orleans - Johnny Horton
4. City Lights - Ray Price
5. Waterloo - Stonewall Jackson
6. Don't Take Your Guns to Town - Johnny Cash
7. Same Old Me - Ray Price
8. The Three Bells - The Browns
9. When It's Springtime in Alaska, It's 40 Below - Johnny Horton
10. Billy Bayou - Jim Reeves
11. Country Girl - Faron Young

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Texas rock & rollers the Old 97s have been one of my very favorites for decades, seamlessly blending soulful gravity and clever wordplay with the occasional regular old shit-kicking good time. Their take on "El Paso" ended up on a soundtrack project for quintessential Texas TV show King of the Hill, wisely avoiding trying to match Marty Robbins note for note and instead just cranking it to eleven and letting the bullets fly.