1975 seemed to start off with an attitude along the lines of “hey 1974 was pretty good, let’s just do that again!” It wasn’t a perfect copy. George Jones inaugural #1 “The Door” might have a similar feel and theme to his previous-year landmark “The Grand Tour,” but it doesn’t share its grace. Billy “Crash” Craddock’s “Ruby Baby” is a fun cover of an old Drifters song but it doesn’t transcend nostalgia. “Kentucky Gambler” is certainly adequate as an uptempo Merle Haggard story-song but it doesn’t have the ornery rip of “Old Man From the Mountain.” And “I’d Be A Legend In My Time,” repurposed for 1975 by a young Ronnie Milsap, is one of those songs that always ends up on classic-country compilations but just rings a bit more hollow than its contemporaries, somehow. “City Lights” is a much better song, but Mickey Gilley’s cover of it feels pretty dashed-off next to the definitive Ray Price version.
Unlike
a decade or so prior, though, if you’re underwhelmed by any particular 1975 #1
then for the most part you’ve only got to put up with it for a week. It’s nice to see Charley Pride back in the #1
mix after about a year’s absence, and “Then Who Am I” is a strong entry in the
canon of his prime. Like most Pride
songs, it doesn’t kick up a ton of heat, but there’s a plainspoken commitment
to melody and lyric there that always serves the song and the singer well. TG Sheppard got his first run at #1 with the
self-recriminating “Devil in the Bottle,” a convincingly-belted big melody
about a repentant boozehound losing his grip.
His style would get smoother and more confident with age, but at the
time he was playing haunted drunkard pretty well.
Tom
T. Hall continued to score on his own stoic-yet-clever terms, this time with “I
Care” off of his kid-friendly Songs From Fox Hollow album. Sung from the POV of a sympathetic, doting
dad or grandpa, the warm specificity of the lyrics kept the cloying aftertaste
at bay as well as anyone could ever hope to.
The oft-forgotten Cal Smith slipped in behind him for his third and
final run at #1, and last round in the Top 10 in general, “It’s Time to Pay the
Fiddler.” A solid song with a strong
metaphor about the impending end of an affair, it was buoyed even more by
Smith’s booming drawl that really warrants a rediscovery. “Linda On My Mind” found Conway Twitty similarly
musing about the affair that’s about to blow up in his face, while across the
nation husbands of women named Linda who’d been anywhere in the vicinity of
Conway Twitty over the past two years found great difficulty sleeping at night.
If
1974 was the year that Dolly Parton broke away from the pack with two
genre-defining hits, 1975 was sort of that year for Freddy Fender. His cultural impact was much smaller in the
long run, but speaking of culture, there was a bit of novelty in his
Mexican-American heritage. Yes, Johnny
Rodriguez was practically a regular on the country charts by now, and Charley
Pride proved that at least the occasional black person could succeed in a
largely white genre, but unlike those two gentlemen Fender really sounded
like his culture. Even if he wasn’t
singing half the song in Spanish, it’d be hard to miss the Tex-Mex
distinctiveness in Fender’s accent, delivery, instrumentation, pacing, you name
it on “Before the Next Teardrop Falls.”
Both a touch exotic (at least if you lived north and/or east of Austin,
TX) and entirely relatable, it was undeniable enough to top both the country
and pop charts in 1975, a precipitous upgrade for a once small-time nightclub
singer whose initial successes were stalled out by a weed possession conviction
that probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the, um, culture. But suddenly the man born as Baldemar Huerta
was on a roll … more on him later.
Parton’s
roll wouldn’t be over for at least a decade or so (or, arguably, ever) and she
scored again with “The Bargain Store” which, like George Jones aforementioned
“The Door,” wasn’t terrible but was burdened with a central concept that fell
on the wrong side of anchoring a song versus just weighing it down. Plus, although her presentation back then was
more modest, it’s hard to imagine the eventual hypersexy curvaceous millionaire
icon having to temper her own romantic expectations to a Dollar General level. George Jones could sell the hell out of
hopelessness. Conway Twitty and even Tammy
Wynette could too. Parton could handle
humility, but straight-up humiliation might’ve been one of the few things out
of her grasp.
Johnny
Rodriguez’ “I Just Can’t Get Her Out of My Mind” was a solid and sincere if
generic chart king for a week before Merle Haggard scored one of his most
memorable hits, the beautifully miserable “Always Wanting You.” Supposedly it was penned about his unrequited
love for the frequently-mentioned Dolly Parton, and honestly that’s truer to
the Dolly story than that “Bargain Store” number ever could be. This is not some poor woman begging for
affection, this is someone that stone-cold legends write heartsick
number-one songs about.
The
less-remembered Billie Jo Spears scored her most-remembered hit in 1975 with
“Blanket On the Ground,” an uber-twangy ode to rekindled marital lust. It’s a worthwhile sentiment that other songs
like Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” managed to actually make sound sexy,
whereas “Blanket” just doesn’t. Between
the cornpone delivery and ramshackle beat, it’s about as hot as watching your
parents hook up. Joe Stampley sounded
considerably more romantically engaged on “Roll On Big Mama” even though I’m
pretty sure his POV is a trucker singing about his big rig. It was probably at least the best trucker
song of the year, albeit by far not the biggest (we’ll get to that).
Next
up was Gary Stewart, a man who had many troubles but sounding 100% invested in
whatever song he happened to be singing wasn’t one of them. It was all wild, lusty elation or deep
despair for Stewart; unlike some of his contemporaries that finally scored a
chart-topper after a decade or two in the trenches, Stewart was a relatively
new chart presence, having cracked the Top 10 for the first time just the
previous year. “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m
Drinkin’ Double)” not only had an awesomely memorable title, it just raged out
of the speakers with heartsick, steel-laced conviction. He’d never quite hit the Top Ten again
(despite a few close ones), much less #1, but he’s certainly one of those
artists whose legacy is much bigger in practice than it is on paper. If jukebox play still figured into the
Billboard charts, he’d probably still crack the Top 10 today.
BJ
Thomas’ “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” had a
pretty memorable title too, and so far holds the record for the longest song
title to top the Billboard charts in both country and pop. The crossover appeal is pretty obvious: it’s
an eminently hummable little number, as easy to imagine Neil Diamond tackling
it as Conway Twitty, and Thomas always split the difference between the two
pretty intuitively. It’s a bit
weightless, but they can’t all be catharsis.
Jessi Colter’s breakthrough “I’m Not Lisa” earned some crossover love
too, getting as high as #4 on the overall pop charts, a well-observed tale of
living in the shadow of a partner’s former love. Good grown-up stuff right there.
The
crossover hits kept coming, with John Denver’s “Thank God I’m A Country Boy”
straddling the country and pop charts on a hayride to #1. I’m not going to sit here and pretend it’s
not catchy, or that it wasn’t kind of ballsy to release the stripped-down live
version as the single, or that his delivery doesn’t show talent and
conviction. But at least to these ears,
it sounds hokey and pandering, with the whole “life ain’t nothin’ but a funny
funny riddle” line as a particular irritant.
He sounded sincere enough giving more-subdued shout-outs to the rustic
life on other, better hits. Guess it’s
not nice to begrudge him picking up the tempo a bit. I’m retroactively surprised it was only #1
for one week.
I’m
also surprised it was displaced by Mickey Gilley’s take on “Window Up
Above.” Speaking of ballsy … George
Jones, the song’s writer and original singer, was still alive and right up
there on the charts with him (if not exactly “alive and well”). It’s a solid tune that was given extra
dimension by Jones’ legendarily emotional delivery. Gilley typically didn’t have that extra
dimension to give, but he nevertheless scored again and again with smoothed-out
versions of country, pop, and soul classics.
If you happened into some dancehall and the cover singer onstage was as
talented as Mickey Gilley, you’d count yourself lucky. But I’m still not sure what it was doing
topping the charts.
#1-debuting
Linda Ronstadt recorded a ton of covers too, but she had more of a knack of
bringing something new to them, like the Everly Brothers “When Will I Be
Loved.” It was brassier, sexier, and
groovier than the original, with a little of that L.A. studio gloss but no
shortage of country/R&B heart underpinning it. Even more so than her Laurel Canyon peers,
she had it in her to shake up whatever charts she chose to take aim at; by some
accounts she’s still among the top ten album sellers in country music history,
albeit with a bit of an asterisk of just how many of those were necessarily
“country” albums.
Unmistakable
non-crossover country took back over for a while. Don Williams “You’re My Best Friend” wasn’t
necessarily his best song, but it was a nice respite from the hard-drinking
heartache numbers like TG Sheppard’s “Tryin’ To Beat the Morning Home,” which
was a near-clone of his breakthrough from earlier in the year in terms of
theme, sound, and melody. Not a bad
song, just a bit redundant. Teenaged
Tanya Tucker scored with another oddball story song, albeit more wholesome than
most of her other early hits; if “Lizzie and the Rainman” sounds sort of like a
soundtrack to a family-friendly quasi-western that doesn’t exist, it’s because
it was loosely based on an old 1956 Katherine Hepburn movie. Merle Haggard wasn’t one to jump on a trend,
usually, but his chug-a-lugging “Movin’ On” fit nicely with the
trucker-friendly zeitgeist that’d culminate as ’75 drew to a close.
Conway
Twitty struck again, but on an uncharacteristically sour note with “Touch the
Hand.” Yeah, he still sings the hell out
of it, and it sounds nice on the surface, but the whole creepy undertone of
“hey, I took your virginity, so you more or less belong to me forever now”
makes it really hard to sympathize with the about-to-be-dumped narrator. It’d be nice to dispense entirely with songs
that use “made a man/woman of me” as doublespeak for one’s first go-round at
sex, as if it’s just that simple. It’s
not as bad as his eventual non-hit “I Was The First” but it’s on the way
there. Johnny Rodriguez’ “Just Get Up
and Close The Door” was kind of morally suspect too – a married woman’s
paramour is pleading with her to just stick around a little longer – but it
lands on the non-creepy side of skeevy, thanks in large part to one of the best
vocal performances Rodriguez ever committed to tape, somehow making the back
door man into a sympathetic figure.
His
fellow Hispanic country star Freddy Fender came roaring back to the top,
basically covering himself with a revamp of “Wasted Days & Wasted Nights,”
his self-penned masterpiece that had been a minor hit before his first career
run was derailed back in the ‘60s. This
time it got the adulation it deserved, a swooning blend of Tex-Mex and swamp-rock
that still holds up with the best of any era.
Glen Campbell reasserted himself on the country charts with the
crossover hit “Rhinestone Cowboy,” which was a little more state-of-the-art in
its anthemic country-pop sweep but has also held up nicely. It managed to hold on for two weeks and then
boomerang back to the top a couple weeks later in an era where that sort of
thing had become exceedingly rare.
Conway
and Loretta Lynn took over for a week with “Feelins,” a pretty sweet (if
slight) bit of steel-drenched country harmony that thankfully ditched the
telephone gimmick from their last hit and the creepy shit from Twitty’s last
solo smash. Ronnie Milsap scored another
early-career-peak hit with “Daydreams About Night Things,” about as wholesome a
song about spending one’s entire day sexually distracted as you could ever hope
for. And then, as October hit, we got
Willie Nelson’s first #1 hit.
“Blue
Eyes Crying in the Rain” is a slow-moving song.
It’s spare and poetic and the production on Willie’s recording doesn’t
do anything to sweeten it up, at least in the ‘70s-radio-friendly sense; it
sounds like a very small group of guys jamming on a back porch but doing it
really quietly so they won’t wake sleeping babies in the house. And it’s transcendentally wonderful. The song hitting number one was sort of a
by-product of an even bigger story of the song’s album Red Headed Stranger
breaking country album sales records on the strength of Nelson’s ludicrous
gamble: maybe all the nice suits and crisp production and other assorted
trappings of conventional wisdom that had earned him only modest success (at
least as a singer …. as a songwriter he was already something of a legend) were
seriously holding him back. After a few
years of declaring some independence and tinkering with the formulas, he went
full outlaw on Red Headed Stranger and it turned out being exactly what
the world needed out of Willie Nelson (and vice versa). They just hadn’t thought to ask. In the years to come, Nelson would shift gears
from artist to icon, change a lot of people’s ideas about what a country star
looked and sounded like, change the relationship of his home state of Texas to
the Nashville mainstream, and all along the way be emboldened to try various
things that shouldn’t have worked but did.
Charley
Pride continued to blaze his own unconventional trail with conventionally good
songs: the sunny, optimistic “Hope You’re Feelin’ Me Like I’m Feelin’ You” was
another keeper. Tanya Tucker followed up
with the wholesome, bouncy, vaguely annoying “San Antonio Stroll.” It’s weird that she kicked off her career
with some seriously dark balladry and then shifted gears for a couple of
harmless 1975 hits … usually you win them over with the crowd-pleasers and then
hit ‘em with the dark shit. Don Williams
remained wary of the (figuratively) dark shit himself; “(Turn Out the Light
And) Love Me Tonight,” like most of his classics, embraces the complexity of
adult love but still couches it in warm optimism.
John
Denver had another run atop the country and pop charts with “I’m Sorry,” which
for once was not specifically about rural lifestyle but more a conventional
relationship ballad. Despite (or maybe
because of) some oddball lyrics about China and whatnot thrown in there, it’s a
very pretty song and holds up fairly well.
Waylon Jennings’ “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” was a less pretty
song, specific to the musician lifestyle and repeatedly referencing a star
who’d been dead for 23 years, but it’s held up timelessly. It’s not always clear if it’s bemoaning
change, demanding it, or just acknowledging it.
Maybe it’s all three, indicative of a commercial music business that
never really knows what it wants but never stops asking for more. It’s world-weary yet energized, hard-eyed yet
soulful. Somewhere there’s a bar band
covering it right this minute (it helps that it’s just two chords).
Meanwhile,
“Rocky” by Dickey Lee has vanished almost completely from the public memory, as
far as I can tell. It’s not bad, just a
brisk and jangly three-part story that (spoiler alert) ends with the untimely
death of one half of a still-young couple just when you’re really starting to
like them. Maybe it was sucked into a
black hole of novelty by the year’s final #1.
Merle Haggard’s “It’s All in the Movies” is still generally and
sort-of-fondly remembered, so I guess it escaped, but does anyone remember
“Secret Love” nearly as much as Freddy Fender’s two earlier 1975 hits? It’s not bad at all, but kind of a secret
song by now, if you will. Same with
Johnny Rodriguez’ “Love Put a Song In My Heart,” which is kind of bland, but
did it deserve to disappear?
It's
entirely possible (please don’t double-check this with an astrophysicist) that
the year-ending #1 song, CW McCall’s “Convoy,” created a big-ass chintzy black
hole of weird, incongruous novelty that just sucked “Rocky” and everything
after it into some other dimly-remembered dimension. It rolled hard over the last two weeks of
1975 and then even harder over the first four weeks of 1976. Some guy no one had ever heard of with a
jarring, often-chirpy trucker saga pulled some mid-‘60s Buck Owens shit and
hugged that #1 lane for six weeks straight.
But since most of it’s run was in 1976, we’ll just figure out how
exactly the hell we’re gonna rank it then.
THE
TREND?
It would still be a decade before the Bellamy Brothers had a country hit about an “Old Hippie” who “gets off on country music/’cause disco left him cold.” But looking at some of the moving & shaking going on in the 1975 country charts, one wonders if a hearty chunk of the listeners were once at-least-vaguely-counterculture teens and young adults who had to ditch the tie-dyes and get a job at some point. Now they were raising families and leading a surface-level-conservative life, so country music maybe didn’t seem like the soundtrack of the enemy anymore (if it ever did). Their old rock & roll heroes had died off and burned out to an upsetting degree. Pop radio was turning into a mishmash of soft rock and disco. If they gave country music a shot, they probably wouldn’t be as scandalized as some older listeners by black and Hispanic stars, or rowdy longhairs like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, or enterprising pop interlopers like Glen Campbell and Linda Ronstadt. Or, perhaps, even whatever the hell “Convoy” was.
THE RANKING
- Before the Next Teardrop Falls (Freddy Fender)
- Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain (Willie Nelson)
- Wasted Days and Wasted Nights (Freddy Fender)
- She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles) (Gary Stewart)
- Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way (Waylon Jennings)
- When Will I Be Loved (Linda Ronstadt)
- Always Wanting You (Merle Haggard)
- Rhinestone Cowboy (Glen Campbell)
- Just Get Up and Close the Door (Johnny Rodriguez)
- Linda On My Mind (Conway Twitty)
- Kentucky Gambler (Merle Haggard)
- (Turn Out the Light) And Love Me Tonight (Don Williams)
- Feelins (Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty)
- Devil In the Bottle (TG Sheppard)
- I’m Not Lisa (Jessi Colter)
- Then Who Am I (Charley Pride)
- It’s Time to Pay the Fiddler (Cal Smith)
- Ruby Baby (Billy “Crash” Craddock)
- I Care (Tom T. Hall)
- Movin’ On (Merle Haggard)
- Secret Love (Freddy Fender)
- I Just Can’t Get Her Out of My Mind (Johnny Rodriguez)
- Roll On Big Mama (Joe Stampley)
- You’re My Best Friend (Don Williams)
- It’s All in the Movies (Merle Haggard)
- (Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song (BJ Thomas)
- Lizzie and the Rainman (Tanya Tucker)
- Daydreams About Night Things (Ronnie Milsap)
- I’m Sorry (John Denver)
- Tryin’ to Beat the Morning Home (TG Sheppard)
- The Bargain Store (Dolly Parton)
- City Lights (Mickey Gilley)
- The Door (George Jones)
- Hope You’re Feelin’ Me (Like I’m Feelin’ You) (Charley Pride)
- Thank God I’m A Country Boy (John Denver)
- Rocky (Dickey Lee)
- Blanket On the Ground (Billie Jo Spears)
- I’d Be a Legend In My Time (Ronnie Milsap)
- San Antonio Stroll (Tanya Tucker)
- Love Put A Song In My Heart (Johnny Rodriguez)
- Window Up Above (Mickey Gilley)
- Touch the Hand (Conway Twitty)
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