1978 - knowin' what to throw away and knowin' what to keep ...

Folks who are fans of both country music and endless conflict often like to cast the genre as an ongoing war for its own soul between tradition/authenticity and pop-oriented carpetbaggers and compromisers. It’s an oversimplification, of course, and if you take the purists’ side it’s both an implicit discouragement of daring to try anything new and an implicit request that any artist who wants to participate should play anachronistic honky-tonk/string-band dress-up regardless of their own background in hopes of deserving the audience’s respect. Seems counterproductive, especially today where your choice of 100-proof country, old or new, is right there at your fingertips. But it persists.

And it was probably kind of a big deal circa 1978. Elvis Presley and Tom Jones had just scored #1 hits in ’77, were Wayne Newton and Siegfried & Roy going to be next? Guys like Kenny Rogers and Glen Campbell might’ve had country roots but their runs at the country charts after working in other genres seemed opportunistic, and their music leaned pop. Ronnie Milsap and other guys that kind of sounded like Ronnie Milsap were getting a big foothold. Even unmistakable country girls Dolly Parton and Crystal Gayle were scoring big with adult-contempo material that seemed to be trying hard not to sound rustic.

’78 sure started on a note of ornery authenticity: Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job And Shove It” (written by fellow talented miscreant David Allan Coe) was as mean a slice of blue-collar twang as you could hope to cook up, and it was a minor crossover phenomenon in spite of it. It wasn’t just a ditty, it was a statement, in an era where that was getting rare. Paycheck had been dishing up unfiltered honky-tonk for well over a decade and finally scored his big breakthrough. But it was immediately followed by the still-ascendant Ronnie Milsap with “What a Difference You’ve Made In My Life,” an almost annoyingly sunny ballad that straddled the line between modern gospel and adult pop. Already-legend Loretta Lynn, usually a monument of authenticity, split the difference with “Out of My Head and Back In My Bed,” which was unabashedly twangy (and frank) but had a decidedly Vegas/variety show razzle-dazzle to it. Newcomer Larry Gatlin might have been a West Texas good ol’ boy by heritage, but he was already blending his country roots with rich, fluffy, harmony-rich pop on “I Just Wish You Were Someone I Love” and would successfully stick to that vein for quite some time.

Margo Smith was a blip, relatively speaking, with the languid retro of “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” weightlessly blending country and old-fashioned pop; reportedly her stage shows were fun, but this is a big shrug of a #1. Much more enduring was Waylon & Willie ambling back into the spotlight with “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” a cover of bona fide cowboy songwriter Ed Bruce that’s aged like a fine bourbon even if you’ve heard it a million times by now. Both guys were far from done with the #1 spot for the year, and this one amiably yet ruggedly held down the fort there for a whole month. The surging Crystal Gayle snatched it back for a week with the brooding, spare “Ready for the Times To Get Better,” one of the best in a sneakily remarkable career.

Charley Pride was also not done. “Someone Loves You Honey” gave him a little more room than usual to stretch his voice, making the most of his warm tone and infusing it with even more personality than usual. Kenny Rogers, a relative upstart at the time, took over with a Dottie West duet “Every Time Two Fools Collide” that steers hard into soul-tinged pop, with only West’s twangy rasp giving it much of a country anchor. But they sing the absolute living hell out of it, finding a chemistry that makes genre largely irrelevant. Ditto with future Kenny collaborator Dolly Parton, next up with the slow-burn bittersweet romance of “Its All Wrong, But It’s All Right.” A bit forgotten just due to being overshadowed by her even-bigger hits, it’s due for a revival.

Johnny Duncan continued his admirable-I-guess commitment to singing about sleeping with his friends’ significant others with “She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed Anytime,” an unsubtle sentiment set to a nicely subtle swing. Country-gospel warhorses The Statler Brothers had been elegantly drifting in and out of the Top 10 for over a decade at this point but finally scored the top spot with the bittersweet chug-a-lug of “Do You Know You Are My Sunshine,” not really their best song but as always a nice showcase for some unimpeachable harmonies. Amidst the emerging outlaws and Twitty-esque horndogs, they were a bastion of wholesomeness as usual. Speaking of outlaws, Willie Nelson was up next with “Georgia On My Mind,” the leadoff single from his landmark Stardust album. Bold in its own way, it largely ditched the “outlaw” trappings that had bolstered his fame and instead did a deep dive into the sort of pre-rock standards associated with the Sinatras of the world. Fusing cocktail-lounge and honky-tonk had gone so poorly in less-tasteful hands over the years, but on-a-roll Willie nailed it with grace.

Emmylou Harris stepped out of her comfort zone a bit too, covering Texas blues-rocker Delbert McClinton’s “Two More Bottles of Wine” with more grit and groove than her usual serene songbird vibe allowed for. The Oak Ridge Boys stepped in to fill any perceived melancholy gap with the near-maudlin weeper “I’ll Be True To You,” a slow-burn tragic ballad (balledy? tragallad?) about a rakish man and his long-suffering off-and-on lover from a group that was sort of a slightly-darker Statler Brothers. Up next: look, I know I’m throwing “cocktail lounge” around a lot as a vibe here, but it sure seemed like a recurring one. Margo Smith’s “It Only Hurts For A Little While” is a nice song, nicely delivered, but it’s inescapably schmaltzy around the edges in ways that legends like Wynette and Parton largely managed to avoid or transcend. Mel Tillis is one sturdy country singer, but he couldn’t do much with the clunky sub-Sinatra “I Believe In You” (well, except have a #1 hit with it I guess). Ronnie Milsap inflated his schmaltzy “Only One Love In My Life” with arena-level vocal pyrotechnics and Elton John-level emoting, but it still sounds like background music at best. Kenny Rogers dove right into lounge-lizard loverman thematic territory with “Love or Something Like It,” which to be fair owed its aesthetic much more to catchy AM radio pop-rock with touches of clever country wordplay. Eddie Rabbitt eased things back into piano-bar territory with the sleepy “You Don’t Love Me Anymore” and Crystal Gayle kept them there with the gently elegant but not-especially-country-either “Talking In Your Sleep.” As mentioned, even the perpetually shaggy Willie Nelson was in lounge mode, but his engaging take on “Blue Skies” was evidence that country twang and pop/jazz sensibilities weren’t incompatible. These sorts of hybrids had been around since Eddy Arnold, Patsy Cline, Ray Price, you name it. It’s just hard to nail it tastefully enough to stand the test of time.

But anyhow, enough of this martini shit for a while, if you wanted something more akin to straight whiskey then Waylon Jennings was staying the course. A lot of us grew up with Waylon shaping our idea of what country music was, but in context he was bucking trends and starting new ones. Eventually the country music audience would sort of embrace rockers like the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, maybe even Neil Young and the Grateful Dead, but at the time the sort of wound-up guitar jams that break up “I’ve Always Been Crazy” were largely reserved for FM rock. While his peers were leaning drearily towards easy listening, Jennings had his eyes on the rock & roll arena, but was canny enough to still keep it recognizable as country music (and unmistakable as himself).

Dolly Parton, of course, also suffered no lack of personality and “Heartbreaker” was a low-key stunner of a tearjerker. She was gradually becoming among the most successful and iconic women across all genres of music, but she could play wounded and vulnerable with the best. Dave & Sugar were decidedly less iconic but still on an inexplicable roll … “Tear Time” was more easy listening dreck, unelevated by much soul or cleverness. “Let’s Take the Long Way Around the World” was more of the florid country-pop – increasing emphasis on the pop – that Ronnie Milsap was flying high with, but some of his stuff’s a little harder to dismiss just because he sounds so damn sincere in his dexterity. Even if you didn’t care for the direction sometimes it’s hard not to get swept up in the momentum.

Barbara Mandrell was/is a talented vocalist as well, but “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed” couldn’t have been cheesier if the 45s came wrapped in Velveeta. It’s the sort of late-70s genreless fluff that makes you wish they would’ve just gone full disco with it so at least the beat would’ve been good for something. Anyway, in context it was still good for a three-week run at #1, before ceding to forgettable numbers like the Kendall’s bouncy two-sider “Sweet Desire”/”Old Fashioned Love” and Eddie Rabbitt’s paint-by-numbers love ditty “I Just Want to Love You.” Charlie Rich, as could be expected, stoked a little more fire on a Janie Fricke duet called “On My Knees” that you never really hear anymore so I guess we could call it forgettable too (albeit at least worth a listen).

A classic was overdue at this point.  I know not every country fan – purists especially – consider Kenny Rogers to be timeless, but if they can’t give “The Gambler” its due they’re just being stubborn. Cannily straddling two trends, it was an outlaw-themed country song with a subtle but solid dose of layered AM pop production gloss, all tied together with one of Rogers’ more subtle and gritty vocal performances and plenty of pithy turns of phrase from songwriter Don Schlitz (who has more hits than most writers have songs). Rogers was already on a hit-heavy roll but he finally had a signature song, one that would be quoted and covered and made-TV-movies-outta for decades to come. ’78 was an up and down year, but somewhere in the night it finally at least broke even. And ended on an ace that it could keep.       

THE TREND?

If the 1977 Billboard Country Charts were a movie, 1978 was a lot like a sequel. Most of the same characters, same general vibe and premise. Some cast members opting out or not making the cut, a few new ones introduced and leaving varying impressions. And in the end it was worth a look but really not as good as the original. I had to hit the internet to jog my memory on more songs that usual for the 1978 entry, adding to the impression that it kind of ended up with the leftovers of the previous couple of years. Despite there being some nice outlaw-country prominence, there’s more pop/easy-listening stuff than I’d prefer, but might as well get used to it. That’s one trend that didn’t prove to be short-lived.

THE RANKING

1. Georgia On My Mind (Willie Nelson)
2. Two More Bottles of Wine (Emmylou Harris)
3. I’ve Always Been Crazy (Waylon Jennings)
4. Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys (Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson)
5. Heartbreaker (Dolly Parton)
6. The Gambler (Kenny Rogers)
7. Everytime Two Fools Collide (Kenny Rogers & Dottie West)
8. Blue Skies (Willie Nelson)
9. It’s All Wrong But It’s All Right (Dolly Parton)
10. Ready For The Times To Get Better (Crystal Gayle)
11. Take This Job and Shove It (Johnny Paycheck)
12. Do You Know You Are My Sunshine (The Statler Brothers)
13. Love or Something Like It (Kenny Rogers)
14. Someone Loves You Honey (Charley Pride)
15. Let’s Take the Long Way Around the World (Ronnie Milsap)
16. I’ll Be True To You (The Oak Ridge Boys)
17. I Just Wish You Were Someone I Love (Larry Gatlin)
18. What A Difference You’ve Made In My Life (Ronnie Milsap)
19. It Only Hurts For a Little While (Margo Smith)
20. Talking In Your Sleep (Crystal Gayle)
21. She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed (Anytime) (Johnny Duncan)
22. Only One Love in My Life (Ronnie Milsap)
23. I Believe In You (Mel Tillis)
24. Sleeping Single in a Double Bed (Barbara Mandrell)
25. Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You (Margo Smith)
26. Tear Time (Dave & Sugar

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Modern outlaw-country bard Cody Jinks didn't even originally fit in to the Americana or Texas Country/Red Dirt subgenres, much less the modern mainstream country of the last decade or two. But he persisted, experimented, improved, and gradually built up a mini-empire of his own as one of the best live draws thriving outside of the usual Top 40. Often willing to think outside the box, and knowing that his seasoned baritone can bring out the outlaw in just about anything, he took an earthy stab at Crystal Gayle's "Ready For the Times to Get Better" and recast it as uniquely pensive hard-core country.

1977 - viva nash vegas ...

Hey, good news on two fronts … longer runs at #1 seem to be back in 1977, so I guess slightly-shorter articles are too. Also, none of these #1 squatters are novelty songs about CB radios. Doesn’t mean it’s never a weird year for other reasons, but 10-4 on moving the hell on, good buddy.

Emmylou Harris’ take on “Sweet Dreams” eased us from ’76 to ’77 and handed it off to Billy “Crash” Craddock and his stormy, convincing, somehow-forgotten-by-now ballad “Broken Down In Tiny Pieces.” His Elvis-esque vibe had to be intentional, but at least he proved he could handle the slow-dance numbers with kingly panache. Newcomer Crystal Gayle scored next with another winner that’s kind of fallen down the memory hole since then: “You Never Miss A Real Good Thing (Till He Says Goodbye)” might’ve just had too long a title to stay stuck in our collective nostalgia, but it’s a sweet, winsome number, twangier than the more countrypolitan stuff that would eventually dominate her career. Conway Twitty was sounding afterglow-grateful on “I Can’t Believe She Gives It All to Me.” Ronnie Milsap probably drifted a little too far into Las Vegas cheesiness on the energetic yet awkward “Let My Love Be Your Pillow,” but Vegas cheesiness was about to be the order of the day so maybe he was slightly ahead of the curve. Recently-divorced uber-country warhorses George Jones and Tammy Wynette were probably violating some sort of restraining order by the time they put out “Near You,” but if nothing else their voices sure still seemed to love each other.

Then suddenly, rock & roll icon Elvis Presley took the #1 spot with the double-sided “Moody Blue”/”She Thinks I Still Care.” It wasn’t a huge surprise; he’d made the country charts off and on throughout the ‘70s, cracking the Top Ten a few times. Rock & roll had changed a lot since he’d jumpstarted it; some would insist the ascendance of the Beatles almost immediately made him irrelevant within the genre, and while that’s a major oversimplification it is fair to say that it’s not obvious where he would’ve fit in post-British-Invasion with genres like disco, heavy metal, psychedelia, and funk taking things in wilder directions. Elvis was getting older and so were his fans … the country charts (or maybe easy listening, for some tunes) was bound to feel more like home. Plus he’d had no shortage of country influence from the start, and even at this notably late period in his career he was covering George Jones (as well as, obviously, following him in the #1 spot). Unfortunately, Elvis wasn’t going to get much older at all. I had to double-check my dates, but we’re not at Elvis’ posthumous hit phase just yet.

So yeah an Elvis #1 made sense, but Tom Jones? Yeah, they were both big sweaty Vegas headliners, and international icons beyond that, but Jones was a Welsh-born pop singer better known for big brassy adult-contempo hits engineered to rock the European pop charts. To be fair, he’d found room in his catalog before for classic country covers like “Green Green Grass of Home” and “Detroit City,” so I guess there’s no harm in giving him his own country hit with “Say You’ll Stay Until Tomorrow” even though it’s a pretty run-of-the-mill come-on of a song. Mel Tillis’ “Heart Healer” kind of is too, but nobody doubted he’d paid his country-music-bidness dues. 

Charley Pride scored yet again with “She’s Just An Old Love Turned Memory,” a typical restrained and gentlemanly performance with a nice touch of magic-hour sparkle in the production. Glen Campbell, never one to be too tied-down by genre, looked well outside of the country music field to New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint’s “Southern Nights.” If Toussaint’s was sort of an R&B-jazz hybrid, Campbell’s added a little extra funk and pop into the mix as well. I grew up with this song but never loved it quite as much as the country (and pop … it was a crossover #1) charts seemed to. It’s got a nice warm sound to it and never hits a bum note, it just didn’t quite strike a chord with me somehow. If you love it, keep in mind that I’m often just wrong.

Kenny Rogers, who’d also been doing some cross-genre dabbling trying to break through (and really, would never exactly stop) scored his first country #1 with “Lucille.” A dusky, largely unadorned waltz, it let Rogers’ husky voice carry the tale of a rambler who couldn’t bring himself to romance some homegrown honey after realizing she’d callously (and very recently I guess) ditched her giant husband and hungry kids to go get hit on in bars by Kenny Rogers. A downbeat but fairly unforgettable song, it launched one of the most successful phases of Roger’s career or, honestly, anyone’s. Johnny Duncan was, at least in song, less stymied by moral complications when it came to getting it on: “It Couldn’t Have Been Any Better” is not far off from being a carbon copy of his ’76 breakthrough “Thinkin’ Bout A Rendezvous” except for this time he actually does sleep with his friend’s girl and clearly enjoyed the hell out of it.

Loretta Lynn had been around long enough at this point to be nostalgic for herself, but she got nostalgic for Patsy Cline instead and released a whole album of covers of her deceased onetime contemporary. And while I have vanishingly few negative opinions about Lynn’s talents, as an interpreter of well-known classics she’s no Emmylou Harris (who, as recently mentioned, covered Cline’s “Sweet Dreams” for a #1). Lynn couldn’t conjure up the crystalline elegance of old Patsy Cline hits – fair enough, most people couldn’t – but she also didn’t really replace it with anything compelling. The whole record sounds like a bar-band cash-in that just happened to have a legend singing lead on “She’s Got You” (her own #1) et al. But sometimes starpower plus nostalgia is irresistible enough to hit regardless of specific merits.

Mickey Gilley backed off of the immediately-recognizable covers for a bit and hit #1 with “She’s Pulling Me Back Again,” of the time-honored country subgenre of songs about how a lady’s gonna have to get better at sex or else a guy’s not going to be able to resist cheating on her, leaving her, etc. It’s not just a male phenomenon, and some of those songs are pretty good, but this one’s just OK. Conway Twitty’s “Play Guitar Play” is well-produced and isn’t going to hurt anyone’s ears or anything, but it’s in the same acceptable-not-remarkable tier. Don Williams, meanwhile, was on the artistic upswing, with “Some Broken Hearts Never Mend” as probably his best #1 thus far. Picking up the tempo a touch was pretty much always a good idea for him; it’s not like he lost his warm, subtle upside on this tune or any.

Then it was time for another six-week reign, and it was way better than “Convoy.” Maybe Waylon Jennings’ “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)” was at least a bit of a gimmick too: the “Outlaw” marketing for Waylon and his pal Willie Nelson (who cameos on the last chorus) might have eventually got a little bit out of hand (someone should write a song about that!) but at least the material was almost always its own reward. Smooth, twangy and smartly-produced – has Waylon’s baritone ever sounded better on record? – it was also instantly memorable for name-dropping not only then-obscurities like Jerry Jeff Walker and Mickey Newbury but also the tiny titular Texas town itself. Hinting at this whole little satellite world of Texas folkies and honky-tonkers packing tiny venues with real-ass songs was pretty radical in retrospect, and perhaps a little kick back at the aforementioned encroaching Vegas-ness of country music.

Donna Fargo scored her final #1 before a steep drop-off from the country charts with “That Was Yesterday.” On one hand, a first-person narrative of a person more or less in love with an opposite-sex friend but held back by life’s circumstances from expressing it is fairly common in country music (and pop to some extent) and relatable for many. Doing it as a straight-up, non-rhyming recitation over a generic slow-dance backing track is the weird part. If she mentioned at any point that the object of her affection was a trucker, or did the whole thing in CB radio voice, it would’ve dovetailed nicely into the previous year’s trends but as it is I can’t quite imagine why this worked as well as it did.      

Charley Pride stuck to his usual gentlemanly, sincere blueprint with the cheating-avoidance anthem “I’ll Be Leaving Alone,” followed up by Ronnie Milsap with the three-week reign of “It Was Almost Like A Song.” I think songs that self-refer are usually too cute by about half, but Milsap throws considerable vocal passion into this one; it might not quite move you, but there’s no lack of talent or effort there. Fellow piano man Charlie Rich took over with the much less break-a-sweat vibes of “Rollin’ With The Flow,” a smooth yet unrepentant statement of purpose for a party-hearty middle-ager. Unlike his last few #1’s, it seemed to wedge itself into the country pantheon; it was still all over the radio a few years later when I was personally old enough to notice.

Then it was Elvis Presley time again already, but this time the hit hit different. Presley passed away at home on August 16, 1977 and hit #1 on August 20. I don’t know if it says anything about his diminished cultural relevance that he only stayed there for one week, or that neither side of “Way Down”/”Pledging My Love” would probably pop up in the first 20 or so Elvis songs that anyone who actually knew 20 Elvis songs would name off the top of their head. “Way Down” didn’t seem like a targeted sop to the country market; it sounds more like Molly Hatchet or .38 Special boogie-rock with The King struggling to reclaim the old magic. “Pledging My Love,” a cover of the Johnny Ace classic, sounds like it could’ve been a ‘60s-vintage Elvis song anyway, and between his impassioned delivery and the song’s heartsick lyrics, it probably prompted more than a few tears from grieving fans.

Relative newcomer Crystal Gayle took over for a full month with “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” one of those sweet, classy cocktail-lounge ballads that years of overplay have kind of turned into sonic wallpaper even though there’s really nothing wrong with it. Conway Twitty’s “I’ve Already Loved You In My Mind” was about as on-brand as it gets, a barroom come-on that manages to sidestep seediness by having a friendly, upbeat melody and using the word “love” instead of a possibly-more-relevant substitute. Kenny Rogers departed from the timeless simplicity of his “Lucille” breakthrough for the more layered dynamics of “Daytime Friends,” a third-party narrative about some guy sleeping with his best friend’s wife that also has a friendly, upbeat melody and plenty of euphemisms but somehow does not sidestep seediness (and hasn’t aged all that well).

Next up was a full-month run at #1 for “Heaven’s Just A Sin Away,” the first big hit for The Kendalls, an act mostly forgotten by time that had sort of a loose bell curve of success from 1970 to around the mid-‘80s. Royce and Jeannie were a father-daughter sort-of-duo, although Royce usually hung back and just sung harmonies and led the band, minimizing the weirdness of a family band dabbling hard in cheatin’ songs and romantic balladry. This one in particular’s pretty great, blending a romantic quandary with a twangy melodic bounce that’s hard to resist. Don Williams eventually swung back in with one of his melancholy best, the simple but affecting “I’m Just A Country Boy.” Some of us used to use this song to sing our kids to sleep so maybe we like it even better than the average country music fan.

Charley Pride 17^th #1 hit – not quite consecutive, although it was rare for him to not at least crack the top five – was “More To Me,” a brisker-than-usual but devoted-as-usual addition to a deep catalog of hits (he’d have ten more #1s before an eventual mid-‘80s dropoff). It’s too late to ask him personally, but I’m still curious if Pride’s strong preference for gentlemanly love songs and the occasional heartache ballad – as opposed to the tough-guy narratives of Haggard and Cash or the incessant come-ons of Conway Twitty – might have been influenced by a desire to seem non-threatening to an audience partially populated by folks who’d see his color itself as a threat. Waylon Jennings didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing – honestly, I don’t think worry was an overriding influence in his life – but he was still willing to play it sweet and vulnerable with something like “The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don’t Want to Get Over You).” To his credit, although he was riding high on the whole “Outlaw” movement in 1977, he didn’t feel obligated to make every damn song highlight it.

Dolly Parton had briefly lost that spark of momentum after her 1974 breakthrough, but as you may already know was not bound for the literal bargain store anytime soon. The Porter Wagoner partnership was wrapping up, some creative adjustments were being made, there was probably some wig shopping or something, and then she came roaring back at the tail end of ’77 with the soaring country-pop charm of “Here You Come Again.” She’d already proven she could practically do the rustic country-folk thing in her sleep. Elements of modern pop (or, more often, five-years-ago pop) were seeping into the country charts left and right. Parton surely realized there was just a little too much potential crossover stardom on the table to not cast a wider net with her own material; she could (and did) come back time and time again to traditional country, and she obviously never lost that distinctive twang, but it was high time to transcend. Other country stalwarts dabbled in pop and came off looking like hacks. Dolly came off looking like a superstar.

 

THE TREND?

Purists have griped about threats to country music’s authenticity from the get-go, but 1977 might’ve given them more to work with than any year prior. Having Elvis and somehow Tom Jones in the mix with genre-blurring opportunists like Kenny Rogers, Glen Campbell, Ronnie Milsap, and even the esteemed Dolly Parton might’ve seemed less like breezy hits and more like ominous threats if you were concerned about your notion of traditional country music losing ground to something cooked up between LA and Vegas. The dearly and newly departed King had changed the world by tweaking R&B and blues for white audiences. Maybe the new, more-modest, less-interesting goal was to repackage modern adult-contempo pop for middle America. Willie and Waylon might’ve looked and acted a little more like rock stars than some elements of the fanbase were comfortable with, but it probably wasn’t lost on the audience that somehow they sounded the most country of all.  

THE RANKING

1. Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love) (Waylon Jennings)
2. I’m Just A Country Boy (Don Williams)
3. Some Broken Hearts Never Mend (Don Williams)
4. The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don’t Want to Get Over You) (Waylon Jennings)
5. Here You Come Again (Dolly Parton)
6. Broken Down In Tiny Pieces (Billy “Crash” Craddock)
7. You Never Miss A Real Good Thing (Till He Says Goodbye) (Crystal Gayle)
8. Rollin’ With the Flow (Charlie Rich)
9. Near You (George Jones & Tammy Wynette)
10. I’ve Already Loved You In My Mind (Conway Twitty)
11. She’s Just An Old Love Turned Memory (Charley Pride)
12. I Can’t Believe She Gives It All to Me (Conway Twitty)
13. Heart Healer (Mel Tillis)
14. Heaven’s Just A Sin Away (The Kendalls)
15. Lucille (Kenny Rogers)
16. Southern Nights (Glen Campbell)
17. Way Down/Pledging My Love (Elvis Presley)
18. More to Me (Charley Pride)
19. It Was Almost Like A Song (Ronnie Milsap)
20. Play Guitar Play (Conway Twitty)
21. It Couldn’t Have Been Any Better (Johnny Duncan)
22. Moody Blue/She Thinks I Still Care (Elvis Presley)
23. Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue (Crystal Gayle)
24. I’ll Be Leaving Alone (Charley Pride)
25. She’s Got You (Loretta Lynn)
26. That Was Yesterday (Donna Fargo)
27. Daytime Friends (Kenny Rogers)
28. She’s Pulling Me Back Again (Mickey Gilley)
29. Say You’ll Stay Until Tomorrow (Tom Jones)
30. Let My Love Be Your Pillow (Ronnie Milsap)

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Twangy Texan singer-songwriter Kelly Willis sure seemed like she should've been a big star, especially there in the early '90s when country music's commercial boom made it seem like some more left-field voices like Radney Foster, The Mavericks, Kevin Welch etc. could provide a little extra neo-traditional edge to the charts. She had to settle instead for being one of the most respected voices (literally and figuratively) on the alt-country/Americana edge of things; seriously, give her catalog a listen and tell me she's not one of the most consistently tasteful and vocally gifted artists around. Her cover of the Kendalls' "Heaven's Just a Sin Away" was a highlight of her shoulda-been-a-breakthrough self-titled 1993 album, not reinventing the wheel but giving it an earthier, sexier direction to roll. Enjoy!

1976 - keep the bugs off your glass and the bears off your tail ...

The ongoing reverent myth about country music – especially classic country music, usually defined as “about 15 years before whatever we’re dealing with now” – is that it’s the beauty of direct, honest, simplicity, the timeless comfort of “three chords and the truth.” And yeah, there are plenty of examples of that timeless ideal out there. Check out the top five, ten, even fifteen or more songs in the highly scientific rankings for any of these years. It’s an embarrassment of riches. The myth didn’t come out of nowhere.

But let’s not kid ourselves too much. The country music industry is also about making money. If it wasn’t, all these timeless legends would be singing on their back porch to nobody, soulful trees falling in the forest and theoretically never making a sound (much less a buck). And while that strive for success often breeds excellence that soars on much more than a monetary level, it also farts out some trend-hopping bullshit that resonates about as far as the second it drops off the charts.

That’s where something like “Convoy” comes in. Trucker songs were already a fairly popular subgenre of country music and had been for well over a decade; in the mid-’70s the big-rig mythos spiked again due to the overlapping public interest in CB (“citizen’s band”) radios. Issues with the price and supply of fuel, new 55 mph speed limits imposed as a result, and aggressive law enforcement of said limits turned CBs from a tool of specific trades to something any road-tripper might find useful. People had fun with the jargon and coming up with handles for themselves and all that … in the cell phone/internet age it’s probably hard to imagine how fascinating this was for people, but it was a craze. I don’t usually cram this much context into an entry, especially now that there’s usually 40+ songs to at least mention, but without it the success of “Convoy” (and some of the other 1976 songs) just doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.

“Convoy” held down #1 for the last two weeks of 1975 and the first four of 1976. Six weeks didn’t happen for anyone anymore. Not established chart-burners like Charley Pride, not breakthroughs like Dolly Parton, nobody. One got the sense that Nashville didn’t even want that to happen anymore … better to have a lot of honors to go around. But CW McCall, a persona invented and portrayed by an Omaha advertising director named William Fries Jr., held down six weeks, plus one week atop the mainstream pop chart. Admittedly, the concept of the song is fun, even clever. It sticks to its narrative and drops trucker slang and garbled CB noise briskly and enthusiastically. But that weird, endlessly annoying sort-of-chorus keeps kicking in, a sugary, weird, androgynous-sounding coo that just highlights the ultimately artless, slapped-together nature of the whole thing. It certainly spoke to a cultural moment but couldn’t be bothered with musical craft; it’s more audio skit than song, and it’s baffling to me that anyone listened to it more than once, much less made sequel songs and knockoffs and even a feature film with Kris Kristofferson and Ali McGraw. Maybe if they’d come up with a more congruous hook (what if Kristofferson guest-sung it?) this’d still be prominently featured on classic country radio, but as it is the most successful country song of the ‘70s (at least on paper) has been rusting on the far back corner of the cultural truckstop lot for decades now.

Meanwhile, Conway Twitty’s “This Time I’ve Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me” is still fondly remembered, one of the catchiest tunes in his storied career and a classic example of setting a sad-as-hell narrative to a bouncy melody. Bill Anderson continued to stubbornly revisit the top of the charts; I know we’ve given him some grief throughout the run here, but “Sometimes” is a pretty morosely clever duet with Mary Lou Turner. Maybe “Convoy” has recalibrated my tolerance for gimmicky b.s., but it feels like Anderson backs off on the whole “Whisperin’ Bill” thing a bit here and conjures up some relatable yearning in the process.

And then here comes something called Cledus Maggard & the Citizen’s Band with “The White Knight.” That title might set off some Johnny Reb alarms, but the song itself is less horrifying than just annoying. Again, it’s an advertising guy (this time Jay Huguely from South Carolina) inventing a folksy name and cribbing together a bunch of trucker jargon into something resembling a song. This time it’s just a more budget-friendly string-band ramble, but Huguely’s affected cornpone accents are even more aggravating than Fries’ studio gloss and wispy vocal hooks. It sucks so bad!

But “Good Hearted Woman” doesn’t, of course. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, long lumped together through collaboration and alliteration, co-wrote this one (inspired by a newspaper article about R&B star Tina Turner) but didn’t initially record it as a duet; it was the title track on Waylon’s 1972 album and went as high as #3 as a solo tune. But it did even better as the flagship single for the slapped-together but uber-successful Wanted! The Outlaws compilation album, the first platinum-certified LP in country music history. While the project’s sometimes been critiqued as a cynical cash-in (fake crowd noise mixed in, for example) it’s good to know there was something more worthwhile than CB radio kitsch around to cash in on.

“The Roots of My Raising” was still worthwhile Merle Haggard, a sincere and folksy predecessor to songs like “The House That Built Me.” Tom T. Hall came blazing in, ornerier than usual, with the absolutely sublime “Faster Horses (The Cowboy & the Poet).” Yet again he proved he could squeeze prime prose into about three minutes worth of country song; his imagined confrontation between a young idealist and salty old bastard sounded lived-in on both sides, buoyed by a Tijuana-ish horn section and possibly the greatest eight-word chorus we’ll ever hear. Don Williams, as was his way, was considerably more chill on the earthy, devotional “Til the Rivers All Run Dry” and Freddy Fender lent his fluttery Tex-Mex tenor to a hit cover of the old R&B chestnut “You’ll Lose A Good Thing.” This is all good stuff! “Convoy” didn’t get to wreck the whole year.

Tammy Wynette was on one hell of a roll herself. No stranger to heartsick classics, she might’ve made her best ever with the towering hurt of “Til I Can Make It On My Own.” Seriously, she was to melodrama what Tom T. Hall was to vignettes: an absolute master of the form, able to teeter on the edge of a sob and reign it back into a whisper with nary a mishandled note. “Stand By Your Man” might’ve been her signature, but this was her masterpiece. To the uninitiated: don’t just listen to this one, set aside some time to listen to this one.

Eddie Rabbitt, one of those guys who had a bigger and longer run than you might think, snagged his first #1 with “Drinkin’ My Baby (Off My Mind),” a spry but slight shuffle that he’d eventually improve upon. Right afterwards, Emmylou Harris scored her first #1 as well with a dreamy cover of Buck Owens’ “Together Again.” Dreamy covers were kind of her thing back then; like her doomed early collaborator Gram Parsons, she could write a great song but was at least as interested in reshaping the classics in her own image. As mentioned before, Mickey Gilley wasn’t nearly as distinctive at covers, but he finally came barreling out of the gate with a previously-unknown tune on “Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time.” Laced with some self-deprecating humor (lest the sexism accusations start rolling in), it’s honestly a piano-pounding blast. Genial, sort-of-forgettable mid-tempo numbers took over for a bit: Charley Pride’s “My Eyes Can Only See As Far As You” and Ronnie Milsap’s “What Goes On When The Sun Goes Down” are neither man’s best work (or shortest titles) but they aren’t gonna hurt anybody. On a more stirring note, Conway Twitty kept his personal fire burning with an old-fashioned banger “After All the Good Is Gone” that harkened back to his “Only Make Believe” years.

Speaking of throwbacks, we hadn’t had a Johnny Cash #1 in quite a while. It’s not like he disappeared, but between chemical misadventures and concept albums and variety shows and whatnot, he likely just wasn’t focused on a prize he’d won plenty of times before anyway. But “One Piece at a Time” probably benefited from the CB craze – it indulges in a little jargon on a mock call there at the end – plus it’s just a catchy, unique, funny song that made it sound like he hadn’t lost a step since “Folsom Prison Blues.” It would be far from his last triumph in a career that would never stop being interesting, but it would be his last solo #1 hit.

Next up was another #1 debut. Crystal Gayle, younger sister of Loretta Lynn although she never came across as much of a coattail-rider, scored with the sweet, subtle swing of “I’ll Get Over You.” And then there was another quasi-comeback for a legend: Marty Robbins, who had only occasionally tasted the Top Ten in the ‘70s after being one of the defining country artists of the ‘60s, came roaring in with “El Paso City.” Sort of like an aging action-movie hero that rebounds from a string of flops by finally agreeing to do a sequel to something that did sell, Robbins wrote “El Paso City” as a pretty fascinating follow-up to his onetime crossover smash “El Paso.” The narrator of “El Paso City” is entirely aware of the song “El Paso” (but conveniently unable to recall the singer’s name) and, while flying (presumably in an airplane) above the city, feels a spooky supernatural connection to the tale as if he was the legendary cowboy in a past life. Sometimes late-arriving sequels are lame and cynical, but this is awesome.

Occasional top-chart-visitor Joe Stampley scored again with “All These Things,” a repurposed Allen Toussaint song that he bravely managed to not whitewash too much. The next one up was considerably cheesier: Dave & Sugar were as solid a block of country Velveeta as the ‘70s ever heated up. “The Door is Always Open” is a solid moral trainwreck of a country song (it’s basically Johnny Paycheck’s “Slide Off of Your Satin Sheets” without the memorable imagery) that’s been covered by the likes of Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton, and some band called Tennessee Pulleybone. But Dave & Sugar couldn’t wring sincerity out of a Hank Williams record, and they made this one sound like variety-show drivel. Still, they didn’t fall off the face off the earth as soon as you might think.

Back to the CB radio stuff … you could argue that “Teddy Bear,” by trucker-country vet Red Sovine, was cheesy as well. Or maudlin or saccharine or whatever other unkind adjectives you want to hang on it. It’s the spoken-word story of the disabled little grade-school son of an untimely-deceased trucker who staves off his grief by talking to his dad’s old trucker friends on his CB radio and shit now I’m crying a little just typing about it. Whatever it is it works, I’m just glad they didn’t pile on even more with the mom getting tuberculosis or something. Sovine got us with the similarly lachrymose “Giddy Up Go” about a decade prior and now he got us again, all the way to a three-week run at #1.

“Golden Ring,” from the golden voices of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, is a different kind of tearjerker from a couple folks who knew their way around one. They were divorced by the time this came out; admittedly I don’t know what their status was when they actually recorded it, but the ups and downs of the protagonist couple do sound mighty lived-in. Don Williams had a little extra spring in his step with “Say It Again,” which still only means he was at around mid-tempo, but he was great at being subtle so it’s hard to gripe. Meanwhile, Mickey Gilley took a loungey pass at the stone-classic Sam Cooke oldie “Bring it On Home to Me” that us white folks are still trying to live down.

Ronnie Milsap continued to peddle sunny, tuneful devotion and unnecessary parentheses on “(I’m A) Stand By My Woman Man.”  He was getting to be kind of the Freddie Hart of his day, although his heyday would be considerably longer.  His two-week run ceded to another one, a stiff and untuneful head-scratcher by journeyman Jim Ed Brown and his new duet partner Helen Cornelius called “I Don’t Want to Have to Marry You” that I’m sure Brown’s wife just loved the hell out of.  Willie Nelson’s galloping revamp of the Lefty Frizzell romp “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time” was infinitely more fun, and Tanya Tucker’s raspily tender “Here’s Some Love” was way sweeter and more playful, but they only got one week apiece.

Conway Twitty also only got one week with “The Games That Daddies Play.”  Between the sharply observed storytelling and juxtaposition of kid-level observations with grown-up problems, it sounds like what you’d get if Tom T. Hall and Tammy Wynette hit the writers’ room together (although apparently Twitty wrote it himself).  Tammy Wynette herself followed up with “You And Me,” which earned its two weeks with a song so supple and dynamic it only suffers in comparison to her landmark from earlier in the year.  It sounds awful damn romantic until you listen close enough to realize it’s basically a whispered come-on to an old lover while her current dude is obliviously right there in bed with her.  Sleep tight, guys!

Sidebar (as if these things aren’t getting long enough already): in a way, it’s too bad that so many of the country legends seemed to pick one primary duet partner and more or less stick with them for years and years.  George and Tammy.  Conway and Loretta.  Porter and Dolly.  Jim Ed and Helen, if you’re not picky.  I get that it probably often just came down to who’s on the same record label, or who actually liked spending time together.  I just wish they mixed it up enough that there was a Conway & Tammy record floating around out there somewhere.

Anyway, the Marty Robbins comeback continued with the sweetly autumnal “Among My Souvenirs,” an implicit embrace of being one of the kind-of-old guys on the charts even though that wasn’t much of a hindrance back then; right after him was Merle Haggard, pushing 40 but looking and sounding more like Robbins’ 50, and covering an old-as-hell Cindy Walker/Bob Wills song “Cherokee Maiden” to boot.  Great rendition though, and it’s nice to think that even back in the mid-‘70s there were not only revivalists topping the charts, but they were already at least borderline legends themselves.

Speaking of, Loretta Lynn scored again with “Somebody Somewhere (Don’t Know What He’s Missin’ Tonight).”  Unlike some of her other recent #1’s, this one didn’t make any obvious attempts to update her sound or approach; it sounded like it could’ve been an outtake off of one of her records a decade ago, with all the downhome charm that implies.  Mel Tillis rolled out kind of a throwback himself with the Jimmie Rodgers-quoting “Good Woman Blues”; it’s no masterpiece, but as a macho barroom shout-along you could do much worse.  Johnny Duncan sounded pretty state-of-the-art on his first chart-topper, the uber-catchy and smooth but not-quite-slick horndog anthem “Thinkin’ of a Rendezvous,” which set the blueprint for his brief and oft-forgotten run at country stardom.  But retro vibes swung back in to close out the year at #1: Emmylou Harris’ then-new yet timeless voice rethinking the Patsy Cline standard “Sweet Dreams.”  Harris was a very different sort of singer, leaning more on harmonies and flutters and layers than the starkly pristine beauty of the Cline original.  But she was, as always, reaching for something timeless and real, and that seemed to be a common vibe among a lot of fellow artists that might’ve been a little concerned that the future could be less Cline and more “Convoy” if they didn’t pull something together quick.         

 

THE TREND?

Well, there’s the trucker/CB thing, obviously.  I guess you could argue that it was isolated to one fluke smash and some assorted cultural detritus, but maybe it itself was part of something larger.  The “Outlaws” were ascendant, Johnny Cash rode again, Marty Robbins had another gun-ballad hit, Tom T. Hall had arguably the best song of the year with a tough-talking ballad, Hag and Conway and Don Williams were still afire … despite a couple of killer new Tammy Wynette songs and the rise of Emmylou Harris, it was a pretty damn masculine year, in terms of delivery and content. Maybe the blue-collar, kind-of-conservative dudes in the audience were bucking – consciously or otherwise – against the ongoing tide of women’s lib and the idea that the guys weren’t as in-control as they were raised to think they were. Between that and the return of a few key (male) stars to the top of the charts, as well as covers of (and sequels to!) various oldies, perhaps some segments of the nation were looking to turn the clock back.  They didn’t succeed, but if you look around today they also haven’t really stopped trying. 

THE RANKING

1. Faster Horses (The Cowboy & the Poet) (Tom T. Hall)
2. Til I Can Make It On My Own (Tammy Wynette)
3. One Piece at a Time (Johnny Cash)
4. Good Hearted Woman (Waylon & Willie)
5. The Roots of My Raising (Merle Haggard)
6. After All the Good Is Gone (Conway Twitty)
7. You & Me (Tammy Wynette)
8. El Paso City (Marty Robbins)
9. If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time (Willie Nelson)
10. Golden Ring (George Jones & Tammy Wynette)
11. Here’s Some Love (Tanya Tucker)
12. Among My Souvenirs (Marty Robbins)
13. This Time I’ve Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me (Conway Twitty)
14. Say it Again (Don Williams)
15. You’ll Lose A Good Thing (Freddy Fender)
16. Sweet Dreams (Emmylou Harris)
17. I’ll Get Over You (Crystal Gayle)
18. Til the Rivers All Run Dry (Don Williams)
19. Together Again (Emmylou Harris)
20. Cherokee Maiden (Merle Haggard)
21. Teddy Bear (Red Sovine)
22. The Games That Daddies Play (Conway Twitty)
23. Thinkin’ of a Rendezvous (Johnny Duncan)
24. Somebody Somewhere (Don’t Know What He’s Missing Tonight) (Loretta Lynn)
25. (I’m A) Stand By My Woman Man (Ronnie Milsap)
26. All These Things (Joe Stampley)
27. Bring It On Home to Me (Mickey Gilley)
28. My Eyes Can Only See As Far As You (Charley Pride)
29. Sometimes (Bill Anderson)
30. Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time (Mickey Gilley)
31. Good Woman Blues (Mel Tillis)
32. Drinkin’ My Baby (Off My Mind) (Eddie Rabbitt)
33. What Goes On When the Sun Goes Down (Ronnie Milsap)
34. The Door is Always Open (Dave & Sugar)
35. Convoy (CW McCall)
36. I Don’t Want to Have to Marry You (Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius)
37. The White Knight (Cledus Maggard & the Citizen’s Band)

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Texas honky-tonk siren Sunny Sweeney has occasionally made inroads to the mainstream ("From a Table Away" was a top ten hit back in 2011) but, like most of her Lone Star peers, she sounds like she might've been more at home in a Top 40 forty years ago. If you look around on the streaming sites you can catch her revisiting the Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson classic "Good Hearted Woman" with no less a true believer than Waylon's widow Jessi Colter; that studio duet doesn't seem to be knocking around YouTube at the moment, but here's a shot of her tearing it up live. Always happy to turn someone on to Sunny Sweeney but had to dig a little to find a good 1976 entry for this section ... most of the #1's were either covers themselves or just haven't inspired notable on-the-record covers themselves.