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