I
don’t know why we stubbornly hang on to the idea of the beginning and ending of
a decade as being some sort of cultural turnstile, as if it’s always just that
simple. But maybe it’s easier with pop
culture than it is with some other things; after all, it’s made by artists and
marshalled by powers-that-be in a constant back-and-forth with
hopefully-receptive audiences. All three
of those entities are all too human and prone to getting swept up in the
cultural expectation to knock off some played-out shit and move on to something
new. Take disco out behind the barn and
shoot it, bring a nice new-wave puppy home for the kids. Stuff like that.
But
the country music business likes its change incremental at best. The Urban Cowboy craze wouldn’t kick in until
the next year; country radio was still acting like the youth audience might be
a lost cause so it was time to circle the wagons and keep the aging audience on
board. Keep some of their old favorites
in the mix, keep the relatable-slice-of-life tunes coming, hold your nose and
grind out some close-enough versions of pop and easy listening to keep them
from drifting elsewhere on the dial. It
all more or less worked, a holding pattern until an unexpected windfall of
oddly John Travolta-driven attention came their way. Tune-for-tune it was one of the less-iconic
years in country music history, but there were gems to be had.
“Tulsa
Time” by Don Williams was a solid start and thematically appropriate for a
genre wanting to circle its wagons, a stubborn bluesy chug about ditching LA
flash for Middle America authenticity. And they didn’t get much more Middle American authentic than guys like
Williams and John Conlee, who scored his first #1 with only his second single,
the poignantly humble “Lady Lay Down.”
It wasn’t quite as good as his breakthrough single “Rose Colored
Glasses” but it’s warm and relatable. Conlee was in his early 30s in 1979 but looked about a decade older (to
be fair, he’s still healthy and touring as of this writing) and was kind of
emblematic of an era when the “hot new star” may well give off one hell of a
middle-aged vibe in their persona and material. Nashville didn’t need another mercurial Elvis; a dependable Kenny Rogers
type would do nicely, right?
They
weren’t allergic to glamour, necessarily; Dolly Parton scored again with the
brassy, sexy “Baby I’m Burnin’,” which had no shortage of shiny pop production
and could’ve been a disco hit with just a couple of tweaks. Crystal Gayle’s glamour was a little more
subtle (whose wouldn’t be?) but undeniable, and her brisk and catchy “Why Have
You Left the One You Left Me For” had just the right balance of sass and
sophistication. Eddie Rabbitt wasn’t
overly glamorous but “Every Which Way But Loose,” the theme song of the Clint
Eastwood/orangutan comedy of the same name, was pretty glitzy by
association. The whole Urban Cowboy
thing was still around the corner, but the trend of manly-man movie stars like
Eastwood and Burt Reynolds bringing in country music stars to burnish the
downhome appeal of their stunt-heavy action comedies with cameos and
soundtracks was in full swing. The
Rabbitt song was forgettable easy-listening filler but it couldn’t help but
benefit from the association.
Dave
& Sugar scored their mercifully-final #1 with “Golden Tears,” which hung in
their for three weeks somehow. In the
1978 rundown I pointed out the proliferation of what amounted to
cocktail-lounge filler, sort of a bad countrypolitan hangover. 1979 suffered from an influx of lounge
music’s brassier, more shameless cousin: variety-show country (henceforth known
as VSC because it’s gonna come up a lot). Big, simple melodies with annoyingly bright production and cheesy vocals
where you could almost hear the plastered-on smiles in the performance. On a not-unrelated note, Anne Murray started
breaking through in a big way, a Canadian easy-listening crossover largely
devoid of edge or twang. To be fair, “I
Just Fall in Love Again” is pretty subtle and lovely, possibly her best
hit. It just feels like it’s on the
wrong chart.
Barbara
Mandrell was inescapably VSC; she and her sisters would eventually headline one
of the last prominent primetime variety shows hosted by a country star. A gorgeous blonde with a
wholesome-cheerleader vibe about her, “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to
Be Right” was sort of scandalous by her standards, a sultry-sounding ode to
infidelity from the POV of the mistress.
Perhaps the cheesy insincerity of the whole thing kept it from messing
with her image. Kenny Rogers and Dottie
West, who’d found something transcendent on their last hit, cheesed it up
pretty hard themselves on “All I Ever Need is You.” It sounds like they’re auditioning for their
own shitty late-70s romantic sitcom, in all its catchy emptiness.
Things
got earthier for a bit. The plainspoken
hurt of Charley Pride’s “Where Do I Put Her Memory” wasn’t his finest hour, but
at least it sounded sincere and relatable. John Conlee’s “Backside of Thirty” was more memorable and more specific
in its misery, and nowadays seems like a time capsule from a day when one’s
early 30s qualified as middle age. Conway Twitty, another dude that seemed like he was pretty much born
middle-aged, came roaring back in with the soul-tinged “Don’t Take it
Away.” It had a whiff of VSC about it,
but Twitty had a knack for transcending the encroaching chintziness of ‘70s
record production.
I’m
sure not everyone would agree, but the Bellamy Brothers first #1 “If I Said You
Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold it Against Me” kind of transcended the
whole VSC thing too despite being part and parcel of the trend. For one, even if that double entendre in the
title’s been quoted to death by now, I bet it sounded pretty clever to fresh
ears (or was it already an old joke by then? I’m admittedly not sure). The vibe feels then-modern but not overdone;
the Bellamys were good at co-opting that beachy Jimmy Buffett vibe without
overdoing the gimmick. The verses
surrounding the hook all sound witty enough instead of a bunch of leering b.s.
like you get with some come-on songs. To
these ears it’s proof that there’s a right way to do even the most derided of
genres. Similarly, Kenny Rogers “She
Believes In Me” was a sweetly soulful piece of folk-tinged easy listening,
elevated by his performance. “Nobody
Likes Sad Songs” by Ronnie Milsap mined a similar vein, with brighter
production but tangible hurt in the performance. It was one of his better tunes of an era he
continued to dominate, and at least country-ish in sentiment.
Waylon
Jennings, meanwhile, remained stoically cheese-averse. “Amanda” was a simple waltz on its face, but
the lines of humility and devotion spoke to the better angels of timeless
country songwriting (thank you Bob McDill!) and soared on the wings of
Jennings’ hearty baritone. Maybe his
(and Willie’s and the rests’) outlaw schtick seemed larger-than-life to some,
but on songs like this he was just as gut-level relatable as blue-collar bards
like John Conlee and Don Williams (who, come to think of it, also had a hit
with this song). It held the top spot
for three weeks before VSC took back over with Anne Murray’s forgettable
“Shadows In the Moonlight,” and then Dolly Parton split the difference with
big-production easy listening but no lack of soulful, twangy melodrama on the
sweeping “You’re the Only One.”
Eddie
Rabbitt’s “Suspicions” was both VSC and sort of an Elvis throwback at a time
when Presley was still a very recent presence on the country charts; underpinned
by a nice groove and some vocal dynamics, it’s not half bad, although there’s
not a ton of personality to it. “Coca
Cola Cowboy” by Mel Tillis was a nicely memorable honky-tonk shuffle from an
industry lifer, with shoutouts to Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford in the
chorus reflecting the Nashville-Hollywood interplay that was going strong and
about to blow up bigger.
Speaking
of cinematic … The Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”
created a wild little world of its own when it hit the air. It’s been overplayed, sequeled, parodied,
quoted to death etc. down through the years so much that it’s hard to imagine
hearing it through fresh ears, but it was something fresh indeed. Daniels was certainly a country boy but not
necessarily a country artist; he’d done session work on Bob Dylan and Leonard
Cohen records, and he and his band were more in league with Southern rockers
like the Marshall Tucker Band and The Allman Brothers than the usual country
chart suspects. But he caught lightning
in a bottle with “Devil,” a multi-movement jam built around the narrative of a
brash country boy challenged by Satan himself to a fiddling contest. To country radio listeners who’d never heard
prog-rockers like Yes or Jethro Tull (and probably didn’t particularly care to)
it was a mindblowing jam made approachable by Daniels’ shitkicker prose and the
red-hot fiddlin’ at the heart of the whole thing. Daniels wouldn’t get particularly close to #1
again but he didn’t need to. The number
one he did get cast enough of a shadow to keep him productively on the
road for decades.
Next
up was another cross-genre interloper, funky rock star Leon Russell sitting in
on an upbeat cover of “Heartbreak Hotel” with his old pal Willie Nelson for an
inessential good time. Conway Twitty
(who, let’s not forget, started out as an aspiring early-days rocker) took
another ride to #1 with the stately, soulful “I May Never Get to Heaven”
followed by his old pal/friendly rival Charley Pride with the VSC jam “You’re
My Jamaica.” Between this one and all
those vaguely calypso-sounding Bellamy Brothers songs that were starting to
gain favor … keep in mind Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” had been a semi-hit
on country radio back in 1977, and solidified his direction as a tropical
troubadour. Perhaps there was a mini-tropical
trend in action; next up were perennial country music B-teamers Moe Bandy and
Joe Stampley with “Just Good Ol’ Boys,” that didn’t have tropical sounds or
themes but did sport the same kind of irreverent good-time humor that Buffett
often trafficked in. Don Williams scored
next with “It Must Be Love,” which had some vaguely island-y bounce in the
production, although I’m not sure I’d make that connection if I wasn’t trying
to retroactively force a movement here.
TG
Sheppard continued to enjoy a roll, crooning through the understated heartache
of “Last Cheater’s Waltz,” a nice counterpoint to the strutting lover-man stuff
that was his heyday default. Larry
Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers, another very-much-of-their-era act, swung in
with their signature song “All the Gold in California,” one of the most heavily
played hits of the time. I remember the
Houston-area radio station of my childhood had an ad where at least one
customer specifically said that she switched over to them because their rival
station played it way too much. How’s
that for cultural impact? The great
harmonies on the track probably reminded folks of the still-beloved Eagles, but
like the average Eagles song it strived for some sort of thematic grandeur
while feeling a bit empty. Tryin’ to be
a hero … windin’ up a zero … stuff like that.
To
compare and contrast some superstar balladeering: Kenny Rogers “You Decorated
My Life” and Waylon Jennings’ “Come With Me” scored back-to-back two-week runs
at #1 in November 1979. They’re both
pretty good. Rogers was in his usual
wheelhouse and he squeezed every bit of sentiment out of the greeting-card
poetry of the assignment, egged on by MOR strings as the whole thing swirled to
a climax. Jennings sounded pleasantly
off-kilter crooning over a warm, stately piano figure instead of his usual
half-time beat and Telecaster twang. His
voice just gets warmer and more emotional as it goes, perhaps spurred on by the
subtle thrill of trying something outside his comfort zone. I can’t remember ever not knowing that
Kenny Rogers song, even though I’m not a big fan; I am a pretty big Waylon fan,
and I don’t think I’ve ever heard “Come With Me” outside of this self-imposed
writing assignment. Funny how legacies
often don’t just leave out the unsuccessful stuff, they also sometimes leave
out the successful stuff that doesn’t fit the narrative.
Her
1979 banner year is central to the Anne Murray legacy I guess, and “Broken
Hearted Me” is a pretty nice slice as far as white bread goes, smooth and
pillowy but not without an emotional center to it. “I Cheated Me Right Out of You” by Moe Bandy
sounds downright roadhouse by comparison; it’s pretty standard-issue honky-tonk,
but at the time that had the potential to stand out amidst all the VSC and
easy-listening crossovers and flowery balladry. Bandy might not have been an “outlaw,” so to speak, but he stuck to his
guns nonetheless. Wrapping up the year
was no less a chart warhorse than the far-from-done Conway Twitty: “Happy
Birthday Darlin’” is kind of an interesting one, with Barry White-ish
spoken-word declarations on the verses and a big chorus hook about how he
didn’t get you any presents or cake but he’s going to stop doing things that
make you feel unappreciated. It held
down #1 for three weeks in December, so it probably resonated big with all the
December babies out there who didn’t get shit for their birthday because
everybody was distracted by Christmas.
THE
TREND?
In more recent years, as country has been irretrievably influenced by everything from several decades of mainstream pop to arena rock and even hip-hop, some pundits have questioned if “country” is just a marketing niche at this point as opposed to an identifiable style of music. Seems pretty obvious this was already the case back in 1979 (and probably well before that), when the rundown of #1s seems to suggest that just about any style that might appeal to Middle America-type Caucasian adults could be marketed as “country” and have a shot at the gold. Easy listening, VCS, Southern rock, movie soundtracks, sort-of-tropical stuff, actual traditional country music … Nashville gambled that the average listener would like most or all of that, and sort of won. What the country mainstream lacked in youth appeal was offset by a growing cache in Hollywood that’d become an even bigger deal as the ‘80s dawned.
THE RANKING
- Amanda (Waylon Jennings)
- The Devil Went Down to Georgia (The Charlie Daniels Band)
- Tulsa Time (Don Williams)
- Lady Lay Down (John Conlee)
- You’re the Only One (Dolly Parton)
- Baby I’m Burnin’ (Dolly Parton)
- If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold it Against Me (The Bellamy Brothers)
- I Just Fall in Love Again (Anne Murray)
- Backside of Thirty (John Conlee)
- She Believes in Me (Kenny Rogers)
- I May Never Get to Heaven (Conway Twitty)
- Don’t Take it Away (Conway Twitty)
- Coca Cola Cowboy (Mel Tillis)
- Last Cheater’s Waltz (TG Sheppard)
- It Must Be Love (Don Williams)
- Come With Me (Waylon Jennings)
- Happy Birthday Darlin’ (Conway Twitty)
- Suspicions (Eddie Rabbitt)
- Nobody Likes Sad Songs (Ronnie Milsap)
- You’re My Jamaica (Charley Pride)
- All I Ever Need is You (Kenny Rogers & Dottie West)
- Why Have You Left the One You Left Me For (Crystal Gayle)
- Just Good Ol’ Boys (Moe Bandy & Joe Stampley)
- All the Gold in California (Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers)
- Heartbreak Hotel (Willie Nelson & Leon Russell)
- Broken Hearted Me (Anne Murray)
- I Cheated Me Right Out of You (Moe Bandy)
- You Decorated My Life (Kenny Rogers)
- Shadows in the Moonlight (Anne Murray)
- Where Do I Put Her Memory (Charley Pride)
- Every Which Way But Loose (Eddie Rabbitt)
- If Lovin’ You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want to Be Right) (Barbara Mandrell)
- Golden Tears (Dave & Sugar)
You'd better believe that barely-twentysomething Alan Jackson was listening to country radio back in 1979, at least when he wasn't catching up on even older country music. He was the most natural dude in the world to put out a classic-covers album called Under the Influence a couple decades later, and there wasn't a bum track in the nicely-curated bunch. The cover of Don Williams' "It Must Be Love" was one of the few actual former #1 hits he tackled, meaning when his version hit #1 it was one of the vanishingly few tunes to snag the top spot for two different artists over two decades apart. Much like Williams, Jackson was never short on laconic charm and effortless warmth; his version gives it a little extra dance-floor kick but never smothers its affectionate charm.
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