1982 - we come here quite often to listen to music ...

Part of the charm of the country charts as one era eases into another is the interplay of old and new, the lack of impetus to shake off something tried-and-true as soon as something shiny and new comes along. This was even truer back in the pre-‘90s days when the industry seemed to embrace its primary role as the soundtrack to adult middle-American life, uninterested in making a big play for kids and trend-hoppers but up for appropriating the sort of light-rock and easy-listening that might draw full-grown listeners away from the country side of the dial. But at the same time there’d be reassuring room for the sounds and artists that had roped in the last generation or two of fans. Maybe it sounded jarring at the time to hear Willie Nelson or George Jones back-to-back with Ronnie Milsap or Eddie Rabbitt, but to the business it probably calculated as a better gambit than ditching the former or rejecting the latter.

Alabama bridged ’81 into ’82 with the run of “Love in the First Degree,” and also bridged a downhome image with some pop-smart songcraft about as well as anyone could. They ceded to the perpetually-underrated Gene Watson, a native Texan who’d been kicking around the charts for most of a decade by then and finally scored with “Fourteen Carat Mind,” a bitingly rueful tale of a low-stakes golddigger leaving a trail of heartbroke (and just broke-broke) rednecks in her wake. It was hardcore, hot-pickin’ country but immediately gave way to Ronnie Milsap’s typically florid and state-of-the-art “I Wouldn’t Have Missed it for the World.” Not a bad tune, but if cultural anthropologists 100 years from now are trying to figure out what exactly made country songs “country,” this is one they’re going to have a tough time with.

While they’re at it they might wanna just skip Conway Twitty’s “Red Neckin’ Love Makin’ Night.” Twitty’s longstanding gift for bringing dignity to the cheesiest and horndoggiest of sentiments finally failed him on a pandering Jerry Lee Lewis knockoff with traces of disco detritus and unbecoming self-name-dropping. Juice Newton, a willowy beauty who’d been knocking around the music industry for over a decade, finally struck emotive gold with “The Sweetest Thing (I’ve Ever Known).” Like most of her material, it was more earthy pop than country, but it was also more than close enough. Mickey Gilley’s languid country-pop blend on “Lonely Nights” continued his low-key hot streak, and as per usual with him it was nice to hear a song he could make all his own instead of trying to borrow a classic. 

Eddie Rabbitt’s “Someone Could Lose a Heart Tonight” continued his streak of sounding sort of like country music’s answer to Eddie Money or Billy Squier, with plenty of big-hook competence but not a ton of resonance. TG Sheppard continued to split the difference between macho and romantic on the catchy-but-slight “Only One You.” Don Williams scored his 12^th #1 with “Lord I Hope This Day is Good,” another master class in letting stronger emotions slip in around the edges of stoic warmth; music biz lifer Ed Bruce wouldn’t have as storied of a career, but “You’re the Best Break This Old Heart Ever Had” pulled off a similar trick nicely. 

And then things got really, really good for a week with Rosanne Cash and “Blue Moon With Heartache.” A shimmery, heartbroken, self-recriminating meditation on a love gone sour, it blended pretty much everything that was good about the day’s contemporary pop and country sounds into something sublime. Just perusing the list I thought I didn’t know this one, but yeah I probably heard it several dozen times as a kid and I hope I hear it several dozen more at least. I guess I just thought it was called “What Would I Give” or “Go Away” or some other line from the chorus. Her music would eventually get even more adventurous and introspective (mainstream gatekeepers said things like “pretentious,” but to hell with ‘em) but in the moment, nobody on the country charts was splitting the difference between conventional beauty and forward-thinking smarts better than Ms. Cash.

The already-legendary Charley Pride went back to the VSC (variety show country) well with “Mountain of Love,” but it’s a tuneful, smartly-written blast so it kind of transcends the mini-genre I sort of made up. “She Left Love All Over Me” was another hit of suggestive country soul from Razzy Bailey, his last ride to the top of the charts before a steep drop to the lower reaches for the rest of the decade. The Oak Ridge Boys, meanwhile, were only hitting their stride, although the cheesy retro-bop of “Bobbie Sue” doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would sustain a dominant run. What with the lines about the titular neighbor girl just turning 18, it sounds more like the sort of thing that’d put a bunch of middle-aged harmonizers on a watchlist.

Merle Haggard was already living up to his name to some extent by 1982 (and to be fair, probably by 1962 also) but he sounded both sly and ornery on “Big City,” a swinging declaration of get-off-the-grid independence that resonates a little more with every traffic jam or social media trend the modern age hands us. Conway Twitty was playing to his strengths again, digging in deep on the masculine pathos with a nice side of kind-of-incongruous circus imagery on “The Clown.” Not every hit was a home run, but for the most part guys like Hag and Conway (and Willie, Jones, Dolly, Pride etc.) were easing into elder-statesman status without losing their relevance. And while Nashville’s apparent lack of ageism at the time was noble enough, it seems like maybe this was around the time that it occurred to some record execs that they could probably sell more records to young folks if they had some younger folks making at least some of the records.

Unlike some of the other relative youngsters that had topped the charts in the last decade – your Alabamas, your Eddie Rabbitts, etc. – the next round was going to lean heavily towards more traditional sounds instead of pushing the pop-rock envelope. I don’t know if this was to course-correct, or to appease the old-schoolers who were starting to sour on the lite-rock stuff, or to catch some sort of youthful zeitgeist yearning for slipping-away authenticity. But either way it spelled out a big push for folks like George Strait, John Anderson, and the next #1: Ricky Skaggs, with “Crying My Heart Out Over You.” A youthful Ned Flanders type with a sweet, clear tenor twang and a growing mastery of any stringed instrument you put in front of him, Skaggs brought some serious bluegrass chops but wasn’t too much of a purist to match it up with some radio-friendly sheen and percussion. He’d get a touch hokey sometimes, but his best stuff was (and is) a breath of virtuosic fresh air.

Alabama more or less revisited their breakthrough “Tennessee River” with the very-similar jam “Mountain Music,” a high-volume hoedown after a few successful pop-rock forays. Then it was outlaw time again, although by now Willie Nelson had realized it was pretty outlaw to just drop the damn outlaw posturing and sing something as tender and soaring as “Always On My Mind.” Transcending some of the cheesy pop production touches with his heavy wonder of a voice, inimitable phrasing, and distinctive Spanish-tinged guitar, it was one for the ages; a mature love song tinged with self-reproach and a plea for forgiveness. The only sort of thing that was worthy of following this up was Willie himself, guesting with Waylon Jennings on the latter’s hard-driving, more-conventionally-outlaw “Just to Satisfy You.”

Up next was the only 1982 #1 I don’t remember from my childhood: TG Sheppard with “Finally.” Fair enough, because it’s not memorable. Sheppard’s a good singer but the song’s got one of those melodies that’s both kind of challenging and really not worth it. Slow and anemic, it mercifully slid right back out of #1 and let the Bellamy Brothers take over with their usual blend of breezy and lustful on “For All the Wrong Reasons.” Again: these guys were excellent at being pretty damn direct without coming across like a couple of creeps. But maybe not as good at it as Conway Twitty: who the hell could be? Any mojo he lost early in the year with that dumb “Red Neckin’…” song came barreling back on his cover of the Pointer Sisters then-recent soul hit “Slow Hand.” Leaning mostly on his gritty low end like a carefully-permed Barry White, Twitty scored himself another late-career signature song.

There’d be plenty more dabbling in the light-R&B pop-crossover end of the pool, with Ronnie Milsap’s tuneful but slight “Any Day Now,” Barbara Mandrell’s twinkly “Till You’re Gone,” and Alabama’s catchy come-on “Take Me Down.” Not terribly similar songs, but they collectively stood in contrast to something like Ricky Skaggs’ sweetly loping, fiddle-laced “I Don’t Care.” It was a bit saccharine, but the harmonies and instrumentation were digging for something timeless. Hank Williams Jr., a decidedly ornerier champion of country tradition, ripped through a cover of his famous dad’s “Honky Tonkin’” for another ride to the top of the charts. Albeit less audaciously than Hank, David Frizzell was leaning on a legendary family name as well (his uncle Lefty, if you’re just joining us); with “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino (To Decorate Our Home)” he was neither a retro throwback or a pop carpetbagger, just a talented vocalist delivering an amusing story to a catchy tune about overaccommodating a barfly husband. The song’s writer, Dewayne Blackwell, would eventually strike even bigger common-touch gold with “Friends in Low Places.”

Up next was one of the great cheesy guilty-pleasure country-pop earworms, the mononymous Sylvia’s “Nobody.” You know, the same Nobody that called today, hung up when I asked her name, etc. Her late-song resolve to win back her straying partner by getting better at sex (at least that’s what I got out of it) is pretty inspiring too. But maybe not as inspiring as the now-legendary George Strait scoring his first #1 with “Fool Hearted Memory.” It was his fourth major-label single after a couple runs at the top ten. It’s a smartly-written, emotionally-rich ball of fiddle-and-steel heartache from back when the still-young troubadour had a bit of youthful yelp to his voice. I don’t know if it was clear at the time just how grand of a run was kicking off here, but in retrospect how could it not have been obvious? Strait was smart but accessible, handsome but not in some off-putting pretty boy sense, visibly young but audibly steeped in country tradition. If everyone in Nashville interested in selling records didn’t see gold, they weren’t looking especially close.

Kenny Rogers was still as good a gamble as anyone, and the earthy but sophisticated country-pop of “Love Will Turn You Around” was one of his best. Jerry Reed stuck with the hot-pickin’ comedy approach to country music and scored with the lighter-side-of-divorce anthem “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft).” Michael Martin Murphey wasn’t necessarily a fresh new face if you’d been hip to the Texas-based “Cosmic Cowboy” scene where he was among the ringleaders, and even if you’d missed that then his crossover 1975 lost-horse epic “Wildfire” barely missed the #1 all-music Billboard spot (and topped the adult-contemporary charts) in an era where dreamy singer-songwriter stuff was all the (quiet, laid-back) rage. So he already had a solid reputation as an adventurous, genre-bending singer-songwriter but appears to have decided to dial it down for something a bit more mainstream; fair enough because “What’s Forever For” is lovely, and so were several of his other successive singles. He'd only hit #1 once more, but perhaps Top 40 country was always meant to just be a stop along the way.  As that leg of his career wound down, he’d commit to traditional cowboy balladry and eventually bluegrass, serving a smaller audience but hopefully with a nice chunk of Nashville money in the bank.

Mickey Gilley was still on an undeniably durable but oddly non-iconic roll, with the big-sweep country-pop of “Put Your Dreams Away” giving him another gold record to hang on the wall of his namesake nightclub. Then things got considerably more iconic, damn near a country-legend singularity with Merle Haggard and George Jones teaming up to cover Willie Nelson’s “Yesterday’s Wine,” which you kind of wish was co-written by Waylon Jennings just to bring things full-circle. It’s a warm, wise and timeless tune, not really missing anything in the stripped-down Willie original but it certainly lent itself well to a grizzled, steel-drenched duet. Perhaps emboldened by the success of the Outlaws compilation a few years prior, “buddy albums” were a bit of a country-music phenomenon as the ‘70s eased into the ‘80s. Various combinations of Willie, Waylon, George, Merle, Cash, Price, Paycheck etc. would team up and burn through a few numbers (in more ways than one, probably) and once in awhile notch a memorable hit. Most of it’s not as essential as their prime solo work, but still it’s kind of cool that these grown-up play dates were captured when everyone was at or near the height of their powers.

It's hard to get mad at a legend for leaning on their legend, and Dolly Parton certainly qualified when she remade her own “I Will Always Love You” for the soundtrack of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, memorably starring Dolly herself alongside Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise and the least-convincing college football team to ever sing in the shower. The B-Side, “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind,” got some play as well. It may not be as heart-melting as the A-side but it’s smart, tuneful, and only slightly derailed by whoever’s grunting out the bass harmonies a little too high in the mix like a death-metal Lee Hazelwood. Ronnie Milsap wasn’t covering himself yet but “He Got You” was pretty interchangeable with his other recent hits, all yacht-rock grooves and sax solos that sound about as country as a Prius. Alabama’s “Close Enough to Perfect” had some pop sheen to it too but was grounded by relatably specific lyrics and warm harmonies. Charley Pride was staying in his ’80s wheelhouse of big-production VSC but managed to keep the cheese level manageable; with “You’re So Good When You’re Bad,” he was finally comfortable dialing things up from “warmth” to some actual heat. Faithful domestic heat, sure, but at least things had maybe progressed to the point where a black man singing about sex wasn’t considered too scary for radio.

Ricky Skaggs sure as hell wasn’t gonna scare anybody; on a cover of Texas legend Guy Clark’s “Heartbroke” he sanded down the “pride is a bitch” line to keep things radio-friendly, and honestly it’s worth it to have something this intricately wordy and mature in the pantheon of #1s. I doubt the songwriter intended it as a bluegrass-pickin’ showcase but it lent itself well to it. It was a lot classier than TG Sheppard’s “War is Hell (On the Homefront Too),” a story song that’s almost “Coward of the County”-level WTF in its detailed depiction of a 1942 teenage kid hastily recruited by the love-starved wife of a deployed soldier for a little afternoon delight. There were still a lot of WWII vets alive and well in 1982 and I wonder if any of them called up their local country station and told them to knock this shit off. Not enough to keep it from going to #1 I guess.

Janie Fricke scored one of her better hits with “It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Easy,” a damaged-goods lament that she threw herself into with her usual heartfelt gusto. Maybe this is a good time to talk about Fricke, which people otherwise don’t really do all that often. She was a good-looking lady but not overly glamorous; she looked kind of like your mom’s friend from work who just happened to score a record deal. She’d broken through by doing supporting vocals on Johnny Duncan hits but soon leveled up to working with the likes of Charlie Rich, Merle Haggard, and even Ray Charles. A bit like John Conlee over on the male side, she had a knack for inhabiting songs of working-class despair and self-doubt. Her best song, “You Don’t Know Love,” didn’t hit #1 but seven others did. She was no lightweight but, unlike some of her storied collaborators, has gotten a bit lost to history.

Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gayle have been too, to some extent, but “You and I” was just the sort of genreless crossover bid that made them fairly big stars in their day. Also cracking the Top 10 on the Adult Contemporary and Hot 100 charts, I guess it’s pretty perfect as a soap opera wedding ballad if that’s what you’re in to. “Redneck Girl” by the Bellamy Brothers was way more fun, fulfilling their usual knack for sounding like they’re totally checking out the honeys but managing not to be leering creeps about it. “Somewhere Between Right and Wrong” was another win for Earl Thomas Conley, who unlike some of his contemporaries wrote most of his own material; catchy but with plenty of lyrical meat on the bone, and a cool synthesizer-I-think riff to spice it up, it was an early triumph for a guy who’d be one of the biggest success stories of ‘80s country music whether he’s remembered that way or not. Florida honky-tonker John Anderson, who’d had a couple runs at the Top 10 by this time, closed out the year with the even stronger “Wild and Blue.” A brisk 6/8 lament shot through with wailing Cajun fiddles, his first #1 put him on the list alongside George Strait, Ricky Skaggs, and Hank Jr. as relatively young bucks giving the business a tradition-minded shot in the arm without a ton of overlap in their approaches. You’d see it again around 1989, about the time Mr. Anderson was gearing up for a well-deserved comeback.

THE TREND?

Maybe more so than usual, the list of 1982 #1s looks like an ongoing tug-of-war between the forces of stoic tradition and crossover ambition, occasionally within the same song. And ironically, much of the former was being driven by new-to-the-table youngsters while the country chart veterans (even the rustic likes of Willie Nelson) dabbled in adult-contempo hybrids. In the right hands, either approach can come up gold, but to these tastes the old-school approach has a far better batting average. Six-year-old me probably would agree … I don’t remember if my folks let me change the radio station every time “You and I” came on, but I do vaguely recall wanting to. At any rate, the mix of already-legends and talented upstarts was as good in 1982 as anyone could hope, to the point where you wish that approach would’ve survived a few decades more.

THE RANKING

1. Blue Moon With Heartache – Rosanne Cash
2. Always On My Mind – Willie Nelson
3. I Will Always Love You/Do I Ever Cross Your Mind – Dolly Parton
4. Fourteen Carat Mind – Gene Watson
5. Wild and Blue – John Anderson
6. Fool Hearted Memory – George Strait
7. Lord I Hope This Day is Good – Don Williams
8. Yesterday’s Wine – Merle Haggard and George Jones
9. Big City – Merle Haggard
10. Just to Satisfy You – Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson
11. Heartbroke – Ricky Skaggs
12. The Sweetest Thing (I’ve Ever Known) – Juice Newton
13. The Clown – Conway Twitty
14. For All the Wrong Reasons – The Bellamy Brothers
15. Love Will Turn You Around – Kenny Rogers
16. Somewhere Between Right and Wrong – Earl Thomas Conley
17. Nobody - Sylvia
18. Slow Hand – Conway Twitty
19. I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home – David Frizzell
20. She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft) – Jerry Reed
21. What’s Forever For – Michael Martin Murphey
22. Close Enough to Perfect - Alabama
23. Mountain Music – Alabama
24. Honky Tonkin’ – Hank Williams Jr.
25. It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Easy – Janie Fricke
26. Mountain of Love – Charley Pride
27. Crying My Heart Out Over You – Ricky Skaggs
28. Lonely Nights – Mickey Gilley
29. Any Day Now – Ronnie Milsap
30. Take Me Down – Alabama
31. You’re So Good When You’re Bad – Charley Pride
32. Redneck Girl – The Bellamy Brothers
33. I Wouldn’t Have Missed it For the World – Ronnie Milsap
34. You’re the Best Break This Old Heart Ever Had – Ed Bruce
35. She Left Love All Over Me – Razzy Bailey
36. He Got You – Ronnie Milsap
37. I Don’t Care – Ricky Skaggs
38. Put Your Dreams Away – Mickey Gilley
39. Only One You – TG Sheppard
40. Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me Baby – Janie Fricke
41. Till You’re Gone – Barbara Mandrell
42. Red Neckin’ Love Makin’ Night – Conway Twitty
43. Someone Could Lose a Heart Tonight – Eddie Rabbitt
44. Bobbie Sue – The Oak Ridge Boys
45. You and I – Eddie Rabbitt with Crystal Gayle
46. War is Hell (On the Homefront Too) – TG Sheppard
47. Finally – TG Sheppard

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Catching on to a larger (if still largely regional) audience circa the mid-'90s, folk singer Robert Earl Keen probably did as much as anyone to keep the Texas singer-songwriter tradition of Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker etc. going into the next generation. Him catching on with rowdy college-aged crowds getting sick of the encroaching blandness of then-modern mainstream country was as big of a gamechanger as the Texas music scene had seen since the "outlaw" heyday a couple decades prior. Dozens if not hundreds of songwriters and bands of varying notoriety would pop up in the wake of his influence. However heralded Keen was as a writer, though, he wasn't shy about dipping into covers both obscure and otherwise, including a whole double album of bluegrass material with 2015's Happy Prisoner. If you sprung for the deluxe edition, you got his hard-charging take on fellow Texan Gene Watson's only #1 hit, which sounds like it was meant to be bluegrass all along.