1983 - breath as hard as kerosene ...

1983 is one of those years like we’ve talked about before, where it feels like the industry just looked at the previous year and said yeah, that was pretty good, let’s just have another round of that. Similar balance of older artists vs newer, tradition vs. crossover, substance vs. fluff. As with many second helpings, it’s not quite as satisfying as the first. But if you skipped it entirely, you’d be missing some good stuff.

John Anderson’s excellent “Wild and Blue” carried over from 1982 with one of those increasingly rare two-week runs at the top before handing over to someone who’d be even more consequential, at least commercially: Reba McEntire. We’re very much in soundtrack-to-my-childhood territory here and honestly I don’t remember Reba being a big deal until a few years later, but she was scoring intermittently before she became the powerhouse female vocalist of her era. “Can’t Even Get the Blues” seems like a bit of a trifle, as is often the case when somebody who specializes in romantic ballads decides they need to put out something upbeat now and then just to change it up. For all her talents, “bluesy” was never a great fit.

“Going Where the Lonely Go,” meanwhile, was one hell of a mid-career triumph for Merle Haggard. Sure, staying relevant was a victory in itself, although the country music industry was generally kinder than most to the middle-agers. But the self-penned tune showed the longtime star never lost his common touch for down-to-earth heartache, and his voice was aging like a fine bourbon. It’s probably the earliest example I can remember of when I decided something was my favorite song.  I guess at around seven years old I was already into road-weary melancholy. That hasn’t changed much.

Emmylou Harris had broken through as a very early example of “alt-country” when she was Gram Parsons’ righthand gal, and she’d drift back there soon enough, but 1983 was well within the sweet spot when she could cover Conway Twitty covering Floyd Cramer on “(Lost His Love) On Our Last Date” and ride it to #1. Mickey Gilley was still on his kind-of-puzzling but undeniable roll with “Talk to Me,” an old Little Willie John chestnut smoothed out for the country-pop charts. Ronnie Milsap was in his imperial phase as well, with “Inside” tackling a complicated, Beatles-meet-James-Taylor sort of melody that’s technically impressive but a bit cold when it’s all said and done. Another very 1983 sort of artist, Crystal Gayle, snagged the next #1 with a cover of Rodney Crowell’s “Til I Gain Control Again.” Most longtime country fans are familiar with this longing beauty of a song, and I don’t know about the rest of them but I always associated it with Crowell himself or the timeless versions by Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris. I wasn’t aware until “researching” this (i.e., driving around listening to music) that Gayle had a version, much less a #1 hit version, but anyhow it’s lovely. One of the best things she ever recorded, although it’s been overshadowed by other tunes that she more or less had all to herself.

TG Sheppard and Karen Brooks’ “Faking Love” has kind of disappeared from cultural memory too, but probably more because it’s drippy lightweight pseudo-funk than any overshadowing issues. Warhorse-by-then Charley Pride scored again with a cover of George Jones decades-old hit “Why Baby Why,” which seems weird since Jones was still often on the chart right next to him.  Don Williams stuck to his mellow guns with “If Hollywood Don’t Need You (Honey I Still Do),” which might be far from his best work but didn’t stray from his usual twilit charm. Veterans continued to rule the roost as Conway Twitty scored with his impassioned take on “The Rose,” which had been a Bette Midler movie soundtrack hit a few years back. Midler didn’t exactly have a small, personality-free voice, but Twitty still masterfully made this one his own. It goes so big I’m sure it at least teeters on the edge of cheese for some listeners, but I’m still down with it.  

Ricky Skaggs’ traditionalist approach didn’t have much room for Bette Midler covers, but to me the bluegrass-informed likes of “I Wouldn’t Change You if I Could” has a whiff of cheese to it too. Skaggs could tackle emotionally messy stuff too, but sometimes the man was just too wholesome for these ears (which is maybe more of a knock on me than on him). John Anderson came barreling back to the top with what would come to be his signature hit, “Swingin’.” You could argue this one falls into the cheese category too, but it’s so damn fun and seems self-aware in its depiction of folksy young romance with all the organ riffs and horn sections you could ever ask for to put this kind of catchy trifle way over the top. And who hits the vocal balance of genial and weathered better than John Anderson? If this is cheese I’ll take two pounds.

The Bellamy Brothers’ “When I’m Away From You” was more breezy than cheesy, another welcome dose of their lighthearted romanticism that’s been kind of overshadowed by their even-bigger hits. “We’ve Got Tonight,” by Kenny Rogers duetting with country legend Sheena Easton, was not breezy enough. A then-recent pop-rock hit for Detroit legend Bob Seger, it suffers mightily in comparison to the original. Seger could transfix a crowd by shifting gears from R&B-fueled powerhouse to sensitive balladeer without losing too much of his vocal gusto. Rogers was a hell of a singer, and Easton was technically gifted enough, but they’ve got so little chemistry with this song and with each other that they just sound overwrought at best.

“Dixieland Delight” was of a piece with “Swingin.’” It’s goofy on paper, with all the folksy lines about doin’ a little turtledovin’ (read: truck sex) while the chubby little groundhogs watch, but in execution it kind of rocks. No horn sections, but some stadium-rock power chords breaking it down at the end before transitioning into a fevered fiddle hoedown … it’s a master class in country-rock dynamics, I know some jaded listeners might write it off as pandering but there was never really any indication that the guys in Alabama weren’t totally the wholesome shit-kickers they usually presented as. The Oak Ridge Boys took a swing at the down-home common touch too with “American Made” but didn’t do half as well. Sounds nice enough, but the brand-name-dropping about foreign-made products probably already felt dated by the time the song’s chart run wrapped up.

Reba McEntire’s second #1 was much more in her wheelhouse. “You’re the First Time I Thought About Leaving” was a lovely, emotionally complex waltz, an almost-cheating ballad that probably hit some uncomfortable nerves on the way to the top, just like you’d want real music for real people to sometimes do. Next up was Shelly West with “Jose Cuervo,” a good-time country-pop ode to boozy adventure that’s more memorable than its modest ambitions might suggest. For one, I’d long assumed that this tune was from the mid ‘70s at the latest; it just seemed like it had always been around by 1983. And as a kid, it seemed a little gender-ambiguous; Ms. West has a rounded, sort-of-deep-for-a-female tone to her voice that sure sounded like it might’ve been a guy singing about waking up next to cowboys and dancing on the bar. In an era when gay people often went unmentioned or were mentioned with contempt, it seemed like an odd thing to hear on the radio, or at all. Maybe that’s why West did so many duets with David Frizzell; his gravelly masculinity made her voice more obviously feminine by contrast.

Next up was the also-plenty-masculine BJ Thomas, who’d drifted over from the easy-listening charts as the glory days of AM-friendly pop dried up, and lent his usual genial warmth to “Whatever Happened to Old-Fashioned Love.” Chart regular John Conlee, who couldn’t have gone pop with a mouthful of firecrackers, went sunnier than usual with “Common Man.” It’s a POV tale from a regular working-class dude romanced by a well-meaning heiress of some sort, politely rejecting her upper-crust trappings in favor of Budweiser and Chevrolet. He wants the girl, sure, but he wants her in a more down-to-earth setting free from garish Mercedes and snobby-ass pedigreed dogs. The Thomas and Conlee songs fit nicely in a paragraph together because, while not without charm, they both hint at sort of a regressive social undercurrent where old-fashioned and blue-collar are put up on a pedestal. Things were better in the past and should be more like that now, and while we’re at it living simply yet surrounded by affordable brand-name indulgences is a sign of unpretentious good character. Nothing wrong with a little nostalgia or trying to find some contentment in modest means, of course, but these sort of sentiments would just get more prevalent and (in some hands) more obnoxious as time went on.

Merle Haggard, of course, still sounded pretty blue-collar a couple of decades into a very successful entertainment career: “You Take Me For Granted” brimmed with resigned vulnerability and timeless hurt. Waylon Jennings continued to kick it defiantly old-school, reshaping Little Richard’s oldie “Lucille (You Won’t Do Your Daddy’s Will)” into something more lonesome, ornery and mean than ever would’ve occurred to the flamboyant piano-pounder. Then things got fairly slick again with Crystal Gayle’s sad-yet-bouncy “Our Love is On the Faultline” and Eddie Rabbitt’s usual yacht-rock smoothness on “You Can’t Run From Love.”  Mickey Gilley leaned on his usual loungey vibe for “Fool For Your Love” and Don Williams spiced up his usual mellow country-folk vibe with quirkier-than-usual lyrics courtesy of this author’s personal favorite songwriter John Prine on “Love Is On a Roll.”  Several veterans in a row there, more or less sticking with what usually worked best for them.

Relative upstart Ricky Skaggs kicked things up a notch, showing off his hot-pickin’ prowess with the restless chug of “Highway 40 Blues.” Alabama yet again successfully split the difference between a rocker and a ballad with the catchy, state-of-the-art country-pop of “The Closer You Get.” Pleasant enough stuff, but things took a deeper and darker turn when legendary buddies Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard sunk their teeth into Texas folkie Townes Van Zandt’s masterful, mysterious “Pancho and Lefty.” Van Zandt’s legend had been quietly building in songwriting-connoisseur circles for well over a decade by then; he didn’t really have the voice or enough of a handle on his personal demons to be a breakout star himself, and by the ‘80s the business wasn’t really looking for another Bob Dylan type anymore anyway. But critics were paying attention, and so were other songwriters (Emmylou Harris had also cut this one), including Willie and Merle who of course could give it all the grizzled grace it deserved. An obliquely poetic tale of crime, brotherhood, and regret, it was easily the oddest thing to top the country charts in 1983 and arguably the very best.   

George Jones went loungier than usual for “I Always Get Lucky With You,” which was a pretty great fit for the sweet-but-kinda-skeevy message of the song, and as per usual there’s no lack of vocal investment. Earl Thomas Conley’s “Your Love’s on the Line” wasn’t one of his strongest tunes, but dude was on a roll … it was good enough to snag another #1. Janie Fricke’s brisk, busy “He’s a Heartache (Looking for a Place to Happen)” hasn’t held up great; she was usually at her strongest milking a heartbroken ballad for all it was worth, but could come off kind of chirpy when up-tempo. The Oak Ridge Boys picked up the pace too, with “Love Song” hearkening back to the gospel-group roots that had evolved into kind of a side hustle during their run as mainstream country hitmakers. Not a great tune, but they were talented enough to do an approximation of black gospel without coming off totally ridiculous.

Ronnie McDowell did sort of an approximation of the Bellamy Brothers with the breezy, tropical-tinged story song “You’re Gonna Ruin My Bad Reputation,” a reformed-playa ballad that’s sweet in execution and smart in lyrical detail. George Strait continued the incipient stages of his decades-long roll with the stately hurt of “A Fire I Can’t Put Out,” milking the old-flame lyrical cliché for all it was worth and then some. John Conlee went bouncier than usual, which was sort of the vibe of the year, with the VSC bop of “I’m Only In It For the Love.” Charley Pride was ready for the variety show stage too on the vaguely disco-ish “Night Games,” finally emboldened to sing about some illicit sex as he drifted into middle age.

Tenderness took over for a stretch. Crystal Gayle’s pensive but tuneful “Baby What About You” was one of her finer moments on record, a smartly spare lover’s lament that showcased her wisely. BJ Thomas sang about getting “New Looks from an Old Lover” with the sort of dusky maturity that probably emboldened a whole generation of rebounding divorcees. Ronnie Milsap reverted to his usual MOR melodic dexterity for the laid-back, catchy “Don’t You Know How Much I Love You.” I know most of us have probably lost count by now, but this was his 23^rd #1 … I know I might come off as a bit dismissive of the man’s catalog, so I’d like to temper that with some credit where it’s due.

Charly McClain didn’t share Milsap’s chart dominance … she’d been trying for a half-decade before she broke through in 1981 with the evergreen “Who’s Cheatin’ Who” and subsequently flitted in and out of the Top 10 before teaming up with chart warhorse Mickey Gilley for the almost psychotically cheerful “Paradise Tonight.” A chipper anthem to two lonelyhearts breaking a streak of bad luck with a barroom hookup so fortunate it starts to sound wholesome, it had a strong whiff of contemporary pop to it (synth handclaps and all) but also served as proof that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Alabama’s empathetic, stripped-down bummer “Lady Down on Love” could’ve been a prequel to that one … a tender character study with a self-recriminating plot twist, it’s one of their best, and possibly one of the most down-tempo songs to ever hit #1. But then it’s back to wholesomely sexy cheerfulness with Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s “Islands in the Stream,” which comes off a little like they heard “Paradise Tonight” and said “oh yeah? Watch this.” Highly amplified star power, of course. Instead of approximating modern pop, just outright hijacking an actual Bee Gees song. Cooing and growling sweet poetic nothings about peace unknown and walking the night, slowly losing sight of the real thing … it’s the best kind of cheese, from two superstars that had real-deal chemistry. 

Easing into the holidays, you’ve got Lee Greenwood’s first #1 “Somebody’s Gonna Love You,” the kind of harmlessly smooth, quietly catchy yacht-country he’d eventually be second-best-known for. A year later he’d put out “God Bless the USA,” which astoundingly in retrospect barely cracked the Top 10 even in the gung-ho Reagan years. It’s common in snark circles to write off Greenwood as an opportunistic schmuck, unknown except for the one patriotic hit that ensured he’d have star-spangled mailbox money for life and at least one big gig (usually televised and on the deck of battleship) around early July every year. But this was the first of seven #1 hits, and others came close. They lean pretty watery, in that Eddie Rabbitt/Ronnie Milsap kind of way that was selling at the time. But it should be said that there was more to him than that one hit that’s sat just a couple notches below our actual national anthem in the patriotic-song pantheon for the last few decades.

Barbara Mandrell (who’d have a couple of hit duets with Greenwood in the years to come) continued her variety-show vibes with the cheated-on anthem “One of a Kind Pair of Fools.” Earl Thomas Conley hit one of the highest points in an underrated career with the downbeat, conflicted “Holding Her and Loving You.” It’s not terribly easy to drum up sympathy (“it’s the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do …”) for a two-timer but Conley pulls it off with some pretty nifty word economy and no shortage of pained but not-overdone vocal commitment. Anne Murray went vaguely topical with “A Little Good News,” a folksy anthem wishing away violence and strife with straight-faced lines like “nobody was assassinated in the whole wide world today” that somehow work just fine in context. Janie Fricke narrowed things back down to a more personal struggle with the lingering despair of “Tell Me a Lie,” a tenderly realized invitation for a cheesy barroom come-on just when she needs it most. Fricke did vulnerability really, really well.

As the year closes out we get John Anderson again with “Black Sheep,” which is an absolute roadhouse blast of a country-rock anthem. A cleverly-sketched POV tale from a blue-collar plugger with a waitress wife and a bunch of high-toned rich siblings that either ignore or look down on him, there’s just not a thing about it that doesn’t work. Anderson’s grinning, nasal-honk delivery. Those awesomely specific detailed lyrics about jacuzzis and big ol’ Japanese yachts. Even the sax solo doesn’t muck up the relentless bar-band chug. It just rips, and still holds up like a million bucks today.

And then there’s Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers (Larry’s always gotta remind everyone who’s boss) with the relatively toothless “Houston (Means I’m One Day Closer to You).” I wondered if this was all over the radio during my childhood because I grew up in the Houston metropolitan area, but in reflection it looks like it was huge everywhere. It got a two-week run at the top in an era when that was increasingly rare. It’s catchy enough I guess; it was a good year for upbeat ditties of various sorts, and “Houston” is about as ditty as it gets.            

THE TREND?

The mix of veterans and upstarts continued apace, with Reba McEntire as the year’s breakthrough right on the heels of Strait, Skaggs, et al. And this might not have been a consistent theme – there were still plenty of sad songs and waltzes to go around – but along with the mini-wave of newer artists there also seemed to be a trend to more fun, upbeat, good-humored numbers.  “Dixieland Delight,” “Swingin’,” “Jose Cuervo,” “Islands in the Stream,” “Black Sheep” … hell, even the haunting “Pancho and Lefty” has a chorus that’s fun to sing along with. Maybe the country music industry was getting a little more aware of the non-listener’s stereotype of country music as wall-to-wall sad bastard laments about cheatin’ hearts. But even the great Hank Williams was also all about the “Hey Good Lookin’” and “Honky Tonkin’” in between bouts of haunted despair. Perhaps while Nashville was trying to draw in younger listeners with younger artists, they were also trying to pull some happier listeners with happier songs. 

THE RANKING:

1. Pancho and Lefty – Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard
2. Black Sheep – John Anderson
3. Going Where the Lonely Go – Merle Haggard
4. Islands in the Stream – Kenny Rogers with Dolly Parton
5. Til I Gain Control Again – Crystal Gayle
6. A Fire I Can’t Put Out – George Strait
7. Dixieland Delight - Alabama
8. Swingin’ – John Anderson
9. Holding Her and Loving You – Earl Thomas Conley
10. Lady Down on Love - Alabama
11. Lost His Love (On Our Last Date) – Emmylou Harris
12. I Always Get Lucky With You – George Jones
13. The Rose – Conway Twitty
14. Love is On a Roll – Don Williams
15. Baby What About You – Crystal Gayle
16. Highway 40 Blues – Ricky Skaggs
17. If Hollywood Don’t Need You (Honey I Still Do) – Don Williams
18. You’re the First Time I’ve Thought About Leaving – Reba McEntire
19. You Take Me For Granted – Merle Haggard
20. You’re Gonna Ruin My Bad Reputation – Ronnie McDowell
21. The Closer You Get – Alabama
22. Tell Me a Lie – Janie Fricke
23. When I’m Away From You – The Bellamy Brothers
24. Lucille (You Won’t Do Your Daddy’s Will) – Waylon Jennings
25. A Little Good News – Anne Murray
26. Jose Cuervo – Shelly West
27. Your Love’s On the Line – Earl Thomas Conley
28. Can’t Even Get the Blues – Reba McEntire
29. I Wouldn’t Change You if I Could – Ricky Skaggs
30. I’m Only In It For the Love – John Conlee
31. Don’t You Know How Much I Love You – Ronnie Milsap
32. Night Games – Charley Pride
33. New Looks From an Old Lover – BJ Thomas
34. Our Love is On the Faultline – Crystal Gayle
35. Why Baby Why – Charley Pride
36. Whatever Happened to Old Fashioned Love – BJ Thomas
37. Paradise Tonight – Charly McClain and Mickey Gilley
38. Common Man – John Conlee
39. We’ve Got Tonight – Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton
40. He’s A Heartache (Looking For A Place to Happen) – Janie Fricke
41. Houston (Means That I’m One Day Closer to You) – Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers
42. One of a Kind Pair of Fools – Barbara Mandrell
43. Somebody’s Gonna Love You – Lee Greenwood
44. Love Song – The Oak Ridge Boys
45. Fool For Your Love – Mickey Gilley
46. You Can’t Run From Love – Eddie Rabbitt
47. Inside – Ronnie Milsap
48. Talk To Me – Mickey Gilley
49. American Made – The Oak Ridge Boys
50. Faking Love – TG Sheppard

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant is about as classic-rock-royalty as it gets; as much as his old warhorse band liked reshaping or flat-out copycatting old Delta blues, I guess it wasn't the only American music genre he had a soft spot for. His relatively recent team-ups with onetime bluegrass prodigy turned somewhat-of-a-country-star Alison Krauss revealed that the sweet-voiced acoustic maestra had kind of a complementary thing for gracefully aging arena rockers too. Their collaborations were big with the Grammy voters and the NPR-ish roots-music crowd and tastefully repurposed a well-curated mix of early rock and pop tunes, folk nuggets and singer-songwriter fare, and at least one stone country classic in Merle Haggard's "Going Where the Lonely Go." Steering into the wistful dreaminess of it all instead of trying to match Hag's hard-lonesome delivery - a tall order even for talents on the level of Plant and Krauss - they handled it beautifully.