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.

1981 - I'd rather see you up, than see you down ...

As a 1976 baby, we’re really getting to the point here where I actually remember hearing (most of) these songs in heavy rotation on the radio as a kid. Country radio was the default at my parents’ house and in their vehicle, at both sets of grandparents’ houses where I spent big chunks of time, in various public establishments etc. That being said, there were 9-10 songs or so in the 1981 list that didn’t ring a bell for me, more than some of the years well before I was born. Maybe that’s just the imperfect memory you’d expect for a 5-year-old, maybe some of these songs just weren’t as big in the Houston area in the pre-ClearChannel days, or maybe some of these just weren’t resonant enough to stay in rotation after they tumbled back down the charts.

It started off big enough. Johnny Lee carried over from ’80 then handed off to the already-venerable-back-then Merle Haggard. Not counting his novelty one-off with Clint Eastwood from 1980, Hag hadn’t had a #1 since 1976. He hadn’t really faded, he was still cracking the top 5 on the reg, but unlike most of his old ‘60s peers the ‘80s were going to be really good to him. Age wasn’t nearly the barrier to chart relevance that it is nowadays; as mentioned before, even the relative newbies came off pretty middle-aged in content and persona. “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink” was an example of how a few artists found a version of ‘80s production that didn’t sound chintzy or dated, but played to their strengths.

“I Love a Rainy Night” crossed over to a pop #1 even though it only topped the country charts for one week; not a ton of substance, but the finger-popping catchiness and Rabbitt’s energetic delivery were clearly good for something. Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” pulled off the same feat, but with the benefit of an iconic voice and being attached to a hit feature film.  As with the movie, it wasn’t exactly a heart-toucher but it did have some lasting social relevance, especially for women who felt overworked and overlooked in a modern workplace. A bit of a country-pop trifle on the surface, a closer listen reveals some pretty clever lyrical detail, a reminder that songwriting is one of Parton’s many gifts.

TG Sheppard was a journeyman by comparison, but “I Feel Like Loving You Again” is invested with some genuine-sounding tenderness instead of his usual default swagger. Fellow journeyman Razzy Bailey kept the sort-of-R&B flame going with the mildly groovy “I Keep Coming Back,” b/w “True Life Country Music” which was an interesting early example of interpolating titles and quotes from better-known songs and calling it clever enough. First-time chart-topper Charly McClain picked up the tempo with the spare, pop-tinged, endlessly catchy groove of “Who’s Cheatin’ Who,” followed up by warhorse-by-now crooner Mel Tillis with the eminently forgettable “Southern Rains.” I don’t remember hearing this as a child, as an adult perusing classic-country stations or playlists, I’ve never heard anyone cover or mention it, and after listening to it a couple of times a few days ago to try to jog my memory I couldn’t currently quote you a line or hum you a snippet of melody. It’s easy to see why folks liked the affable, baritone-voiced Tillis; I like him too. But it’s hard to imagine what made this one a winner for him.

Dottie West wasn’t at her absolute best either on the sad kiss-off “Are You Happy Baby?,” there’s not a ton of meat on the bone but West’s gravelly conviction was always good for something. The Bellamy Brothers cannily reprised the general premise of “If I Said You Had a Beautiful…” with “Do You Love as Good as You Look.” Similar to their signature hit (even though this time they didn’t write it), it was built around a direct, only-slightly-clever come-on but it was so catchy, breezy, and non-threatening that it didn’t come off at all creepy or obnoxious. Nice addition to a catalog that I think gets underrated sometimes.

But for a little while, it was time to shift gears to straight-up legends. Elvis Presley was four years gone at this point, and most of the King of Rock & Roll’s old fans were probably more comfortable with country (or maybe easy listening) radio than the weirder stuff that was prevailing in contemporary rock music. Elvis’ version of country music mainstay Jerry Reed’s “Guitar Man” had first popped up on the soundtrack to his 1968 movie Clambake, and somebody at RCA figured it was ripe for rediscovery so they had Reed and a new backing band come in to record a new electrified track around Presley’s vocal from the original. Eventually the recording industry would pull this trick on all sorts of deceased legends, but at the time this was a bit of a novelty (and apparently a welcome one at that). Willie Nelson was up next with something timeless: the glorious heartache and gratitude of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” should do just fine for the next 100 years with no tweaks needed. It’s certainly up there with Nelson’s greatest masterpieces as a singer, songwriter, and (while we’re at it) guitarist.

Hank Williams Jr. was still early in his transition from mimicking his long-gone legend of a father to confidently self-mythologizing the both of them, and he scored his first #1 with the rakishly macho waltz of “Texas Women.” Full of clever rhymes and loved-‘em-all swagger, it was a pretty solid introduction to the larger-than-life performer he was becoming. “Drifter,” the first big hit by mononymous semi-star Sylvia, had much less staying power; an odd little number that sounds like the theme song to a variety-show parody of a B-western flick, it’d be overshadowed by other bigger hits of the era including her own. Can’t say I recall ever hearing it before researching (if that’s the right word) for this article. Conversely, I can’t remember ever not knowing every word to “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” … that thing was everywhere, and deservedly so. Lefty Frizzell’s nephew David and Dottie West’s daughter Shelly might’ve had the benefit of nepotism but they sure didn’t half-ass the opportunity: as the arrangement gradually swells from a bare-bones crawl to a harmonica-driven big-sky force of country-pop nature, they’re both up for every key change and subtle tempo shift, making their characters feel as real as their voices. It’s a beauty.

“Old Flame” by Alabama had a nicely subtle glow about it, a quietly catchy little country lope with layered harmonies, a laid-back counterpoint to the romantic paranoia of the lyrics. They might’ve been more Skynyrd on stage back in their heyday, but they were more Eagles on record. Those upstart kids weren’t squeezing Mickey Gilley off the charts, though: if anything he was getting better and more tasteful, laying off the too-smooth covers of soul and country classics and tackling a mournfully clever song like “A Headache Tomorrow (Or a Heartache Tonight)” that he could make all his own. Conway Twitty stretched his legs at least a bit by tackling the hearty Bee Gees ballad “Rest Your Love on Me,” which sounds like it was tailor-made for him anyway, and was backed by the similarly sturdy “I Am the Dreamer (You Are the Dream).” Ronnie Milsap got in on the recontextualized-cover game too, reviving the old Jim Reeves chestnut “Am I Losing You” with his usual abundance of vocal pyro; whether you think that takes a solid song to the next level or just kind of smothers it is a matter of taste I suppose. TG Sheppard was relatively laid-back, in delivery if not libido, on the self-congratulatory stud muffin anthem “I Loved ‘Em Every One.”

And then things got downright sublime. Rosanne Cash was, obviously, the daughter of already-legend Johnny Cash.  She didn’t spin her wheels trying to somehow be a female version of her famous dad, but she quickly showed that she shared his artistic edge even if she pushed it in a different direction. “Seven Year Ache” is, to these ears, one of the most perfect three minutes of music ever put to tape. An insistent but soothing groove, smartly verbose lyrics that push the envelope of country wordsmithing, crystal vocals with longing and regret shining just below the surface. She’d eventually go even further in the arch, moody, not-for-everyone direction that her breakthrough hints at, but (as we’ll see) in terms of landing ambitious-sounding singles that still hit with the masses, she was one of the top commercial country artists of the 1980s. And it feels like that’s kind of been forgotten since then.

And then you get “Elvira,” which became a signature song for the already-established Oak Ridge Boys, casting their four-part harmonies (and, especially, Richard Sterban’s indelible bass vocal) in more of a novelty-song direction, reminiscent of oldies acts like The Coasters. It was penned by Dallas Frazier (who recorded it way back in 1966) and covered in 1978, coincidentally, by Rosanne Cash’s then-husband Rodney Crowell; his version was reportedly where the Oaks heard it, possibly around the same time they were scoping out the same album’s “Leavin’ Lousiana in the Broad Daylight” that they had their second #1 hit with. Pretty damn circular around here sometimes. As a kid I liked this song but was distracted by wondering if it was about the comically sexy-spooky TV personality Elvira (aka Cassandra Peterson, who hadn’t created the character yet back in 1966, but I bet I wasn’t the only one who wondered if there was a connection by the time the Oaks got a hold of it). 

Razzy Bailey spun back into the top spot with the easy-listening “Friends” which, back to my childhood impressions, seemed to be both all over the radio and, as far as I knew back then, was his only hit (if not only song, ever).  Check out Razzy Bailey on Wikipedia, there’s a picture of him as a genially smiling older man in a straw hat and Hawaiian shirt. He looks like a composite of every middle-aged songwriter I ever ran into at an acoustic open mic.  He was a gifted vocalist with a knack for sounding fully invested in whatever he was singing.  But it’s weird that, at five, he had more #1 hits than Roger Miller, Gary Stewart, and Gene Watson put together.  The more conventionally-starry Kenny Rogers and Dottie West were up for another duet #1 with the squeezably soft, forgettable “What Are We Doin’ In Love.”  Dolly Parton’s “But You Know I Love You” was well within the easy-listening vein too, but as per usual it transcended on the strength of her performance.  Anne Murray’s “Blessed Are the Believers” wasn’t gonna wake any babies either, but this sort of intelligent, well-crafted folk-pop was totally in her wheelhouse … it’s easy listening that’s easy to listen to, which ironically often isn’t the case for most of us.  She was kind of the Mary Chapin Carpenter of her day, not as prone to wit but with a sweeter voice.

Up next was another round of Barbara Mandrell, this time with “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.”  It was sort of a nod to the Urban Cowboy fad that made a lot of folks suddenly decide they were cowboys, but despite Mandrell’s charms as a performer it seemed a bit rich coming from someone who’d mostly trafficked in crossover schmaltz.  Her variety show with her sisters was on TV by the time this hit; cheesiness was kind of her thing, and she was good at it.  Bringing in George Jones for a vocal cameo and piping in crowd noise to make this sound like a live track all speaks to the crowd-pleasing calculations that made her a big deal in her day but have also arguably left most of her music stuck in it.  

Earl Thomas Conley was kind of unassumingly one of the most consistent and successful singer-songwriters of the era, and the warm grooves and smart lyricism of “Fire and Smoke” makes for a fine Exhibit A.  Alabama stayed on a soft-rock roll with the wholesomely sexy “Feels So Right” (I bet Conway was pissed he didn’t get this one) and their friendly Southern-pride rival Hank Williams Jr. barreled along amusingly through the Yankee kiss-off “Dixie On My Mind.”  I grew up idolizing Hank Jr., and good on him I suppose for following his own muse instead of just recording whatever he was asked, but if you take away the songs about his dad and the songs about being from the South his catalog gets pretty slim; it’d be like taking the beach songs away from Jimmy Buffett.  He kind of was/is Buffett for people who like whiskey, woods and guns better than margaritas, beaches and boats. 

Back to the country-pop fence-straddlers for awhile: Crystal Gayle stuck to her tuneful, vaguely elegant groove with the peppy “Too Many Lovers,” Kenny Rogers kicked up a near Philly-soul level of vocal yearning on the kinda-majestic “I Don’t Need You,” and Ronnie Milsap brought a little more piano-man swagger than usual to “There’s No Gettin’ Over Me.”  Up next was Ronnie McDowell, a Navy vet and big Elvis Presley fan. He’d scored a 1977 pop hit with the mournful self-penned “The King is Gone” and followed so close in his hero’s footsteps performance-wise that he was Hollywood’s go-to guy of the era if they needed an Elvis mimic to record vocals for movies or TV shows. As a country artist, he was bit redundant with the TG Sheppards and BJ Thomases of the day, but “Older Women” was the sort of catchy paean to regular folks that couldn’t help but hit a nerve in a good way.

Mickey Gilley eased back into his cover-band ways with a take on the Eddy Arnold/Cindy Walker classic “You Don’t Know Me.”  His performance is solid, even nicely nuanced, and this time around it benefits from not having one definitive version of it out there looming large enough to make Gilley’s take suffer by comparison (I’d still argue the Ray Charles version is really where it’s at).  Conway Twitty was up to his old tricks as well, with “Tight Fittin’ Jeans” fitting him better than actual tight jeans probably did at this point in his life.  A rakish little barroom vignette about meeting a slumming rich babe at a honky tonk (this probably rang pretty true to life in the Urban Cowboy aftermath), towards the end Twitty sings “In my mind she’s still a lady, that’s all I’m gonna say.” Which says plenty.

Razzy Bailey continued his largely-forgotten hot streak with the actually-pretty-groovy trucker anthem “Midnight Hauler,” his only notably up-tempo #1.   TG Sheppard scored one of his better ones too with “Party Time,” rocking a nice mid-tempo groove as a counterpoint to lyrics that are more melancholy than the title suggests.  Eddie Rabbitt scored his 9^th #1 with “Step By Step,” a bit of sparkly soft-rock reminiscent of Air Supply, in case that sounds like something you’d be into. Charley Pride, with a massive string of hits and a few recent hard-country Hank Williams covers behind him, dipped his toe into variety show country (VSC, around these parts) with the Vegas-y swirl of “Never Been So Loved (In All of My Life).” The Oak Ridge Boys continued their peak with the dusky beauty of “Fancy Free” and Roseanne Cash kept her hot streak going with the chugging, charming throwback of “My Baby Thinks He’s a Train.”

It was a nod to a stint of dominance for traditional country. Hank Williams Jr. scored again with the clever, name-dropping lope of “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down,” hinting at how guys like Jones, Cash and Jennings that had sort of provided a bridge between Hank Sr.’s heyday and his were easing into relatively sober elder-statesmen status. Resurgent legend Merle Haggard hit again with the dreamy, affectionate waltz of “My Favorite Memory.” Johnny Lee split the difference between twangy classicism and then-modern country-pop songcraft with “Bet Your Heart on Me,” followed by heartache maestro George Jones with the barroom-as-prison metaphor of “Still Doin’ Time.”  Somewhere nearby, Willie Nelson was probably glad to note that sad songs and waltzes were selling that year.

But, as noted, so was crossover-friendly country-pop. Steve Wariner would build a quietly notable career out of breezy numbers that sounded more than a little like what would eventually be called “yacht rock,” but his first #1 out of the gate was “All Roads Lead to You.” To these ears it sounds somehow both clunky and weightless; he’d do way better stuff eventually, but I’m not sure what zeitgeist this one captured. Alabama’s “Love in the First Degree” had a high soft-rock percentage to it as well but it was a more obvious winner and holds up pretty nicely, sticking hard to the love-as-a-crime metaphor without wearing it out. Newer strains of pop were infiltrating the country sound, but bands like Alabama were doing their best to prove that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

THE TREND?

If you fast-forward to the ranking, 1981 looks like a pretty solid year for the country music charts, like they capitalized on the Urban Cowboy trend with some near-undeniably good music, some more-middling stuff that you can still see the crossover appeal of, and even something starting to resemble a youthful movement. Alabama, Hank Williams Jr., Rosanne Cash, Steve Wariner, Earl Thomas Conley and others would have many more moments in the sun throughout the ‘80s and beyond, and the fact that these artists didn’t sound overly similar to each other speaks well for the sort of intergenre diversity that might aggravate purists but keeps things interesting for the rest of us.  And some of the still-active big names like Waylon Jennings and Don Williams had to live without the brass ring for a little while in a crowded field, while other legends like George Jones and Merle Haggard enjoyed a bit of a revival.  No real stinkers hit the #1s of 1981, at least to these ears; there’s a few bum notes at the bottom of the list, but for the most part it’s just lesser works from otherwise-worthwhile artists.  

THE RANKING

1. Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground (Willie Nelson)
2. Seven Year Ache (Roseanne Cash)
3. My Favorite Memory (Merle Haggard)
4. Still Doin’ Time (George Jones)
5. 9 to 5 (Dolly Parton)
6. I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink (Merle Haggard)
7. Who’s Cheatin’ Who (Charly McClain)
8. Texas Women (Hank Williams Jr.)
9. You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma (David Frizzell and Shelly West)
10. Rest Your Love on Me (Conway Twitty)
11. But You Know I Love You (Dolly Parton)
12. Guitar Man (Elvis Presley)
13. Do You Love As Good As You Look (The Bellamy Brothers)
14. Fire and Smoke (Earl Thomas Conley)
15. All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down (Hank Williams Jr.)
16. Feels So Right (Alabama)
17. I Love A Rainy Night (Eddie Rabbitt)
18. Elvira (The Oak Ridge Boys)
19. A Headache Tomorrow (Or a Heartache Tonight) (Mickey Gilley)
20. Old Flame (Alabama)
21. Fancy Free (The Oak Ridge Boys)
22. I Don’t Need You (Kenny Rogers)
23. Blessed Are the Believers (Anne Murray)
24. You Don’t Know Me (Mickey Gilley)
25. Dixie On My Mind (Hank Williams Jr.)
26. My Baby Thinks He’s A Train (Rosanne Cash)
27. Tight Fittin’ Jeans (Conway Twitty)
28. Midnight Hauler (Razzy Bailey)
29. Love in the First Degree (Alabama)
30. Party Time (TG Sheppard)
31. Never Been So Loved in All My Life (Charley Pride)
32. There’s No Gettin’ Over Me (Ronnie Milsap)
33. Older Women (Ronnie McDowell)
34. I Feel Like Loving You Again (TG Sheppard)
35. Are You Happy Baby? (Dottie West)
36. Bet Your Heart on Me (Johnny Lee)
37. Am I Losing You? (Ronnie Milsap)
38. Friends (Razzy Bailey)
39. I Was Country (When Country Wasn’t Cool) (Barbara Mandrell)
40. Too Many Lovers (Crystal Gayle)
41. What Are We Doin’ in Love (Kenny Rogers & Dottie West)
42. I Keep Coming Back (Razzy Bailey)
43. Step By Step (Eddie Rabbitt)
44. I Loved ‘Em Every One (TG Sheppard)
45. All Roads Lead to You (Steve Wariner)
46. Drifter (Sylvia)
47. Southern Rains (Mel Tillis)

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Texas crooner Aaron Watson - a longtime favorite on the rodeo and college indie-country circuits - might not have been the most obvious candidate to tackle an album's worth of female-penned classics. But to his credit, that's what the conservative-minded traditionally-Christian cowboy is going for on his latest project. Roping in another rising star with a similar buckaroo background - Jenna Paulette - he gave the Rosanne Cash signature tune "Seven Year Ache" a fresh take, hitting those expertly-crafted syllables with all the confident care they deserve.

1980 - urban cowboys & dukes of hazzard

The dawn of a decade. That cosmic window where we toss out the detritus of the last ten years and gaze towards the horizon at a bright new sun. Or just keep on keepin’ on because the last few years went pretty well. Country singers were popping up in hit movies, rubbing elbows with Burt Reynolds, hanging out at the White House with Georgia native Jimmy Carter. Folks like Willie and Waylon earned it a dose of critical respect, Dolly Parton was about as big and beloved as a star gets, talents like Ronnie Milsap and Barbara Mandrell who probably could’ve been pop stars were choosing to plow the fertile ground of the country charts. Those slicks in NYC and LA and London and wherever else could trip over their skinny ties trying to beat each other to the next hot trend: Nashville had identified a huge slice of Middle America that just wanted catchy, relatable tunes that appealed to adults with conservative (not necessarily politically, although there was certainly overlap) tastes and lifestyles. 

So staying the course made sense. It’d be late spring before someone who hadn’t had a #1 before scored one, and late summer before it’d be anyone who signaled anything resembling a new direction. Kenny Rogers was first out of the gate with “Coward of the County,” scoring a three-week run at the top. It’s easy to see how “The Gambler” being such a smash inspired him to tackle another Western narrative with a memorable chorus, and obviously it worked at the time, but for my money “Coward” is one of the most butt-awful songs of that or any era. Rogers is a good singer of course, and the production’s not as chintzy as it could’ve been, but geez, this story …  spoilers ahead. Kid in a generic western town is considered cowardly but really just behaves himself because his outlaw father’s dying request was that he not engage in tough-guy bullshit because it leads to prison. He has a girlfriend that loves him though. Then one day while he’s at work three actual outlaw brothers (called The Gatlin Boys, which is odd considering that some real Gatlin brothers were among Kenny’s chart rivals) come by and rape his girlfriend (“they took turns at Becky/and there was three of them”). He comes home to the immediate aftermath and, spurred by his girl’s visible trauma but also by looking at his daddy’s picture from the mantle, beats the three presumably full-grown outlaws to death despite having studiously avoided actual fights for his entire life. One last punch dedicated to Becky’s trauma, then a whole slightly-tweaked chorus dedicated to the memory of his father. What – and I cannot stress this enough – the hell.

But at least they got it out of the way early, with TG Sheppard taking over for a couple of weeks with “I’ll Be Coming Back for More,” a leerily upbeat cheating anthem with all the subtlety of a horny wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon. Things got way better with the Oak Ridge Boys landing a brilliant Rodney Crowell-penned tune “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight” that kicked up a nicely swampy atmosphere to frame a poetic tale of backwater Cajun drama that, unlike the likes of “Coward,” left some room for poetic mystery. “Love Me Over Again,” by stalwart-by-now Don Williams, wasn’t as striking but it continued the warm, dignified streak that made him a legend. Barbara Mandrell ditched her usual cheesy foxiness to show more vocal prowess and tenderness with the slow-burning “Years” before ceding to another Rodney Crowell composition, this time Waylon Jennings with the hard-driving badassery of “I Ain’t Living Long Like This.” I know we don’t always make a big deal about the songwriters here (we’re wordy enough as it is) but Crowell’s a personal favorite, would eventually have some #1 spotlight himself, and was sort of a mini-Kristofferson in the sense of bringing some literary ambition to a scene that didn’t always prioritize it. He’d eventually be spotlighted as a singer as well, building up enough of an audience to veer off into more auteurish, highly-personal territory as a singer-songwriter.

Up next was Willie Nelson with the dusty majesty of “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.” Speaking of songwriters, google Sharon Vaughn sometime, she’s got a knack for bringing poetic subtlety to country hits, and Willie of course is as simpatico to that sort of thing as anyone could ever hope for. Bob McDill has an even deeper catalog, with Ronnie Milsap’s take on his “Why Don’t You Spend the Night” standing out as one of his more intricate works. Conway Twitty scored his lone #1 of the year with “I’d Love to Lay You Down,” an absolute gem that tempered his usual signature come-ons with odes to marital gratitude and actually looking forward to getting old together. It’s a love song for all of us who’ve already been this far before, bump-bum-bum.

The Bellamy Brothers breezed back in with “Sugar Daddy,” which like their previous #1 sounds a bit skeevy on the surface but is pretty charming and affectionate if you give it a chance.  They weren’t vocal heavyweights or anything, but David Bellamy was a gifted songwriter who knew a hook when he wrote one.  Meanwhile, Charley Pride recorded a whole album of Hank Williams covers called There’s A Little Bit of Hank In Me, which resulted in hits like “Honky Tonk Blues” as well as rumors that Pride might be the illegitimate son of the country legend.  Never mind that Hank was only 11 years old when Pride was born … people couldn’t Google that back then, and two decades into his career, folks were still trying to wrap their head around why a black man would want to be a country music star.  

It was a good year for female artists … I don’t know if there are itemized stats for this sort of thing, but four distinct female artists in a row shot to the top in mid-spring and that seems rare.  The consistently elegant Crystal Gayle with the melodic sweep of “It’s Like We Never Said Goodbye.”  The appealingly gritty Dottie West with the spare, salty “A Lesson in Leavin’.”  Easy-listening crossover Debby Boone with her first country #1, the gently catchy “Are You On the Road to Lovin’ Me Again.”  And then the divinely rustic Emmylou Harris with the slow-burning twang of “Beneath Still Waters.”  The Harris and West entries hold up best, but in a modern era where female artists are relatively marginalized on country radio, it all sounds like a pretty nice run.  Keep in mind that this is the same Debby Boone who’d won Grammys and scored a pop #1 with “You Light Up My Life” three years prior; she was the first “new” name to score a #1 country hit in 1980, still plenty youthful but not so much new as repurposed.  There’d be plenty more female #1s as the year went on.

Eddie Rabbitt scored one for the dudes, albeit with the lightweight “Gone Too Far.”  By all accounts a good guy, and a lifelong fan of country music despite his New Jersey upbringing, Rabbitt nonetheless seemed almost engineered to make slick, breezy pop  for people who’d probably really dig Hall & Oates-type stuff but didn’t want to venture outside the country aisle at the record store.  Dolly Parton had no shame about co-opting other genres herself – divorcee character study “Starting Over Again” sounds more Broadway than Nashville – but even on a lyrical clunker like this one, she had that unmistakable twang and personality to her voice that made anything sound recognizably country.  The still-on-a-helluva-roll Ronnie Milsap was more Rabbitt than Parton, splitting the difference on a single where both sides got some play: “My Heart” was an upbeat-but-mournful earworm that leaned pop, while “Silent Night (After the Fight)” was low on twang but high on the distinctly heartbroken wordplay you’d want out of a traditional country song. 

Next up was another first-timer: Cristy Lane.  If you’ve thought about her at all in the last 40 years, you’ve probably got her pigeonholed as a gospel artist, between her big hit being the Jesus-friendly waltz “One Day at a Time” and the gospel-album packages she hawked on TV in the 80s.  But really she’d been trying to forge a country music career for almost two decades by 1980, spurred along by a shady-sounding husband who badgered record labels on her behalf and booked her on near-fatal tours of war-era Vietnam entertaining GIs.  She’d cracked the country Top 10 a few times in the late ‘70s, but “One Day at a Time” managed to elbow its way to the top amidst the various cheatin’-and-drinkin’ songs country music had come to be known for.  Given that most of the country demographic, then as now, is at least nominally Christian it’s surprising this doesn’t come up more often; this was also the heyday of gospel-rooted groups like the Oak Ridge Boys and Statler Brothers, but even they were shifting gears to secular tunes for mainstream country success.  Lane finally grabbed the brass ring with an explicitly religious tune, sort of like Ferlin Husky or Kris Kristofferson in past decades.  But then her next single was something called “Sweet Sexy Eyes” and perhaps that spooked the devout; she tumbled down the charts, taking a couple of years to realize that perhaps contemporary Christian music was her row to hoe going forward.  Meanwhile, the just-mentioned Oak Ridge Boys lent their gospel-trained harmonies to the excellent “Tryin’ to Love Two Women,” which was secular enough to point out that really, the problematic part of infidelity is the logistics.

George Jones was up next with “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” and that kind of blows my mind.  Frequently atop any attempted list of the greatest country songs ever, a career landmark and signature song for one of country’s greatest legends … how is it possible that this song came out in 1980?  This is like finding out that the first Godfather movie actually came out in 1992 or that Babe Ruth’s baseball heyday was in the mid-‘60s or some other time-bending paradigm shifter.  It’s also crazy to think it was Jones’ first #1 in six years and only spent one week at #1, although it had enough staying power that (at least according to Billboard) it was the third-biggest country song of the year. I don’t know what else I could say about this towering masterpiece of love and loss and big Billy Sherrill production flourishes that hasn’t already been said; it just seems like something eternal instead of something specific to 1980, but there it is.

And then you had another single from Charley Pride’s Hank-covers project – “You Win Again,” a heartsick masterpiece that’s always good for another go-round – followed by Mickey Gilley with a florid, unnecessary cover of Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways.”  Speaking of inessential, Clint Eastwood took the next logical step from having country stars in his stunt-caper movies and just pulled up a mic next to Merle Haggard himself and sort-of-sang the duet “Bar Room Buddies.”  If you’re a revered-enough star, sometimes just having your name on it is enough I guess.  It’s engaging but nothing worth quitting the day job over.  For that matter, neither is “Dancin’ Cowboys” by the Bellamy Brothers, which is catchy enough but just doesn’t have much meat on the bones, the vocals so quiet in the mix it’s like someone just caught them half-heartedly whisper-singing in the truck.  At least they weren’t trying to cover an unimpeachable classic like Mickey Gilley with his overcooked, staid take on Ben E. King’s soul classic “Stand By Me,” which was like Muzak if they added vocals.  Gilley was a good singer and a very prominent figure in the era’s country music, but he just didn’t know when to leave a great song alone.  Surely he’d befriended some songwriters along the way that could’ve helped him cultivate his own style instead of spending so much time on covers that suffered by comparison.  Then again … he’s the one with the number one hits, not me.

So yeah, that’s a five-song stretch of covers and novelties, as if “He Stopped Loving Her Today” just made everyone give the hell up.  But then it was time for a first-timer that actually was something of a game-changer.  The band Alabama doesn’t get a ton of critical respect, but they had a youthful spark to them, a chick-magnet lead singer named Randy Owen, and a live show where the energy level and imagery was more akin to Southern rock.  “Tennessee River” might not be a great song, but it was a great record, with big hooks and cool dynamics and downhome shout-outs and a big fiddle-driven jam at the end in case you were worried that these kids were a bunch of pop-rock interlopers.  Without necessarily turning off the middle-aged crowd, it managed to sound like it was reaching out to the younger folks too, at a time when most other artists didn’t bother.  They’d reap some serious rewards off of this.

Eddie Rabbitt broke out of his own doldrums with the rollicking “Drivin’ My Life Away,” an upbeat country-rocker with rapid-fire lyrics that kept the “Tennessee River” party going with those midnight headlights that blind ya on a rainy night etc.  Ronnie Milsap couldn’t be bothered to rock out though; fortunately his clunky tortured-comparison single “Cowboys and Clowns” was backed by a much more palatable tune, a relatively swinging cover of the old Jerry Reed-penned Porter Wagoner hit “Misery Loves Company.”  Probably a lot of folks heard these songs on the car radio en route to the picture show to see Urban Cowboy.

Urban Cowboy was a big mainstream hit, starring John Travolta on his first run of fame on the heels of Saturday Night Fever and Grease, and for a while there it did for country music what the other flicks did for disco and ‘50s nostalgia: took an existing entity and spread/rekindled interest in it to a wider audience.  In retrospect it’s cool that Travolta didn’t try to sing the soundtrack himself – he could carry a tune, of course – and nobody would probably agree more with that than Johnny Lee.  He’d labored in the shadow of his old pal Mickey Gilley for years, singing in bar bands and a regular gig at Gilley’s historic Pasadena, TX nightclub, which of course featured prominently in Urban Cowboy.  Lee was picked to sing the movie’s big tie-in single “Lookin’ For Love,” and it was an absolute smash, riding atop the country charts for three weeks and getting up to #5 on the pop chart.  It wasn’t exactly hardcore country, but Lee’s assured-but-vulnerable baritone loaned it some authenticity.  The whole movie soundtrack sold 3 million copies, hedging its bets a little with non-country ringers like The Eagles, Bob Seger, and Bonnie Raitt; lots of industry heavyweights got a piece of the Urban Cowboy action, but even more than Mickey Gilley, Johnny Lee’s the guy who seemingly got a whole career out of it.

Dolly Parton would have her own hit movie (and tie-in song) soon enough but for now she had to settle for the breathtakingly beautiful “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You,” a sweetly longing waltz that’s one of her finest moments on record.  TG Sheppard was less transcendent on “Do You Wanna Go to Heaven,” a little number about how getting baptized is a lot like hooking up with some chick on the road.  Razzy Bailey, another example of a middle-aged dude who’d knocked around the fringes of the industry patiently enough to finally get his shot, started up his largely-now-forgotten hot streak with the country-soul hybrid “Loving Up a Storm.”  Next up was Don Williams, around the same age but already a chart regular, with the sweetly clever and wordier-than-usual “I Believe In You.”  Despite the influx of Urban Cowboy-inspired attention, things were kind of business-as-usual.

Hollywood was still calling, though.  The Dukes of Hazzard was becoming a big hit on TV, two cornfed boys and their hot female cousin dodging cops in a Confederate-themed Dodge Charger that kept making suspiciously similar-looking stunt jumps mid-chase.  I’m going to assume Waylon Jennings was as amused by this as most of the rest of the country, because he didn’t have a long history of doing things he didn’t want to do.  He was a big enough star to comfortably say no to singing the theme song “Just a Good Ol’ Boy,” much less appearing (at least vocally) in every episode as the narrator, but Ol’ Waylon was along for the ride.  I don’t really know how to rate or rank a TV theme song that doesn’t mean much outside the context of the show, but it was way better than “Coward of the County” at least.  And like a cold beer chasing a quick bourbon shot, Willie Nelson was up next with “On the Road Again,” a song with about ten words and a simple melody that still manages to make you smile every single time you hear it.

The Urban Cowboy soundtrack reared its head again with Anne Murray’s sweet, easygoing “Could I Have This Dance.”  Kenny Rogers had been on that soundtrack too, with the pretty-swell “Love the World Away,” but instead the next #1 went to his weirdly stiff, off-putting take on Lionel Richie’s “Lady.”   Rogers and Richie worked together pretty frequently for awhile, but (at least to these ears) whatever chemistry they might’ve found as buddies didn’t translate well on record.  “If You Ever Change Your Mind” by Crystal Gayle was another swoony, sophisticated, kinda-sleepy ballad that you’d think folks would’ve been getting tired of by then.  Ronnie Milsap’s “Smoky Mountain Rain” was a big-production ballad too, but it had some narrative drive and tasteful dynamics to elevate it (plus Milsap’s usual hyper-invested vocal).

Those upstart kids in Alabama (who would’ve been a great fit on the Urban Cowboy soundtrack) scored #1 again, this time with a spacious, harmony-rich slow-burner “Why Lady Why,” showing their range went well beyond hoedown-rock.  And not to beat a dead mechanical bull, but Urban Cowboy’s lingering echoes closed out the year with Mickey Gilley’s sleepy slow-dancer “That’s All That Matters” and Johnny Lee’s upbeat romance “One in a Million” squeezing in amidst the Christmas songs as country radio’s first year of the ‘80s took a bow.  

THE TREND?

The possibly-overemphasized Urban Cowboy craze didn’t hit the collective consciousness until September, but for the most part it reflected an existing direction, bringing expanded attention to it but not really transforming it.  The common lament among critics, purists, old-schoolers etc. is that it watered down country music for a mass audience, as if it was retroactively to blame for Kenny Rogers, Anne Murray, Eddie Rabbitt etc.  A more optimistic tack would just be to enjoy some of those country-pop nuggets for what they were and hold out for a comeback miracle like George Jones and “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” putting himself squarely back in the mix with folks like Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Dolly Parton who were doing some of the best work of their careers, either bucking the trends or transcending them from the inside.  Straightening the curves, flattening the hills, and looking for love in all the right places.  

THE RANKING

1. He Stopped Loving Her Today (George Jones)
2. Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight (The Oak Ridge Boys)
3. My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (Willie Nelson)
4. I Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This (Waylon Jennings)
5. Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You (Dolly Parton)
6. A Lesson in Leavin’ (Dottie West)
7. Drivin’ My Life Away (Eddie Rabbitt)
8. Tennessee River (Alabama)
9. Beneath Still Waters (Emmylou Harris)
10. Lookin’ For Love (Johnny Lee)
11. I Believe In You (Don Williams)
12. One in a Million (Johnny Lee)
13. Sugar Daddy (The Bellamy Brothers)
14. I’d Love to Lay You Down (Conway Twitty)
15. Trying to Love Two Women (The Oak Ridge Boys)
16. On the Road Again (Willie Nelson)
17. Smoky Mountain Rain (Ronnie Milsap)
18. Love Me Over Again (Don Williams)
19. Why Lady Why (Alabama)
20. You Win Again (Charley Pride)
21. My Heart (Ronnie Milsap)
22. Honky Tonk Blues (Charley Pride)
23. Theme From Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol’ Boys) (Waylon Jennings)
24. Why Don’t You Spend the Night (Ronnie Milsap)
25. Could I Have This Dance (Anne Murray)
26. If You Ever Change Your Mind (Crystal Gayle)
27. Dancin’ Cowboys (The Bellamy Brothers)
28. One Day at a Time (Cristy Lane)
29. It’s Like We Never Said Goodbye (Crystal Gayle)
30. Bar Room Buddies (Merle Haggard & Clint Eastwood)
31. That’s All That Matters (Mickey Gilley)
32. Do You Wanna Go to Heaven (TG Sheppard)
33. Years (Barbara Mandrell)
34. Gone Too Far (Eddie Rabbitt)
35. Starting Over Again (Dolly Parton)
36. True Love Ways (Mickey Gilley)
37. Loving Up a Storm (Razzy Bailey)
38. Cowboys and Clowns/Misery Loves Company (Ronnie Milsap)
39. Are You On the Road to Lovin’ Me Again (Debby Boone)
40. Stand By Me (Mickey Gilley)
41. Lady (Kenny Rogers)
42. Coward of the County (Kenny Rogers)
43. I’ll Be Coming Back for More (TG Sheppard)

DOWN THE ROAD ...

There's nothing wrong with the Oak Ridge Boys' hit take on Rodney Crowell's "Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight," and kudos to them for their good taste in recording it. But perhaps it's an even better fit for the seedier, steamier, grittier sounds of a stripped-down rock outfit like Shovels & Rope, the husband-and-wife duo that's always had a special ear for uniquely Southern tales of love and mayhem. On their Busted Jukebox record series, they've looked outside their own considerable songwriting talents to rock unconventional covers of everything from Leonard Cohen to the Clash to Guns n' Roses, often with some gifted semi-famous friends in tow. But looks like they saved the Crowell classic for themselves.

1979 - Eastwood smiles and Robert Redford hair ...

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

1. Amanda (Waylon Jennings)
2. The Devil Went Down to Georgia (The Charlie Daniels Band)
3. Tulsa Time (Don Williams)
4. Lady Lay Down (John Conlee)
5. You’re the Only One (Dolly Parton)
6. Baby I’m Burnin’ (Dolly Parton)
7. If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold it Against Me (The Bellamy Brothers)
8. I Just Fall in Love Again (Anne Murray)
9. Backside of Thirty (John Conlee)
10. She Believes in Me (Kenny Rogers)
11. I May Never Get to Heaven (Conway Twitty)
12. Don’t Take it Away (Conway Twitty)
13. Coca Cola Cowboy (Mel Tillis)
14. Last Cheater’s Waltz (TG Sheppard)
15. It Must Be Love (Don Williams)
16. Come With Me (Waylon Jennings)
17. Happy Birthday Darlin’ (Conway Twitty)
18. Suspicions (Eddie Rabbitt)
19. Nobody Likes Sad Songs (Ronnie Milsap)
20. You’re My Jamaica (Charley Pride)
21. All I Ever Need is You (Kenny Rogers & Dottie West)
22. Why Have You Left the One You Left Me For (Crystal Gayle)
23. Just Good Ol’ Boys (Moe Bandy & Joe Stampley)
24. All the Gold in California (Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers)
25. Heartbreak Hotel (Willie Nelson & Leon Russell)
26. Broken Hearted Me (Anne Murray)
27. I Cheated Me Right Out of You (Moe Bandy)
28. You Decorated My Life (Kenny Rogers)
29. Shadows in the Moonlight (Anne Murray)
30. Where Do I Put Her Memory (Charley Pride)
31. Every Which Way But Loose (Eddie Rabbitt)
32. If Lovin’ You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want to Be Right) (Barbara Mandrell)
33. Golden Tears (Dave & Sugar)

DOWN THE ROAD ...

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.