1963 - methed-up falcons

If the previous couple of years were more like a relay race – one act getting a hearty run with the baton and then passing it to the next – 1963 was more like a chaotic scramble for a fumbled football, musicians of various stature throwing elbows and shoulders to get a tenuous grasp of a prize so slippery and elusive that the truly scrappy ended up with it at least twice.

Case in point: Carl & Pearl Butler had 1962’s last #1 with the richly-harmonied cheating ballad “Don’t Let Me Cross Over” and held it for a grand total of a week before sly veteran Marty Robbins slipped in with the catchy but slight “Ruby Ann” and nabbed it for a week.  Then the Butlers got it back for a week. Then Flatt & Scruggs, bluegrass wunderkinds who cashed in some cred to score a big TV theme song, ran with it for a couple weeks with “The Ballad of Jed Clampett.”  The Butlers got it back for a week, Flatt & Scruggs swiped it back for two weeks, then the Butlers phoned in a blackmail threat or something (cheating-related maybe?) and got back to #1 for eight straight weeks somehow – a miracle in this cutthroat clusterfuck of a year that was 1963.  Or maybe a huge section of the buying-and-listening public were really going back and forth on whether they wanted to cheat on their spouses or just stay home and watch The Beverly Hillbillies.  I don’t know what it says about marriages in 1963 that the Butlers’ tune came out on top.

Or they did until the next scrum kicked in.  Bill Anderson staked his claim to #1 with the weepy string-laden “Still,” which holds up about as well as most of his performances to modern ears (it was a whisper-friendly age I guess) before Hawkshaw Hawkins stomped in with the relatively swinging “Lonesome 7-7203.”  Hawkins and Anderson yanked the slot back and forth from April through June when a young Buck (Owens) stepped into the fray with his first #1, “Act Naturally.”  The three swatted the ball back and forth until Johnny Cash just stepped in and grabbed that shit with “Ring of Fire” and held it for seven weeks (although forever would’ve been more appropriate).  Oddly, that stomping, horny and horn-laced fireball – co-written about Cash by his eventual wife June Carter and future Hank Williams Jr. manager Merle Kilgore – was a rock of stability in a wild, grabby year.  It eventually ceded the spot (much more likely burning out than fading away, to borrow a much-later tune’s hook) to Canadian nice-dude George Hamilton IV and his suave, slow-loping “Abilene” for five minutes or so before Buck Owens came crashing back in with the giddy, hot-picking joy of “Love’s Gonna Live Here.”  Some guy named Ernie Ashworth borrowed it for a week with a catchy number called “Talk Back Trembling Lips” that my mom used to sing the chorus to and I assumed she’d just made up, but Buck handily snatched it back with “Love’s …” and, presumably breathlessly, held a death grip on that sumbitch from mid-October 1963 through well into 1964 when, as we’ll see, his main competition would be his own bad self.  1964 would be a big year for Buck.  1963 was freaking exhausting for everyone.

THE TREND?

I don’t know what it says about the industry, the artists, or the public that the #1 spot boomeranged around like a methed-up peregrine falcon throughout 1963.  Did diehard fans see their heroes losing ground and run out and buy extra records and burn up the request lines to get them back on top?  Were different radio stations in different camps trying to get their faves back to glory?  For what it’s worth, Bill Anderson’s “Still” was somehow the top-rated single for the whole year, so I’m not sure how much of it is even meant to make sense.  But maybe, just maybe, the relatively long grip that Buck Owens and Johnny Cash managed to have on #1 with their respective standouts speaks to an emergence of genuine star power in country music.  To this day, there’s always room for some act to land a number one hit and then be lucky to land a county-fair gig a couple short years later, but there’s also always a handful of true titans that not only rise above the rabble, but distinguish themselves by doing it again and again until they’re more than just a hit or two: they’re a personality, a sound, and if they cultivate it wisely they’re eventually a legend.

THE RANKING

1. Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
2. Love's Gonna Live Here - Buck Owens
3. Act Naturally - Buck Owens
4. Don't Let Me Cross Over - Carl & Pearl Butler
5. Lonesome 7-7203 - Hawkshaw Hawkins
6. Abilene - George Hamilton IV
7. Talk Back Trembling Lips - Ernie Ashworth
8. The Ballad of Jed Clampett - Flatt & Scruggs
9. Ruby Ann - Marty Robbins
10. Still - Bill Anderson

DOWN THE LINE ...

Social Distortion is pretty much the soul of rock & roll in my book ... ferociously loud, deceptively smart, and refreshingly relatable. Punk integrity meets bar-band charm. They might actually be best-known in some circles for this breakneck Johnny Cash cover that cranks the volume and preserves the spirit.

1.           

1962 - devil woman meets mountain man

Seeing as how all sorts of stuff seemed to do the trick in 1961, all sorts of stuff continued to be given the chance to in 1962.  It must have been refreshing for the artists and record companies to realize there was more than one way to make a hit record, and/or it must have been just as frustrating when something that seemed like a sure thing failed.  As the field of hitmakers grew a bit more diverse, recent successes like Ray Price and Johnny Horton found themselves on the outside looking in.

Relative newcomer Porter Wagoner kicked off the year with “Misery Loves Company,” a song that those of us raised on classic country probably assumed was called “Break Out the Bottle” since that’s the grabbiest line in the chorus.  It’s a fine barroom singalong, another entry in the longstanding genre of songs about a party-hearty dude who’s crying on the inside, with the only real critique being that given the large and prominent chorus of background singers it feels like it almost doesn’t matter who’s singing lead.  It’s still a lot better than its successor, Sheb Wooley’s “That’s My Pa.”  A novelty singer of some note in his day (and a decent actor), his childhood tale of his cotton-farmer dad coming back from market presumably (and audibly) drunk grates more than it amuses, especially when the semi-yodel schtick kicks in.  Hard to imagine anyone wanted to hear it more than once.

Fortunately, Patsy Cline was around to class up the joint with her second #1, “She’s Got You.”  More rueful than devastating relative to her previous one (“I Fall To Pieces”), it endures as one of the most stately and gorgeous couple of minutes ever committed to vinyl, a soulful lament playing forever in the dusky little cocktail lounge of your heart.  Billy Walker shuffled in behind her with “Charlie’s Shoes,” a classy-enough oldie with some clever lines about just how careful one should be about what one wishes for.  It’s no Cline, majesty-wise, but it is a winsome little number about winning over some other guy’s gal just to find out she’s a nightmare.  Rounding out the heartache trifecta of the spring of 1962 was no less an expert than George Jones with his third #1, “She Thinks I Still Care.”  For all the praises deservedly heaped upon Jones as a vocalist and performer, I don’t know if he’s ever got (or, to be fair, wanted) credit as an ironist.  But if he did, this would be his thesis on it, all twinkly honky-tonk piano licks winking at you from the dusty backbeat while his voice goes from bruised dignity to unfettered anguish.  “Just because I asked a friend about her/Just because I spoke her name somewhere …”  The word economy (courtesy of writer Dickey Lee) is just off the charts here, which is good because Jones tends to turn one-syllable words into threes or fours with his phrasing anyway.  Not as elegant as “She’s Got You,” but it hits even harder.

“Wolverton Mountain” by Claude King was a relative novelty, not only because it’s a colorful character study of one Clifton Clowers but also because the gentle swing of the beat and vaguely Disney-ish whistling hook seem more informed by frothy ‘60s pop even though the subject matter’s all rural mountain stuff.  There’s some vague creepiness to the old mountain man’s possessiveness of his daughter, and even to the younger narrator’s conviction that he’s just gonna go on up and get her, but hot damn it’s catchy and holds up way better to repeat listens than, say, “That’s My Paw.”  “Devil Woman” by Marty Robbins took over the #1 reins in September, and it’s a beauty, with a subtly percussive Caribbean-ish backbeat under some sweet Latin-ish picking and Robbins’ God-ish tenor croon.  Like “Wolverton Mountain,” the lyrics invite a little scrutiny under closer inspection – call your paramour a “devil woman” all you want, pal, but it took two to tango back then as now – but there’s hooks, harmonies, and smartly-chosen meter for days.  It brings us up to at least four stone classics for 1962.

Bill Anderson’s “Mama Sang A Song” strives for some deep emotional impact of its own, and must have achieved it with some folks en route to #1.  And it no doubt describes a way of sharecropper life that was common or at least relatable in its time, but to modern ears it sounds maudlin and manipulative, with the whispered delivery that was Anderson’s whole gimmick just coming off a little odd. After a couple weeks of that, Hank Snow’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” probably couldn’t have been more welcome: you could call it a novelty song I guess, what with Snow’s auctioneer-speed delivery of town names all over the country, but it’s got something more going for it. The trudging-locomotive start building to a breakneck boogie – if you didn’t speak English you’d probably think this was a train song instead of a road song – and genuine cleverness of the whole thing reward repeat listens more than the average novelty number. Especially if you want to keep listening til you hear the name of your own hometown.

“Don’t Let Me Cross Over” by Carl & Pearl Butler got an 11^th hour #1 on December 29 of 1962 but saw way more chart action in 1963, so we’ll just let it cross over into that year.

THE TREND?:

Again, a pretty solid and diverse year overall.  There wasn’t just one kind of song or even just one kind of singer allowed to dominate; George Jones is not Patsy Cline and neither one of them are Hank Snow or Marty Robbins, etc.  If there’s a trend to be gleaned, maybe it’s the at-least-temporary doubling-down on letting country be country; sure, Patsy Cline’s voice and arrangements had pop crossover potential for days, and “Wolverton Mountain” and “Devil Woman” were sophisticated enough to make a run at the pop charts (the former cracked the top ten, the latter the top twenty).  But still, the King tune was inherently country-themed, as were the hits of varying quality by Wooley, Wagoner, and Anderson, and you don’t get much twangier than George Jones and Hank Snow.  It was a good year for country songs that weren’t trying to be anything else.  Don’t let me cross over, indeed.

THE RANKING:

1. She Thinks I Still Care - George Jones
2. She's Got You - Patsy Cline
3. Devil Woman - Marty Robbins
4. Wolverton Mountain - Claude King
5. I've Been Everywhere - Hank Snow
6. Misery Loves Company - Porter Wagoner
7. Mama Sang a Song - Bill Anderson
8. Charlie's Shoes - Billy Walker
9. That's My Paw - Sheb Wooley

DOWN THE LINE ...

Southern Culture on the Skids have stylishly ridden that line between novelty act and sincere reverence for decades now, cranking out takes on rockabilly and classic country with the pedal-to-the-metal joy they deserve. 1995's Dirt Track Date was probably their highest-profile moment (including the undeniable original "Camel Walk") but another one of their best was 2007's Countrypolitan Favorites, which included this revved-up "Wolverton Mountain" throwdown with some pretty damn fetching background vocals. 

1.          

1961 - come back to the five & dime Jimmy Dean ...

 If Ferlin Husky’s “Wings of A Dove” closed out 1960 on a Christmas-friendly gospel note, Johnny Horton’s “North To Alaska” might’ve served as good company for listeners once the celebration was over and everyone noticed it was just too damn cold.  A catchy little Gold Rush ballad buoyed by what sounds like a pickaxe riff and background singers chanting “mush!”, it’s more artifact than classic, and “Wings” nabbed its #1 spot back for a couple weeks on the tail end of February.

Already-dependable hitmaker Marty Robbins must have fired up the last snowplow before spring hit; “Don’t Worry” rocketed up the charts as March came in, and perched there for ten weeks.  Sixty years later it’s not hard to see why.  For a lovesick lament it’s got no lack of swagger; if they’d somehow missed it in the lyrics, that echo-drenched baritone guitar solo would’ve given it all it needed.  But those lyrics!  “Don’t pity me, cause I’m feelin’ blue/Don’t be ashamed, it might have been you” is about as fatalistic and resilient as a breakup song is bound to get while still stopping just shy of a kiss-off anthem.  Robbins, as gifted a tenor vocalist as country music knew then or now, brings an almost operatic drama to bittersweet lines that still hold up great.

When that one finally let up a bit, “Hello Walls” by Faron Young swooped in with another stoicly clever lament; it’s not as impressive as “Don’t Worry” but only in the sense that Peyton Manning maybe isn’t quite as good as Tom Brady.  For one, it’s Willie Nelson’s first #1 as a songwriter, and though Young’s a distinctive vocalist himself you can feel him digging in to the literally-offbeat rhythm baked into your standard (meaning: classic) Nelson tune.

Next up was “Heartbreak USA” by Kitty Wells, who’d seen her biggest success pre-modern-chart but scored a nice little comeback of sorts.  A lament from the POV of someone whose sweetheart has shipped off to the military, it might have struck a particular chord in the year of America’s first official troop deployment in Vietnam.  Granted, she’s more vigilant about the chance that some “geisha girl” or “fraulein” might steal his heart than that he’ll succumb to a violent and possibly needless death, so maybe this was pretty dated within a year or so.  Much more enduring was Patsy Cline’s first #1, “I Fall to Pieces” which took over for (surprisingly only) a couple of weeks in August; it must have sounded haunted even to fresh ears, Cline’s soulful yet note-perfect hurt and indignation spilling out of the speakers like bitter honey, but of course it’d take on more resonance in just a few years.  “Tender Years,” by George Jones at his most wistful and empathetic, briefly took hold in its wake and traded the top spot throughout the rest of the year with Leroy Van Dyke’s catchy little infidelity instructional “Walk On By” and an extended stretch of Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John.”  Solid and memorable tunes all, “Walk On By” would in 1994 be recognized in Billboard’s 100^th anniversary issue as the biggest country hit of the modern era with a combined 19 weeks at #1, which is weird considering how much Van Dyke’s contemporaries came to overshadow him in the years since.  “Big Bad John,” for its part, would cross over to #1 on the pop charts; somewhere between a murder ballad, a novelty song, and a heroic anthem, it was at least one of the era’s most distinct country songs if not necessarily its most timeless.

THE TREND?:

It was a little harder to parse an obvious through-line in 1961, except maybe to note that the #1 spot was passed around considerably more (not even counting the multiple times it boomeranged back to “Walk On By”) and, unlike ’59 and ’60, solo female artists actually got a turn at it.  And just one years’ worth of recency bias revealed more names that still hold some reverent sway, with Patsy Cline and George Jones and arguably Marty Robbins (and can we start counting Willie Nelson now too?) hanging in there as household names today.  Jimmy Dean too, if your household digs breakfast sausage.

THE RANKING

1. Don’t Worry - Marty Robbins
2. I Fall to Pieces - Patsy Cline
3. Big Bad John - Jimmy Dean
4. Tender Years - George Jones
5. Hello Walls - Faron Young
6. Walk On By - Leroy Van Dyke
7. North to Alaska - Johnny Horton
8. Heartbreak USA - Kitty Wells

DOWN THE ROAD ...

The 1994 one-off project Rhythm, Country & Blues was probably the best out of the various cover-oriented projects that had a little mini-boom inside the bigger boom of '90s mainstream country. Pairing up various combos of classic R&B/soul artists with country artists of varying vintage, it strikes gold or at least some sort of interesting alchemy more often than not ... Marty Stuart and the Staple Singers covering The Band, Conway Twitty and Sam Moore tag-teaming "Rainy Night in Georgia," etc. Probably the album's most meditative piece was Aaron Neville and Trisha Yearwood (who we'll be discussing eventually) blending soulful harmonies on a cover of Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces."

1960 - the short list

With the ‘60s counter-culture just around the corner, Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” kept it’s fatally beautiful death grip on the charts into February before yielding to a mournful but decidedly lower-stakes successor, Jim Reeves’ “He’ll Have to Go.”  A master class in dreamy yet mature baritone vocal control, Reeves’ most-remembered hit was a closer cousin to the crooner balladry of Frank Sinatra than the hillbilly laments of Hank Williams.  It was an early glimpse into the “countrypolitan” approach that would grow in dominance as the country music industry increasingly wrote off the younger generation as lost to rock & roll and decided to double down on the easy-listening aspects of the genre, hopefully winning over some new shares of the adult listeners that were shaken off of pop radio by those damn noisy kids.  Unlike some of those 1959 oddballs, its crossover potential made total sense; it went as high as #2 on the Hot 100 and still resonates.  A cheating song from the POV of the cheated-upon – or, to be fair, maybe just a potential suitor about to lose his spot – it’s almost weird in its sense of mature reserve, with Reeves’ gift for suitably coloring the edges with a timeless kind of hurt.

Hank Locklin’s “Please Help Me I’m Falling” took over from Jim Reeves’ monumental 14-week run at #1 with a 14-week run of its own.  It’s similar in tempo, just as melodically solid and subtly poetic, but key differences here: for one, this time the narrator’s on the verge of doing a little cheating himself, and he doesn’t feel great about it.  Also, Locklin’s tenor twang is in no danger of being mistaken for a smooth Rat Pack type: it’s all guilt-ridden hillbilly here, pop charts be damned.

So with about seven months taken up by those slow-moving (if evergreen) laments, Cowboy Copas’ “Alabam” (which took over for a five-week run in late August) must have sounded like “Hey Ya” blasting out of the speakers when it hit.  1960 country music’s slightly-belated song of the summer, it’s a catchy bit of boom-chicka-boom vignettes from a guy who was already a couple decades into the music career that would be unfortunately overshadowed when he and fellow kind-of-forgotten star Hawkshaw Hawkins were killed in the same plane crash that took Patsy Cline three years later.  It choogled back down the charts a few weeks later to make room for “Wings of a Dove,” an explicitly gospel waltz from established hitmaker Ferlin Husky that became his signature song and probably nestled in nicely with the more religious-specific Christmas tunes as November turned to December (and it hung in there well into January and made a brief February resurgence in the top spot).  It was less a repetitive, simplistic precursor to what would eventually become Christian pop-rock and more of a piece with country-gospel classics like “Amazing Grace” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”  Specific in its imagery and sweet in tone, it’s probably one of the few country classics of its day that hasn’t garnered many barroom covers, even though those sneakily propulsive drums and impassioned background singers give it more kick than you probably remember.  Give this one a fresh listen.

THE TREND:

Long stays at the charts for a small handful of dominant songs: two downbeat laments about adult cheaters, one hillbilly-folk choogler, and a good-natured Christian waltz tune.  All good stuff in retrospect, especially if you’re inclined to like country music, but also: you get a strong sense that any youth-driven record sales or request-line calls had migrated en masse to hang with the cool kids in the rock & roll section.

Also kind of interesting that none of these guys, despite the long chart runs, would likely be considered among the Top 25 or so country artists of anything other than their specific era.  Jim Reeves would probably come the closest, but of course it didn’t help that he and Copas’ lives were cut short by air crashes within a half-decade.  Husky and Locklin would go on to live long and seemingly happy lives but aside from their signature works seem somewhat lost to history.

THE RANKING:

1. He'll Have to Go - Jim Reeves
2. Wings of a Dove - Ferlin Husky
3. Please Help Me I'm Falling (Hank Locklin)
4. Alabam (Cowboy Copas)

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Unfortunately we won't get to discuss the late Hal Ketchum in this column much; "Small Town Saturday Night" might've been one of the bigger songs of the '90s but it somehow never quite tippy-topped the Billboard chart. So I'm gonna salute the guy while I can, a country-folk maestro with a hugely soulful and distinctive voice (not to mention a trailblazer for prematurely-gray dudes everywhere). RIP good sir, thanks for the tunes, even the occasional covers.

1.           

1959 - don't leave the farm, son ...

The first proper year of a consolidated Billboard country music chart – charmingly bearing the now-outdated name “Hot C&W Sides” – started off with 1958’s leftover #1 hit “City Lights” by Ray Price.  The then-young Texas crooner and his band The Cherokee Cowboys made their name with a stripped-down, barroom-friendly sound that drew whatever sense of luxury it might’ve had in the early days from Price’s supple, sturdy baritone.  The twang was all in the fiddle and trebly guitar licks; as a singer, Price’s resonance and diction had more in common with the polished voice of a Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby than the hillbilly drawl of an Ernest Tubb or Hank Williams.  Penned by future chart presence Bill Anderson, the song’s lament of a good ol’ boy spiritually lost in the empty decadence of big city nightclubs would be a recurring theme for decades. 

Taking over January and most of February was Jim Reeves’ “Billy Bayou,” not as enduring of a number but another case of a smooth, relatable crooner giving a bit of uptown air to a straightforward stripped-down country track.  Catchy and full of regional signifiers but low on emotional resonance, it eventually gave way to Johnny Cash’s “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.”  Keeping the Western side of the equation relevant, it’s sort of an ornerier and higher-stakes answer to “City Lights” but this time, instead of an ongoing dissolution the protagonist meets a quick and violent end; either way, the message seems to be something along the lines of “don’t stray too far from the farm if you want to live long and well.”  Long #1 streaks briefly ended with Johnny Horton’s “When It’s Springtime In Alaska (It’s 40 Below),” sort of a twist itself on the theme: this time the country boy goes somewhere even more exotic in search of adventure and finds a quick, violent, and remote death in a frozen honky-tonk.  No less a future legend than George Jones then took over the perch from mid-April to mid-May with his first #1 “White Lightnin’,” and this time the country boy found plenty of adventure closer to home courtesy of the local moonshiner.  As propulsive and guitar-driven as any of the rockabilly numbers of the day, it was a rare blast of joy in a chart year that was leaning pretty dark.

Taking over from Jones and hanging on through late July – and crossing over to the all-genre Hot 100 #1 – was Johnny Horton with “The Battle of New Orleans.”  It was still pretty damn jaunty but thematically couldn’t have been more different: this time the country boys were at war, taking it to the British in 1814 with squirrel guns, muskets, and (if the narrator is to be believed) a fucking hand-held alligator.  Over 150 years removed from its subject matter, it was all glory and clever turns of phrase, a celebration of American pride and Southern resourcefulness, martial drumbeats spiked with catchy banjo licks and folksy descriptions of a bunch of defeated Brits who “ran through the brambles and they ran through the briars, ran through the bushes where the rabbits wouldn’t go.”  The only hit that could overtake it after 10 weeks sounds like a bit of a companion piece; Stonewall Jackson’s “Waterloo” had snippets of military-grade drumbeats and a historical theme, going back and forth between using Napoleon Bonaparte’s storied defeat as a metaphor and referencing it directly.  It’s as fatalistic as it is catchy, not exactly evergreen but an intriguing mix of folksiness and awareness that country songwriters nowadays probably wouldn’t attempt, much less master.

“The Three Bells” by the Browns echoed “Battle of New Orleans” in the sense of having a ten-week reign at #1 coupled with a shorter one atop the Hot 100.  A translation of the French folk-pop song “Las Tres Cloiches” that had been a pre-Billboard hit for Edith Piaf a decade earlier, it sounded like it bore some historical weight itself, in the sense that the narrative sounded like it could’ve happened 200 years ago or last week.  A warm and sentimental tracing of a man’s life through birth, marriage, and death at a presumably ripe old age, it was as much a gospel tune as a folk or country song, with an autumnal vibe that no doubt fit the season of its run. 

Faron Young’s “Country Girl” swept in like a bitter late-fall wind with lines like “then one day you learned too much, and it poisoned your sweet mind.”  Seemingly mostly upset that he bought the shoes and clothes that she was stepping out on him in, it’s a petty and non-descript blip on an otherwise-booming year for the genre (Young would have bigger and better hits eventually of course).  Ray Price took his spot back with a much more pathos-laden lost-love lament: “Same Old Me” epitomized the contemporary basics of the genre with its bittersweet fiddle-and-steel-guitar and honky-tonk backbeat, even if the decades have somewhat eclipsed it with even better Ray Price songs. 

1959 would wrap up on a note both more iconic and crossover-friendly.  By modern standards – hell, even by the standards of a decade or so later – it’s hard to fathom that the nationwide pop charts would be overtaken in one year by a hillbilly war ballad, a nursery-rhyme-ish adaptation of a French ballad, and a mariachi-fueled gunfighter broadside, but that’s exactly how Marty Robbins and “El Paso” wrapped the year up.  Between the brisk waltz tempo, the heady rush of Mexican guitars, and Robbins’ heavenly tenor narrating a sorrowful tale of lust, violence, and justice, it’s pretty astounding to think of what it must’ve been like to hear the saga of the hapless young cowboy, besotten into trigger-happy jealousy by the “wicked Felina” (to be fair, as far as we know all she did was share a drink with some other doomed vaquero) blasting through the radio with fresh ears.  It’s run at the top would extend into 1960, and its life as an unimpeachable classic might outlive us all.

THE TREND?

A disparate handful of tunes that don’t particularly resemble each other taking turns reaching out and taking over the pop charts by means that are a little hard to imagine nowadays.  Also, fair warning to all those good ol’ boys and the “country girls” they love: maybe don’t leave the farm.

THE RANKING

1. El Paso - Marty Robbins
2. White Lightnin' - George Jones
3. The Battle of New Orleans - Johnny Horton
4. City Lights - Ray Price
5. Waterloo - Stonewall Jackson
6. Don't Take Your Guns to Town - Johnny Cash
7. Same Old Me - Ray Price
8. The Three Bells - The Browns
9. When It's Springtime in Alaska, It's 40 Below - Johnny Horton
10. Billy Bayou - Jim Reeves
11. Country Girl - Faron Young

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Texas rock & rollers the Old 97s have been one of my very favorites for decades, seamlessly blending soulful gravity and clever wordplay with the occasional regular old shit-kicking good time. Their take on "El Paso" ended up on a soundtrack project for quintessential Texas TV show King of the Hill, wisely avoiding trying to match Marty Robbins note for note and instead just cranking it to eleven and letting the bullets fly. 

PRE-1959: juke box folk?

Billboard’s country music charts sort of go back to 1944, and though it’s impressive that there’s still a record at all, the record is a bit of a mess.  For one, the category was called Juke Box Folk, an indicator of how differently popular music was consumed once upon a time.  And the inaugural #1, “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” charted on the strength of two different versions of it: Al Dexter’s, who actually considered himself a country singer, and Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters, who almost certainly did not.

The procedure of counting multiple versions to one chart ranking seems to have died out quickly, but the chart soldiered on honoring an eclectic mix of artists that are still considered time-honored country stars (Al Dexter would be back in 1944, along with the chart debuts of Ernest Tubb and Red Foley) and artists that no one would consider part of the country music genre or tradition.  Nat King Cole and Louis Jordan both scored #1s, perhaps a precursor to Ray Charles eventual run at the country charts, although by 1945 the non-country acts seem to have been at least temporarily shuffled off, perhaps nudged aside by an influx of Western Swing from Bob Wills and Spade Cooley.  Between those two, their contemporary Tex Williams, and singing cowboys like Tex Ritter and Dick Thomas, one can see how the designation “country and western” once made a lot of sense.  “Eastern” country singers, for lack of a better word, like burgeoning stars Merle Travis and Eddy Arnold, would go back and forth at the #1 spot.  Arnold would pretty much have 1948 all to himself, staying at #1 for the vast majority of it before 1949 brought serious competition in the form of legend-in-the-making Hank Williams and less-remembered singing cowboy Jimmy Wakely for one last gasp of the “Western” side of things (eventual superstar Marty Robbins and various ‘70s “Outlaws” not included).

In 1950, Billboard at least temporarily decided to make their own job harder, offering up three separate charts for the increasingly viable country music industry to keep up with changing times.  The Juke Box chart remained, with new ones added on for Record Sales and Disc Jockeys (i.e., radio airplay).  There was a lot of overlap, with the same songs and artists often scoring #1 on all three at some point; big year for Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, and Red Foley, with eventual superstars Lefty Frizzell and Hank Snow making their debuts as well.

The three-charts approach endured through mid-1957, when the Juke Box list was axed, with Marty Robbins’ jaunty lament “White Sport Coat (And A Pink Carnation)” as its final #1.  In October of the following year, Billboard finally consolidated the two remaining charts into what it called “Hot C&W Sides.”  The combined chart’s first #1, Ray Price’s “City Lights,” would hold onto its spot for the remainder of the year.

None of this is meant to dismiss the bulk of the 1950s for the various country music charts, or the genre and business in general; it was a period of wild growth and change, full of records that would endure and artists that would go on to be legendary.  Hank Williams soared to chart domination and immediate influence and then died young: his chart presence didn’t immediately disappear, but without new music to be made and a superstar to tour in support, it soon left room for new stars and styles.  Artists like the aforementioned Price and Robbins and Don Gibson, Hank Thompson, Webb Pierce and others would stake longtime claims.  Early rock & roll – or at least the southern Caucasian wing of it – would infiltrate the charts in the person of Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and the Everly Brothers, most of whom would find an ongoing home there after less country-influenced artists took over the rock genre.

But the chart consolidation, for purposes of this blog written by a life-long fan but part-time-at-best journalist, gives me the same opportunity for concentration as it apparently gave the industry at the time, taking on the chart’s history one song at a time to honor the classics (or take a little piss out of them when appropriate), spotlight the forgotten (justly or otherwise), and try to make a little sense of the trends inside and outside the genre that fueled the various ascensions of people trying to make art (or at least hits) that either fit inside the once-rustic little box of country music or expand what it could mean.  Hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoy writing about it.

No Kinda Answers ...

Just to get some things out of the way before we get going here ...

Why are you qualified to judge, critique, etc. decades of classic country music?

Well I have been paid modest amounts of money on numerous occasions to write album reviews – mostly in the country and Americana fields – for multiple print and online publications.  So I’m technically a professional music journalist.  Plus I’m a lifelong country music fan who grew up in a family of similarly-inclined listeners who, intentionally or not, made sure I heard a lot of country music from different eras growing up.  I guess it stuck … I liked it enough to keep seeking it out.  Hank Williams Jr. and Willie Nelson were bigger childhood heroes to me than any athlete or comic book character.  As a high schooler I was enamored by the whole “new traditionalist” thing with folks like Clint Black, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson etc. putting new spins on old sounds.  In and around my college years I was a regular patron at beer joints like the Dixie Chicken in College Station, TX that loudly acknowledge that most truly great country music was made before 1985 or so.  I still listen to it on a near-daily basis (background or otherwise), As a performing musician, I’ve covered Hag knows how many songs as a musician onstage or just for grins among friends, it’s right there in the fabric of my life and always will be.  I like other kinds of music, sure.  But country music of various eras and subgenres is always going to feel like home.

What inspired the blog?

Aside from just fandom in general, around 2021 I became pretty enamored with a column on the Stereogum website by the hilariously excellent pop-culture writer Tom Breihan.  Among his other writing pursuits among various outlets, he tackled the Billboard Hot 100 charts, one #1 at a time, with his column aptly named The Number Ones.  This is highly recommended reading … Breihan is a full-timer and it shows.  His articles show a breadth of knowledge, rigor of homework, blend of the objective and subjective, and knack for finding just the right anecdotes and context to bring the stories to life. 

That being said, you’re not necessarily going to get that here.  For one, I’m not a full-timer, I’m self-publishing and squeezing this into the margins of other employment and family life so my research might not make it much past Wikipedia, YouTube and my own beer-stained memory.  Also, a lot of the artists who’ve managed a #1 pop hit only made it to the top of that wildly diverse mountain once or twice, meaning that sifting through the years gives Mr. Breihan a lot of fresh stories to tell.  If you try doing this with the country music charts … how many times can you reiterate the Ronnie Milsap or Conway Twitty story and make it feel new?  So instead of a nice long article on each song, I’m tackling this thing one year at a time, which starts off easy enough in the days of months-long reigns for top-tier hits and eventually gets long as hell when more-than-one-week runs become rare and there’s 40 or more songs to at least mention in any given year. 

A ranking?  Based on what?

It seemed fun to try to rank the #1 hits of every year in order of, for the most part, just how much I like them.  But I do try to keep in mind things like cultural relevance and durability in the collective memory and how well it represents its era, or at least the best and most salient qualities of its era.  If a song’s a cover of a better-known version it’s less likely to be all that high on the ladder.  In some years even the stuff knocking around the bottom is pretty solid, for the most part; in other years, anything outside the top five or so may well be unlistenable to some ears.  If it seems like I’m being overly hard on one of your favorites, keep in mind that taste is subjective and if someone’s got a spot on any of these lists at all, then they’ve already had more #1 hits than I have. 

So what’s your “taste”?

I’m no strict purist, but I do usually like country music with a more traditional feel. Willie Nelson is probably my favorite all-around artist, in terms of songwriting and personality and delivery and just the general soul of his work. John Prine is up there too and certainly my favorite songwriter, although he doesn’t factor in all that often on a specific discussion of #1 country hits. Some of my most frequent go-to’s as a listener that actually factor in to such a discussion include George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Gary Stewart, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, George Strait, John Anderson, Dolly Parton, Ray Price, Rodney Crowell, Buck Owens, Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, you probably get the idea. But I’m not immune to the charms of some country-pop here and there and will gladly concede that weaving other genres into the music goes back to Hank Williams and beyond. Imagine if Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys didn’t like jazz. Country music has been so big for so long that it’s unsurprising that it draws from almost everything, just like pop and rock and folk always have.

As far as modern stuff, I do tend to lean towards Americana and singer-songwriter stuff. I like Jamie Lin Wilson, Walt Wilkins, Steve Earle, Turnpike Troubadours, Courtney Patton & Jason Eady, Emily Wolfe, Shinyribs, John Evans, Adam & Chris Carroll, Mark Jungers, Drew Kennedy, hot damn there’s a lot of ‘em. I got into what was usually called alt-country in the ‘90s, stuff like Son Volt and Old 97s and the Bottle Rockets. I love old-school soul and R&B (Otis Redding, Al Green etc.), the earthier side of classic rock (Creedence Clearwater Revival, Rolling Stones, etc.), big-name singer-songwriter rock from guys like Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, Texas folks like Guy Clark and Billy Joe Shaver and Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen … I love bits of heavy metal, hip-hop, and punk even if I’m less qualified to speak on them.  

And yeah there are some country artists, including long-term successful ones, that I think it’ll become clear aren’t my cup of tea. No disrespect to folks like Eddie Rabbitt, Ronnie Milsap, Tim McGraw etc. I still like some of their stuff, it’s just not in my wheelhouse. Sometime around the mid-2000s it might all be so far out of said wheelhouse it’s time to call it a day.

Any politics here? I don’t like politics in my music.

There are a few songs and artists that’ll be impossible (or maybe just boring) to discuss if we don’t at least mention the political content, context of the times, etc. I’m going to try to keep it as evenhanded and non-partisan as possible without totally subsuming my own point of view (which is pretty politically moderate anyway). So I can’t promise people of any political persuasion that they’ll never be exposed to a viewpoint they don’t like, whether I’m stating my own opinion or just playing a little devil’s advocate. For what it’s worth, though, it’s become clear in writing this that although songs that could be considered political aren’t entirely uncommon in country music, aside from a few key cultural touchstones they don’t usually end up on the top of the charts. A lot of songs have a generally conservative “vibe” (or less frequently, a liberal one) without being in-your-face divisive; we might make a note of that here and there, but bottom line: I’m not writing with an agenda.

What tends to get left out in the discussion?

Given the timeframe of when a cohesive Billboard country music chart started, a lot of people whom country music history would be unimaginable without are minimized or left out entirely. Not much Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, The Carter Family, Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys, Webb Pierce, etc. Bluegrass doesn’t factor in much; some artists with bluegrass roots broke through to the top, but for the most part bluegrass records remained a niche. Some major artists like Johnny Cash and Lefty Frizzell were already at least a little past their hitmaking prime by 1959 when the consolidated chart started, so they won’t come up as much as you’d think.

Plus for a long stretch there was at least one other major publication-based chart competing with Billboard, the Radio & Records chart. There was a lot of methodology overlap but just enough difference that sometimes a record would hit #1 on one but not the other. R&R was merged into Billboard circa 2006 so this isn’t really an issue anymore, but for years the R&R chart was used for various prominent syndicated radio country countdown shows. So you may well remember something as being a #1 hit that’s not mentioned here … we’re not ignoring it intentionally, it’s just a different chart. And the R&R stuff isn’t archived on Wikipedia or – far as I can tell – anything else easily accessible on the internet, so I can’t throw around examples or anything. I have some vague recollections of songs like Pat Green’s “Wave On Wave” and Steve Wariner’s version of “Tips of My Fingers” being #1 hits, but hell if I can prove it.  

And in 2012 the Billboard chart split again, into a “Country Airplay” ranking that only took airplay on country-specific stations into account and “Hot Country Songs,” which also factored in downloads, streaming, and play on non-country stations. If I can somehow power through the early 2000s in general, that’d probably be a good spot to eventually call it a day on this project.