My Kind of Country

Country music from a fan's point of view since 2008

Week ending 12/16/17: #1 singles this week in country music history

5 Comments Posted by on December 17, 2017

1957 (Sales): My Special Angel — Bobby Helms (Decca)

1957 (Disc Jockeys): My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You — Ray Price (Columbia)

1967: It’s the Little Things — Sonny James (Capitol)

1977: Here You Come Again — Dolly Parton (RCA)

1987: The Last One to Know — Reba McEntire (MCA)

1997: From Here to Eternity — Michael Peterson (Reprise)

2007: So Small — Carrie Underwood (Arista)

2017: Meant to Be — Bebe Rexha featuring Florida Georgia Line (Warner Bros.)

2017 (Airplay): Ask Me How I Know — Garth Brooks (Pearl)

Charts , , , , , , , , ,

5 responses to “Week ending 12/16/17: #1 singles this week in country music history”

  1. Occasional Hope December 17, 2017 at 11:17 am

    One of my favourite Reba records.

    Reply
  2. Ken December 17, 2017 at 11:47 am

    1957 was the best year of Bobby Helms young career. The 23 year old singer began that year with his first hit “Fraulein.” His Decca single topped the country chart for four weeks in the fall of 1957 and remained on the country chart for an entire year. His subsequent single was a complete change of style as producer Paul Cohen transitioned Bobby’s sound from traditional country to rock & roll. Embellished by the Anita Kerr singers “My Special Angel” topped the country charts for four weeks and became a #7 pop hit. An October 29, 1957 recording session yielded the recording that has become an all-time Christmas standard, “Jingle Bell Rock.” According to Bobby he did not care for the song when he first heard it but it was transformed into the final recorded version thanks to rewrites provided by himself and guitarist Hank “Sugarfoot” Garland. That single was rush-released and became a huge hit during the 1957 Christmas season and has remained on holiday playlists for both country and pop radio stations for the past 60 years.

    Although Bobby scored two more top ten hits in 1958, “Just A Little Lonesome” [#10] and “Jacqueline” [#5] he never surpassed his success of the previous year. Bobby passed away in 1997.

    Reply
  3. Luckyoldsun December 18, 2017 at 5:10 pm

    Wow. Garth has another #1?
    It’s been just over 10 years since his last Top-10 single.
    I can’t think of another veteran artist who scored a solo #1 hit after not having a top-10 for a full 10 years. I checked Kenny Rogers, Hank Snow and Jimmy Dickens, but they’d each had a top-10 single within a decade of their last, surprise #1. Maybe someone else can name another one.

    Reply
  4. Occasional Hope December 18, 2017 at 7:17 pm

    He wasn’t really a veteran at the time, but Willie Nelson had a couple of top 10 hits in the early 60s, then nothing as successful until Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain hit #1 in 1975.

    Reply
  5. Luckyoldsun December 18, 2017 at 7:52 pm

    OK, that’s a good one! I knew that “Blue Eyes” was Willie’s first #1, but I sort of figured that he had a handful of top-10 hits leading up to that.
    But in fact, per Wikipedia, Willie didn’t have any top-10 hits (and had only 3 top-20 hits) in the decade before “Blue Eyes” went to the top. The one difference is that in the case of Willie, that was first #1, rather than a return to the top.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: