Country music from a fan's point of view since 2008
1958: All I Have To Do Is Dream / Claudette — The Everly Brothers (Cadence)
1958 (Disk Jockeys): Just Married — Marty Robbins (Columbia)
1968: Honey — Bobby Goldsboro (United Artists)
1978: Georgia On My Mind — Willie Nelson (Columbia)
1988: I Told You So — Randy Travis (Warner Bros.)
1998: I Just Want To Dance With You — George Strait (MCA Nashville)
2008: I’m Still A Guy — Brad Paisley (Arista Nashville)
2018: Meant To Be — Bebe Rexha featuring Florida Georgia Line (Big Machine)
2018: One Number Away — Luke Combs (Columbia)
1958: All I Have To Do Is Dream / Claudette — The Everly Brothers (Cadence)
1958 (Disk Jockeys): All I Have To Do Is Dream — The Everly Brothers (Cadence)
1968: Honey — Bobby Goldsboro (United Artists)
1978: Do You Know You Are My Sunshine — The Statler Brothers (Mercury)
1988: What She Is (Is A Woman In Love) — Earl Thomas Conley (RCA)
1998: This Kiss — Faith Hill (Warner Bros)
2008: I’m Still A Guy — Brad Paisley (Arista Nashville)
2018: Meant To Be — Bebe Rexha featuring Florida Georgia Line (Big Machine)
2018 (Airplay): For The First Time — Darius Rucker (Capitol Nashville)
1958 (Sales): Oh Lonesome Me / I Can’t Stop Loving You — Don Gibson (RCA Victor)
1958 (Disk Jockeys): Oh Lonesome Me — Don Gibson (RCA Victor)
1968: Honey — Bobby Goldsboro (United Artists)
1978: Do You Know You Are My Sunshine — The Statler Brothers (Mercury)
1988: Eighteen Wheels and A Dozen Roses — Kathy Mattea (Mercury)
1998: This Kiss — Faith Hill (Warner Bros)
2008: Just Got Started Loving You — James Otto (Warner Bros)
2018: Meant To Be — Bebe Rexha featuring Florida Georgia Line (Big Machine)
2018 (Airplay): Heaven — Kane Brown (RCA)
Kenny followed the crossover success of ‘The Gambler’ with another self-titled album, filled with songs intended to attract the non-country audience. Indeed, listening to most of the record I was hard pressed to hear any country elements at all.
The lead single, ‘You Decorated My Life’, is a pleasant but definitely AC ballad ornamented with a heavy string arrangement. It was another big hit for Kenny, hitting #1 country, #2 Adult and #7 pop. The album’s sole nod to reasonably straight country was a return to the story songs which had been so successful for him before, in the shape of ‘Coward Of The County’. Set to the same rhythm as ‘Lucille’, the somewhat melodramatic story is of a boy who eschews violence after his criminal father dies, until his girlfriend is assaulted. It proved to be an enormous international hit, Kenny’s only #1 other than ‘Lucille’ in the UK (where for some reason ‘The Gambler’ did not chart). It’s not as good, or believable, as ‘Lucille’, but is definitely memorable and the best song on this album.
A couple of other songs are in a country-pop vein. ‘Goodbye Marie’ is a well-written song (by Mel McDaniel and Dennis Linde’ about a man planning on leaving, but with a somewhat cluttered production. It definitely had single potential, and in fact was subsequently a minor hit for Bobby Goldsboro, and Kenny’s version was eventually released as a spoiler single in 1986, after he had moved to a rival label. ‘One Man’s Woman’, written by Kenny’s keyboard player Steve Glassmeyer, is a pretty good cheating song, and is well sung by Kenny, although the strings dominate the arrangement too much for my taste.
The standard ‘Old Folks’ is not country at all, but quite nicely done with a sensitive vocal interpretation, although the keyboard sound is now very dated and there are more strings.
‘I Want To Make You Smile’ is a tender ballad written by Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers. I like this despite the overbearing strings, apart from a hideous falsetto note or two near the end.
‘Tulsa Turnaround’, which Kenny had previously recorded with The First Edition, is more of a dirty blues rocker which is well done but a bit loud and busy for me. ‘You Turn The Light On’ is very pop with a hard beat, and ‘She’s A Mystery’ is syncopated pop; while ‘Santiago Midnight Moonlight’ and the even more dreadful ‘In And Out Of Your Heart’ are outright disco.
This is not an album I can recommend to country fans.
Grade: D
Released in 1972, Good Hearted Woman found Waylon Jennings making large strides in the direction towards the Outlaw Movement for which he’s most associated. Songwriting credits from the likes of Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson were paramount in making the musical shift.
Chet Atkins enlisted Ronnie Light to produce the project after Danny Davis exited the fold to focus his attention on his Brass Band. Jennings noted he put Light through hell during production although his anger was directed at the musicians who didn’t truly understand his artistic vision.
The #3 peaking title track served as the album’s first single. Famous for a version that featured Jennings singing with his co-writer Willie Nelson, “Good Hearted Woman” is presented here with Jennings singing solo (the duet came three years later on Wanted! The Outlaws). The background vocalists are dated and distracting, but the track is otherwise perfect.
Jennings solely penned the harmonica laced “Do No Good Woman” while Nelson took a sole writing credit on “It Should Be Easier Now.” The pedal steel soaked Nelson composition afforded Jennings the opportunity to give a tour de force vocal performance while his own track feels a bit run of the mill.
Chip Taylor and Al Gorgoni’s shuffle “Sweet Dream Woman” peaked at #7. The pesky background vocalists rear their ugly heads again, but other than that the track is excellent. I love Jennings’ vocal, too, but I get the sense he was being constricted. If I had to guess, I bet he would’ve desired to cut loose a lot more than he was able to.
Kristofferson composed the album’s closing track, the excellent recitation “To Beat the Devil.” Jennings’ baritone is the perfect vehicle to convey the story, about a man who happens upon a tavern on a cold winter’s night.
Harlan Howard contributed the honky-tonker “One of my Bad Habits.” With an ear-catching chugging beat the track details the plight of a man coming clean about his reckless behaviors (smoking, drinking, his woman) and trying to do something about them. I love the bright production, complete with both steel and twangy guitars.
Swamp rocker Tony Joe White contributed “Willie and Laura Mae Jones,” one of the album’s standout tracks. White composed the masterful lyric, about a friendship between a white family and their black neighbors, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement; three years prior to the release of Good Hearted Woman. The subtly is masterful. With just one line (‘that was another place, another time’) he’s able to get his message across beautifully.
Canadian Folk-Rocker Gordon Lightfoot graces Good Hearted Woman with his stone country ballad “Same Old Lover Man.” The tender qualities in the lyric and production are equally matched in Jennings’ vocal, which makes use of his higher register. There’s nothing wrong with the track but in the context of the album it feels a bit too light.
“Unsatisfied” is a more typical ballad, with Jennings using his lower register to convey the lyric. While I was listening the melody seemed somewhat familiar and it came to me. To my ears the track is similar to Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey,” which might’ve been intentional or just something I heard. Otherwise, it’s a solid recording.
“I Knew You’d Be Leavin’” is another ballad, but unlike the previous two, has a peppier production that really caught my ear. I wasn’t fond of Jennings’ vocal, it seemed to low for my tastes, but the track itself is very good.
Good Hearted Woman is a wonderful album and well worth checking out to get a better view of Jennings’ recorded output during this era of his career. The proceedings are too clean and careful and “Willie Mae and Laura Jones” should’ve been the album’s second single. But I would still recommend this album as it is another strong entry in Jennings’ discography.
Grade: A
Although I had been listening to country music all of my life, 1968 was the first time I ever really focused on the genre.
There were several reasons for this, including the fact that with part-time and summer jobs I had some spending money for the first time in my life. One of my jobs was in Virginia Beach where there was a record store next door that actually carried a decent selection of country 45s.
The summer of 1968 may have been “the Summer of Love” for many but in my opinion pop music had started getting a bit weird for my taste so I started keeping my radio on either WCMS in Norfolk (“Where Country Music Swings”) or WTID in Newport News (“Top Gun”). Both of these were AM stations as the FM bands were reserved for classical music.
Mostly I listened to WCMS which was the stronger station (50,000 watts) and had better disc jockeys, folks such as “Hopalong” Joe Hoppel and “Carolina” Charlie Wiggs. Disc jockeys had more latitude in what they played, and local listener requests figured heavily in airplay. While I won’t pretend that the radio stations were perfect (there were lots of dumb commercials and sometimes really silly contests),radio station DJs could play records by local artists and other non-charting records without running afoul of corporate mucky-mucks. Local DJ Carolina Charlie had two records in “Pound By Pound” and “Angel Wings” in 1968 that received frequent airplay on WCMS and also received airplay on other stations throughout the area in which Charlie played live shows.
Most of the larger country radio stations had their own top forty charts and many of them had a local countdown show on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. At one time I had several years worth of top forty charts for WCMS AM-1050. Mom, God rest her soul, threw them out long ago without telling me, so to some extent I am operating on memory but there were five songs that were huge hits in the Norfolk area in 1968 that have stuck in my memory, songs that were not necessarily big hits nationally, but that the local audiences, composed largely of US military personnel and families loved (there were three local Navy bases plus an army base).
“Undo The Right”, sung by Johnny Bush and written by Johnny’s good buddy Willie Nelson, was a big hit nationally, reaching #10 on Billboard’s Country chart. In the Norfolk area, the song was huge staying at the #1 slot for five weeks. The song, with its heavy dose of fiddle and steel, was more country sounding than 95% of the songs (mostly countrypolitan or Nashville Sound productions) to chart that year. The single was issued on Pete Drake’s Stop label and led to Bush being signed to RCA, where a mysterious throat problem derailed his career for a number of years
The big hits basically had long since stopped by 1968 for George Morgan, although “Sounds of Goodbye”, released on the Starday label, might have become a big national hit for him had not two other artists recorded the song, thus splitting the hit. Although the song only reached #31 nationally, it did spark off a bit of a renaissance for Morgan. In the Norfolk area the song was a top five hit, reaching #2. The song, probably the first hit on an Eddie Rabbitt composition, also charted for Tommy Cash at #41 and was a top twenty hit for Cash on the Canadian Country charts. Vern & Rex Gosdin had a successful record with the song on the west coast of the US in late 1967. Cashbox had the song reach #15 but their methodology in 1968 was to combine all versions of the song into a single chart listing. I’ve heard the Gosdins’ version of the song, but Tommy Cash’s version for United Artists never made it to an album and I’ve never found a copy of the single, so I’ve not heard his recording.
“Got Leavin’ On Her Mind” was probably my favorite recording of 1968. Written by the legendary Jack Clement, the song was issued on the MGM label by newly minted Country Music Hall of Fame member Mac Wiseman. As far as I know, the song was a ‘one-off’ for MGM and Wiseman. Long known as “the voice with a heart” and a legendary bluegrass singer, this record had the feel of bluegrass without actually being a bluegrass record in that the instrumentation was standard country without Nashville Sound trappings. Bluegrass artists rarely have huge chart hits and this was no exception, reaching only #54 for Mac. In the Norfolk area, demand for the single was strong and while it only reached #5 on the WCMS charts, the record store I frequented had difficulty keeping the record in stock, reordering new supplies of the single on several occasions.
Carl and Pearl Butler were archaic even when their music was new, but “Punish Me Tomorrow” seemed to catch the ears of the servicemen in our area. It only reached #28 nationally, but it was top ten on WCMS and might have reached higher but the DJs on WCMS made the mistake of playing the flip side “Goodbye Tennessee” resulting in the station receiving a lot of requests for that song, too.
“Drinking Champagne” went top ten on WCMS, anticipating by four years the huge success that Cal Smith would achieve starting in 1972. Written by legendary disc jockey Bill Mack, the song reached #35 on Billboard’s country chart but went to #1 for a week on WCMS. Years later George Strait would have a successful record with the song. Cal’s was the better version and this might have been a huge national hit if released a few years later after Smith hit the big time.
I realize that most of our readership wasn’t born in 1968 and if they think about country music in 1968 at all, it is for pop-country singles like “Honey“, “Harper Valley PTA” and the various Glen Campbell and Sonny James singles that received some pop airplay. There were good solid country records being made but aside from the aforementioned and some Johnny Cash recordings, they weren’t receiving pop airplay. In 1968 there were large sections of the country that had no country stations at all; moreover, many country stations went off the air at sundown or cut power significantly so that they reached only the most local of audiences.
1968: Bobby Goldsboro – Honey (United Artists)
1973: Charlie Rich – Behind Closed Doors (Epic)
1978: Willie Nelson – Stardust (Columbia)
1983: Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson – Pancho & Lefty (Epic)
1988: Reba McEntire – Reba (MCA)
1993: Billy Ray Cyrus – It Won’t Be the Last (Mercury)
1998: Various Artists – Hope Floats: Music from the Motion Picture (Capitol)
2003: Lonestar – From There to Here: Greatest Hits (BNA)
2008: Taylor Swift – Taylor Swift (Big Machine)
2013: Florida Georgia Line – Here’s To the Good Times (Republic Nashville)
1968: Bobby Goldsboro – Honey (United Artists)
1973: Charlie McCoy – Good Time Charlie (Monument)
1978: Willie Nelson – Stardust (Columbia)
1983: Alabama – The Closer You Get (RCA)
1988: Reba McEntire – Reba (MCA)
1993: George Strait – Pure Country: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (MCA)
1998: Various Artists – Hope Floats: Music from the Motion Picture (Capitol)
2003: George Strait – Honkytonkville (MCA)
2008: Taylor Swift – Taylor Swift (Big Machine)
2013: Hunter Hayes – Hunter Hayes (Atlantic)
1968: Bobby Goldsboro – Honey (United Artists)
1973: Charlie Rich – Behind Closed Doors (Epic)
1978: Willie Nelson – Stardust (Columbia)
1983: Alabama – The Closer You Get (RCA)
1988: Reba McEntire – Reba (MCA)
1993: Wynonna – Tell Me Why (MCA/Curb)
1998: Various Artists – Hope Floats: Music from the Motion Picture (Capitol)
2003: George Strait – Honkytonkville (MCA)
2008: Jewel – Perfectly Clear (Valory)
2013: Florida Georgia Line – Here’s To the Good Times (Republic Nashville)
1968: Bobby Goldsboro – Honey (United Artists)
1973: Johnny Rodriguez – Introducing Johnny Rodriguez (Mercury)
1978: Kenny Rogers and Dottie West – Everytime Two Fools Collide (United Artists)
1983: Alabama – The Closer You Get (RCA)
1988: Randy Travis – Always & Forever (Warner Brothers)
1993: Wynonna – Tell Me Why (MCA/Curb)
1998: Garth Brooks – The Limited Series (Capitol/Pearl)
2003: Toby Keith – Unleashed (Dreamworks)
2008: Toby Keith – 35 Biggest Hits (Show Dog/UMe)
2013: George Strait – Love Is Everything (MCA)
For part six of this series, as always, just some songs I liked, one song per artist, not necessarily the biggest hit, (although I feel free to comment on other songs by the artist).
“Forgive and Forget” – Eddie Rabbitt (1975)
Prior to this, Eddie was known, if at all, as a songwriter. This record got to #12, but did better than that in some markets, and gave Rabbitt his first significant hit. The next song “I Should Have Married You” got to #11; after that the next 33 singles would crack the top 10 with 19 of them getting to #1 on either Billboard and/or Cashbox.
“Ladies Love Outlaws” – Jimmy Rabbitt and Renegade (1976)
The title track of a 1972 Waylon Jennings album, for some reason RCA never issued the song as a Jennings single, although it got considerable airplay (it didn’t chart because Billboard did not track non-singles airplay at the time). Jimmy’s version was good (Waylon’s was better) and got to #80, his only chart appearance.
“Ain’t She Something Else” – Eddy Raven (1975)
Eddy’s second chart single reached #46 and became a #1 record for Conway Twitty in 1982. It took Raven eight years and 16 singles to have his first top 10 hit. Can you imagine any artist being given that much slack today
“Whatcha Gonna Do With A Dog Like That” – Susan Raye (1975)
Susan Raye had the Buck Owens organization behind her, was very pretty, and sang well. Despite those advantages, she never really became a big star, probably because her heart wasn’t in it. This song got to #9, one of six solo top tens she was to enjoy. In theory “(I’ve Got A) Happy Heart” was her biggest hit, reaching #3, but she got so much pop radio action on “L.A. International Airport” that it sold a million copies.
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My Kind of Country 