Embed from Getty Images

(Pictured: This much cool will give you frostbite: Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, and Glen Campbell.)

You asked for it, now you have to read it.

I experienced the country music of the mid-70s somewhat directly. It was an era when WMAQ in Chicago became a sensation by programming country music with Top 40 formatics (and even employed Chicago legend Fred Winston for a while). Mother and Dad listened to it in the house, the barn, and the car, and I recall turning it on myself.

The country music of the years before is a different story. What I picked up I got by osmosis or heard in years after, including some songs from the Billboard country chart from May 16, 1970.

1. “My Love”/Sonny James. There is a long list of one-time country superstars who are absolutely forgotten today. “The Southern Gentleman” had 23 #1 hits, 16 of them in a row between 1967 and 1971. “My Love” is a cover of the 1966 Petula Clark hit, and although it hasn’t aged well, it was a big deal in its day.

2. “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone”/Charley Pride. “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” is Charley Pride’s biggest hit, but “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone” is the Charley Pride-iest. It’s everything that made him great in a couple of minutes.

3. “I Do My Swingin’ at Home”/David Houston. Here’s another guy who, like Sonny James, was straight money for several years, with an eye-popping record of chart success. In 1966, “Almost Persuaded” had a run at #1 country not beaten until the download era, but today, it’s the only Houston hit people remember now, if any.

5. “What Is Truth”/Johnny Cash
9. “Hello Darlin'”/Conway Twitty
11. “Tennessee Birdwalk”/Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan
12. “My Woman My Woman My Wife”/Marty Robbins
60. “Everything Is Beautiful”/Ray Stevens
62. “Long Lonesome Highway”/Michael Parks
Crossovers from country to pop and back again have always been a thing. “Everything Is Beautiful” would top the Hot 100 as May turned to June. “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife” made #42. I wrote about it a few years ago. “Hello Darlin'” made #60 but was Twitty’s longest-running country #1. You don’t need to hear me bang on about “Tennessee Birdwalk” again.

10. “Rise and Shine”/Tommy Cash. Younger brother of Johnny, and with a modestly successful career of his own during the 70s.

26. “Oh Happy Day”/Glen Campbell
32. “All I Have to Do Is Dream”/Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell
America was at peak Glen Campbell in 1970; his TV show was a hit and his records were ubiquitous. Campbell and Gentry did two Everly Brothers covers, this one and “Let It Be Me,” both of which crossed over from country to pop, and theirs might be the first version of “All I Have to Do Is Dream” I ever knew. “Oh Happy Day” ran the country chart at about the same time the gospel version by the Edwin Hawkins Singers was climbing into the Top 10 of the Hot 100.

35. “Togetherness”/Buck Owens and Susan Raye
38. “Tomorrow’s Forever”/Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton
47. “Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries”/Kenny Vernon and Lawanda Lindsay
58. “I’m Leavin’ It Up to You”/Johnny and Jonie Mosby
67. “A Good Thing”/Bill Wilbourne and Kathy Morrison
Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell were established solo stars who got together. Owens and Wagoner were established stars who took on duet partners, while other duets came up as duets. Dolly’s solo career began while she was partnered with Wagoner. Raye and Lindsay, who appeared on Owens’ TV show Hee Haw, scored their own hits later on. Raye had five straight country Top-10 hits between 1970 and 1972, including “L.A. International Airport,” which went to #54 on the Hot 100.

(“Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries,” first recorded by R&B singers Peggy Scott and Jo Jo Benson and more famously by Twitty and Loretta Lynn in 1971, is not really about procuring fruit.)

50. “Down in New Orleans”/Buddy Alan. Buddy Alan was the son of Buck and Bonnie Owens and the stepson of Merle Haggard. After a handful of minor hits in the 70s, he gave up recording for a successful career in radio programming.

53. “Running Bare”/Jim Nesbitt. In 1960, Johnny Preston scored a #1 pop hit with “Running Bear,” about an Indian brave who “loved little White Dove with a love big as the sky.” Sonny James took it to #1 country in 1969. After that, Jim Nesbitt (whose name we have mentioned at this website before) did “Running Bare,” a parody that in retrospect seems inevitable.

Our pal Bean Baxter pointed out on Twitter the other day that a large amount of 70s country is out of print and/or missing from streaming services. That’s a great loss to history geeks such as we, but also to people who simply enjoy good tunes.

(Pictured: Bill Anderson in the 70s.)

The other day on Twitter I threatened to start up a whole new blog devoted to 70s country, which I love, but which I have always suspected is of somewhat limited interest to the readership of this website (which itself is already of limited interest to the world at large). A handful of kind readers chimed in to say they’d read it, which is gratifying. So for today: the great Radio Rewinder Twitter feed posted the Billboard Top 75 country chart from May 17, 1975, earlier this week, and there’s lots of good stuff on it.

The first thing you notice is the number of pop crossovers: the top three songs were all significant pop hits, and two of them, by B. J. Thomas and John Denver, were #1 on the Hot 100. In all, 10 of 1975’s #1 country singles were significant pop hits, and six of them were Hot 100 #1s. Other crossover hits on the 5/17/75 chart include “I’m Not Lisa,” “Misty,” “When Will I Be Loved,” “Lizzie and the Rain Man,” “Reconsider Me,” “Rainy Day People,” and “T-R-O-U-B-L-E.” But beyond the pop crossovers, several songs at the top of this chart would be considered country classics for the next couple of decades: “She’s Acting Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles),” “Too Late to Worry,” “Tryin’ to Beat the Morning Home,” “Roll on Big Mama.” Record charts from any genre and any bygone year can impress us with the number of legends appearing, and this one certainly does: George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Buck Owens, Brenda Lee, Don Williams (just starting his Hall of Fame career), Hank Williams Jr., Sonny James, Roy Clark, Lynn Anderson, Johnny Cash, Hank Snow, Mel Tillis, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Reed, Mac Davis.

Let’s dip into the chart and see what’s interesting.

10. “Misty”/Ray Stevens. Let me again praise this version of the Erroll Garner piano bar standard, which is done straight and is brilliantly produced by Stevens. It made #14 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1975.

44. “The Tip of My Fingers”/Jean Shepard. A now-forgotten pioneer of country music, one of the first women to headline country concerts in her own right, and a member of the Grand Ole Opry for 60 years until her death in 2016, Jean Shepard hit the country Top 40 31 times starting in 1953; “The Tip of My Fingers,” which had gone to #16, was her last Top 40 entry. It was written and first a made a hit by Bill Anderson (about whom there’s more below) in 1960; later versions by Roy Clark (1963)  and Eddy Arnold (1966)  are probably the best-known.

50. “Boilin’ Cabbage”/Bill Black’s Combo. Bill Black, Elvis Presley’s bassist and with a successful career in his own right, died in 1965. His widow sold his recording studio and the name “Bill Black’s Combo” to Bob Tucker and Larry Rogers. Tucker had taken over leading the combo when Black’s health failed in 1963. “Boilin’ Cabbage” was on the 1974 album Solid & Country, released on the Hi label (also home to Al Green), and it is quite the country stomper. Their next album, World’s Greatest Honky Tonk Band, was successful enough for Billboard to honor them as the top country instrumental group of 1976.

53. “Fireball Rolled a Seven”/Dave Dudley. Dudley is most famous for the 1963 hit “Six Days on the Road.” “Fireball Rolled a Seven” name-checks every major Southern stock car race and Richard Petty too, and is mentioned here entirely because the phrase “fireball rolled a seven” just sounds cool.

62. “Freda Comes, Freda Goes”/Bobby G. Rice. Fans of obscure pop tunes may remember “Freedom Comes, Freedom Goes” by the Fortunes. This is the same song except for the change from “freedom” to “Freda.”

73. “Country DJ”/Bill Anderson. I’d never heard “Country DJ” before I saw this chart, and I do not have sufficient words to describe how much I adore it. Anybody who ever worked in small-market radio will recognize practically everything in it as God’s Own Truth.

95. “God’s Gonna Get’cha (For That)”/George Jones and Tammy Wynette. While I don’t know it for sure, I have to think this record was inspired by Maude‘s TV catchphrase “God’ll get you for that, Walter.”  “God’s Gonna Get’cha (For That)” is a minor entry in the George and Tammy catalog (eventually making #25) , but it’s worth 2:41 of your time, and the harmonies are great.

Y’all better be serious about wanting to read more along this line, because there will be more of it next week.

(Pictured: Culture Club, 1983.)

Last February I asked if having three acts with two separate, non-double-A sided singles in the Top 40 at the same time was some kind of a record. A couple of readers quickly chimed in to say that it was not. On the chart dated May 7, 1983, there are seven acts with two hits in the 40:

—Michael Jackson with “Beat It” (#1) and “Billie Jean” (#14)
—Styx with “Mr. Roboto” (#8) and “Don’t Let It End” (#27)
—Duran Duran with “Rio” (#16) and “Hungry Like the Wolf” (#33)
—Lionel Richie with “My Love” (#17) and “You Are” (#38)
—Culture Club with “Time” (#19) and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” (#34)
—Journey with “Separate Ways” (#21) and “Faithfully” (#23)
—Hall and Oates with “One on One” (#31) and “Family Man” (#32)

If we dip below the Top 40, we can find other pairs:

—Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band with “Even Now” (#12) and “Shame on the Moon” (#91)
—Kenny Rogers with “We’ve Got Tonight” (#36) and “All My Life” (#67)
—Frida with “I Know There’s Something Going On” (#41) and “Here We’ll Stay” (#103)
—Golden Earring with “Twilight Zone” (#43) and “The Devil Made Me Do It” (#79)
—Pat Benatar with “Looking for a Stranger” (#51) and “Little Too Late” (#100)
—Christopher Cross with “No Time for Talk” (#59) and “All Right” (#96)
—Thompson Twins with “Love on Your Side” (#72) and “Lies” (#98)

That’s 14 acts with two records on the chart at the same time. It likely has something to do with the slow-moving charts of the period, which is something we’ve discussed before.

Beyond the number of acts doubling up, there’s an argument that, early in the decade though it is, the week of May 7, 1983, represents Peak 80s, with groundbreaking records and iconic hits thick on the ground. In the Top 40, there was “Let’s Dance” and “Come on Eileen,” “She Blinded Me With Science” and “Little Red Corvette” and “Flashdance,” “Always Something There to Remind Me” and “Whirly Girl,” Def Leppard’s “Photograph” and Bryan Adams’ “Straight From the Heart.” Below the Top 40, there was New Year’s Day” by U2, Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue,” “I Eat Cannibals” by Total Coelo, “Our House” by Madness, Todd Rundgren’s “Bang the Drum All Day,” “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs, plus “Back on the Chain Gang,” “Too Shy,” “Reap the Wild Wind,” “Mexican Radio,” “I Melt With You,” and even the Cheers theme “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.”

Although I was hearing most of these songs plenty in the spring of 1983, I was playing only a few of them on the air myself. I was music director and afternoon jock at KDTH in Dubuque, a country station. As I wrote a while back, country hits that crossed to pop were the heart of our playlist. In this week, those included Ronnie Milsap’s “Stranger in My House,” “You Can’t Run From Love” by Eddie Rabbitt, “The Closer You Get” by Alabama, and “Swingin'” by John Anderson. “Swingin'” was a rage that spring, blowing out the phone lines at KDTH on its way to #1 country and #43 on the pop chart. Most of its pop-chart action came in smaller markets; apart from WZGC in Atlanta, which had it at #1 for three weeks in March, the most famous major-market station to chart it was WLS in Chicago. “Swingin'” went to #12 in a 14-week run on the WLS survey, although I never knew anybody who actually heard it on WLS; I never did.

Listening to this stuff, and revisiting the spring of 1983 for the first time in awhile, I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I expected. I actually felt the warm glow of nostalgia, which is elusive where the 1980s are concerned. During the week of May 7, 1983, The Mrs. and I had been Mr. and Mrs. for one month. We were 23 and 22 years old. We were getting ready to move out of my crappy one-bedroom bachelor pad to a new apartment in June, the bottom quarter of an old house that’s still my favorite of all the places we ever lived. She worked for the local newspaper, which also owned KDTH. And we were figuring out, together, what our life was supposed to be, together.

Next week at this website: return with me to the spring of 1974, and enjoy some half-assed historical theorizing thereon. 

Next week on the radio: I’ll be taking over the afternoon show on Magic 98 on a regular basis, Monday through Friday from 3 til 7 US Central, at least for a while, until they find somebody they like better. You can listen here, if you care.