Report From The Country, Part Nine: Rootless In The Seventies - Lovers And Losers
Published September 15th, 2006 in Obsessions, Treasure Tags: C&W, Music.
Thirty years ago, my best friend’s parents subscribed to Phoenix’s first cable television service, a single station called ON TV. It had a very limited schedule of programming; in fact, some days they just ran the same movie all day, over and over. What I remember most clearly was Robert Altman’s “Nashville” running on an endless loop. We must have seen that movie a half dozen times, but never all the way through at one time. The funny thing is, when I finally saw “Nashville” years later from beginning to end, it didn’t strike me as all that different than when I saw it in discontinuous hunks.
“Nashville,” for folks who haven’t seen it, is about the country music business of the early seventies, but like a lot of the great films of the day, it’s also about the need to tell stories in new ways. “Nashville” is charged with awareness that the old simple answers don’t make enough sense any more. Back then, it seems we spent a lot of time trying to come to grips with feelings we just couldn’t quite get our arms around. In the end, we had to let it go. We called it “loss of innocence” and moved on.
The songs in this collection, all from the late sixties and early seventies, are like that to me. Their depth and complexity don’t merely reflect a greater sophistication on the part of Nashville’s songwriting brigade. The lovers and losers in these songs seem to stand in for a something greater, a world cast adrift and haunted by a gnawing sense of irrevocability. The upbeat songs have a wistfulness informed by happier times, while the sad ones seem to hold out no chance of redemption.
Of course, country music really did turn upside down in the early seventies. Its abrupt pop crossover brought an influx of fresh talent, new sounds and unfamiliar territory. Previously unrepentant honky tonkers like Ray Price could suddenly score easy listening hits with material by counterculture “outlaws” like Kris Kristofferson. And for every record that placed on the pop charts, there were scores of retreads. The radio was full of songs mining the maudlin happy hearth of “Little Green Apples” or the epic suburban tragedy of “Honey,” as every country artist tried for the brass ring of crossover success.
The old “me decade” of the seventies has long since been replaced by the new “me reality,” and most folks nowadays consider the old identity struggles of generations past to be quaint at best — that is, if they’re even aware they happened. In fact, as complicated as the era may have seemed to those of us who lived through it, the seventies don’t come close to the clusterfuck that constitutes modern daily living. So then, consider these songs as a tribute to a simpler complicated time — a brief moment when we paused to reflect on the losses of a past still in view. Though we didn’t know it then, we still had a lot more yet to lose.
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1. The Lover’s Song - Ned Miller
2. Things Go Better With Love - Jeannie C. Riley
3. Us - Anita Carter
4. Angel’s Sunday - Jim Ed Brown
5. Restless Melissa - Hugh X. Lewis
6. As Soon As I Hang Up The Phone - Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty
7. Wish I Didn’t Have To Miss You - Jack Greene & Jeannie Seely
8. The Most Uncomplicated Goodbye I’ve Ever Heard - Henson Cargill
9. Swiss Cottage Place - Roger Miller
10. The First Day - Jane Morgan
11. Loser’s Cocktail - Dick Curless
12. Back Then - Wanda Jackson
13. It Meant Nothing To Me - Diana Trask
14. Keep Me In Mind - Lynn Anderson
I am putting the blame fully on you for slightly getting me into old country. I still do not think the post 1980 stuff is worth mentioning though. Most stuff, I do not like, but there are a few things tht are good.
Todd –
There’s a lot of post 1980 country songs that I like. Great songs know no decade!
I am a firm believer in great songs know no decade, but the focus of country songs has shifted probably more than any other genre of music in the last 25 years or so. Also, it has becaome a lot more mainstream power pop that I am not a fan of. I shouldn’t have said the all post 80s stuff is not worth mentioning because there are some songs that are good, just not nearly as good as the stuff proir to that IMHO.
Move your cutoff year up 15 years and I might agree with you. However, once you hear Part Ten, you might move yours back 5 years.
These collections are just great. This is yet another keeper. And I have to agree, there are a lot of post-1980s country songs that I like. Once the new century started, that’s when country started to suck for me. The best stuff now is all underground.
Yes, yes — thanks for assembling these. I enjoyed this one and Sock It To Me Country very much. That whole Nashville-transitional era is so interesting.
I remember ON-TV. My family didn’t have it, but I recall that it was on channel 15 back when it was a tiny indie station. Spent many evenings watching Saturday Night Live repeats at 6:00 before they switched to ON-TV at 7:00.
I think that people were just better raised back then. Kids today have very little discipline and very little respect. In my opinion that’s what contributed to such great music. These people knew how serious life was.
Personally this collection ain’t bad. Can’t say it’s the best I’ve ever come across but it sure ranks in the top 10. The newer stuff is OK. I think they should create a new genre to discribe some of that new pop country stuff, instead of given it the same name as these awesome artists.