No matter what folks do on Sunday, they like to party on Saturday night. Back in the late seventies, if you liked to dance you did the Hustle. That’s what people did back then. Despite the enthusiastic drubbing it used to receive at the hands of rock fans back then (not to mention racists and gay bashers), disco was always at heart a populist entertainment. And though “roots” has always been a topic of fierce contention among country critics, I have to commend the artists in this anthology for casting off theirs in pursuit of contemporary popularity.
Now, I’m not saying that all the artists on the country charts in the late 70s copped licks from Van McCoy and Barry White, but plenty of them did. In general, these hits from the later half of the 70’s are marvels of glossy overproduction. The beat is leaden and loud, the guitars chip away at the rhythm while the bass pounds at the root, the piano tickles at the jazz fringes and the strings swirl invitingly. The sound has that shiny clean trebly sheen associated nowadays with excessive cocaine use. The arrangements are big and blown out, and the singing has a strong showbiz attitude. Nothing here would be out of place on “The Donny And Marie Show.” As such, these songs are indeed “a little bit country,” if only a very little bit.
As a longhaired teenager, I used to turn the dial to the country station and smugly scoff as my two least favorite music styles of the time seemed to be eating each other. Now, I troll lists of country hits from that era, looking for nuggets of cheesy eclectic pop perfection like these. Some of the songs here are unabashed cash-ins, last-gasps by worn out hit makers of the past, willing to try anything for one last shot at the top. (In this way, they aren’t so different from similar artists put out to disco pasture in the pop charts.) Some manage to pull off a relatively elegant upgrade of the Nashville Sound without sacrificing traditional country charm. Some of them just sound a lot like the theme to “Laverne And Shirley.” But I love ‘em all.
Taken together, the songs in this collection evoke a golden nadir for the form, a necessarily developmental step for country music, though its unlikely to be anyone’s favorite period. It was an era that set the stage for the inevitable repudiation, reclamation and reinvention to come. Once having swayed this far into the realm of bubblegum, however, country could henceforth always be counted on to augment its standard purist fare with the occasional candy-coated throwaway classic.
- Brass Buckles – Barbi Benton
- Thanks – Bill Anderson
- Blanket On The Ground – Billy Joe Spears
- Lonely Men, Lonely Women – Connie Eaton
- Western Man – La Costa
- Country Boy (You Got Your Feet In LA) – Glen Campbell
- That’s When My Woman Begins – Tommy Overstreet
- Silver Wings And Golden Rings – Billie Jo Spears
- Love Is Only Love (When Shared By Two) – Johnny Carver
- Sweet Talkin’ Man – Lynn Anderson
- (I’m A) Stand by My Woman Man – Ronnie Milsap
- Rollin’ With the Flow – Charlie Rich
- You Don’t Miss A Thing – Sylvia
- The Days of Sand and Shovels – Nat Stuckey
You have no idea how much I love these. Made my day. What an expertly made collection thus far. Great taste and not a bad song in the mix.
Thanks Jay! Glad folks are enjoying them.
Amazing country songs. Billie Jo Spears is my favorite.
I like BJS as well, though I have to admit that on sheer cheese points alone, I gotta go with Carver.
Most anything Ronnie Milsap has done is great! I was shocked to not see any Donna Fargo or Charlene Mandrell on the list though!
Tommy Overstreet is an inspired choice! I lived near the Overstreets outside of Nashville back in the early-to-mid-70s and got to know the family. TO was always very friendly and open, even at the brief commercial peak of his career. In retrospect, he seemed a “man out of time,” a traditional Country singer forced into the role of the “new” Kenny Rogers, both in image and sound, chasing whatever pop-oriented trend that the label thought would sell that week. I think that he’s doing Gospel in Branson now, which is closer to his heart, I’m sure….
Could La Costa have had a career in any decade but the ’80s? An eerie foreshadowing of the Shania to come, or merely a studio-created farce to file alongside Sylvia once the hits stopped coming?
As a lover of pure pop sounds, I can’t help but celebrate those traditionalists who made the supreme career sacrifice of chasing the “latest and loudest.” It may have robbed them of some of their “credibility,” but it gave some of my favorite cheesy pop songs a distiguished home!
Derrick, I’ve enjoyed all of your reports from the country. Thank you. Why do you suppose country music dead today? Could it have something to do with the decline of AM radio? AM stations used to have the best country music. Now they just have talk programs or foreign language cultural news.
So maybe Nashville says, we got to make records that sound like rock to get on the FM stations (?)
Pete
How about if we just blame Ronald Reagan and call it a day?
Yeah we could do that. But I humbly think the loss of AM radio has something to do with the loss of a whole middle swath of American society. I don’t think you can pin all of that on Reagan.
You’d be surprised what I can accomplish once I put my mind to it.
Indeed. Anyway thanks for sharing the country treasures that AM radio brought to the world.