When I was six, my family began attending church regularly and listening to Christian music all the time (mostly to the still extant KSBJ-FM 89.3 and KHCB-FM 105.7). Yes, my Christian music years were a sad, lonesome desert. But that is a topic for another post. Because I’d rather talk about what I loved before my family’s conversion: country music.
Specifically, the KILT and KIKK brands of late-70s /early-80s country music. Because I was born and grew up in Pasadena / Deer Park (home of Gilley’s Nightclub and Urban Cowboy), that was pretty much all my dad listened to. And so it was all I listened to. And when I wasn’t in the car, I was watching Hee Haw or Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters. I really loved country music. Now, after spending my teens and 20s avoiding that era, I’ve recently begun revisiting some of my favorites.
One big factor in my rediscovery is that radio has come to the rescue. Country Legends Radio 97.1, is a blast. They’re constantly playing classic country, and you can get a flavor from their playlist, which is updated in real time.
XM Radio has been even better, because they offer more options and fewer commercials. Channels 10 through 18 are all country, and I especially dig:
- Channel 10 – America’s Classic Country: XM’s version of Country Legends. More CountryPolitan than Willie’s Place (below).
- Channel 13 – Willie’s Place: A more eclectic classic country station that includes a lot of 50s and 60s stuff (e.g., Marty Robbins, Patsy Cline)
- Channel 14 – America’s Bluegrass: I wasn’t aware there were other country’s that had Bluegrass music, but this station is very focused on the American version.
For whatever reason, I’m finding it harder and harder to listen to new indie rock or new music period. If I’m driving, I’m either listening to sports radio, NPR, or country music on XM. Not sure if it’s just me getting older and more boring, but it seems like I find more new music when I’m listening to stuff that’s older than I am.
Lately, I’ve been making it a point to catch Marty Stuart’s American Odyssey show, which comes on every Friday on XM 2 and XM 10. Each show highlights music from a particular city in the US, and I almost always hear something I’ve never heard, or I hear something familiar, and Stuart discusses some new background information I’d not known (something I wish was more common on American radio in general). American Odyssey covered Houston in March:
The country singer and his on-air crew will talk about Houston’s history, landmarks and a slew of Houston-bred artists, including ZZ Top, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Kenny Rogers, Betty Lee and Archie Bell and the Drells.
The playlist will include Ernest Tubb’s Another Story, Another Time, Another Place; Johnny Winter’s Highway 61, Arlie Duff’s Y’all Come, Red Crayola’s Fairest of All, ZZ Top’s La Grange, Bell’s Tighten Up, Rogers’ Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town and Watson’s A Real Mother For Ya.
Anyway, I realize this is about as far from adventurous or groundbreaking as I could get, but I love listening to country music again, and it’s felt like returning to something inherited—as opposed to tastes I later acquired on my own. They say you can’t pick your family. Well, when you’re a kid you can’t change the radio, either. In the days before our family’s conversion, that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Here were some of my favorite songs from when I was a kid. Note that these songs are not the more respectable country artists I discovered in college. This is the stuff I liked when I didn’t know any better. Yes, Gram Parsons and Loretta Lynn and George Jones are much cooler, but I didn’t really find them until much later.
Eddie Rabbit performs "Driving My Life Away"
Roseanne Cash “Seven Year Ache”
Johnny Lee “Lookin’ for Love”
Merle Haggard – “Rainbow Stew” (embedding disabled)
Don Williams – “I Believe in You”
Anne Murray – “Could I Have This Dance”
Kenny Rogers – “Coward of the County” (my first show was probably seeing Kenny Rogers at the rodeo when I was four or five)
I saved the best for last: Charlie Rich – “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World”. It came out much earlier, but this song was everywhere when I was little. And I remember it much more clearly than any other song. I love the hell out of Charlie Rich.
What about the Gatlin Brother’s All the Gold in California? I remember loving that one a lot when I was a kid. I’m not surprised you didn’t find George Jones as a kid in the sense that his ballads didn’t really appeal to us as kids but he was all over the place and I’m sure you listened to his novelty songs not even realizing the connection to his “serious” stuff. Country stuff that appealled to me as a kid include anything Willie wrote about cowboys and of course “boom bop a boom bop a boom bop a bowm bowm Elvira.”
Isn’t this Country a close sibling to Christian music anyway?
Actually, both “Elvira” and “All the Gold in California” would have been good. As well as the Oklahoma songs, “Livin’ on Tulsa Time” and “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma.” Conway Twitty and Charlie Pride were also huge in my house.
And it’s also true that we only stopped listening to country for a little while. We eventually let it back in the house when I was 11 or 12. Just in time for me to really dig Randy Travis and George Strait. That’s when I really started listening to George Jones, too.
“He Stopped Loving Her Today” is one of the saddest songs I ever heard.
This post brought back many memories. Thank you.
The era of country yr talking about actually was very much a part of the pop landscape at the time. I mean Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers, etc all were having crossover pop hits. It seemed back then you could actually have a country artist be pop without them sounding indistinguishable from a Disney teen pop band. I think that kind of speaks to the diversity of music at the time – reggae, punk, rock, rap, disco, funk…there was a lot going on in that period despite being the era of big labels. These days there is a kind of homgeny that comes from things being pigeonholed into so many subgeneres.
Anyhow, yeah great country station. I do wish at times they’d be a bit more adventurous and dig deeper in the catalog than just the hits but I guess that’s not the point of the station.
God, how I detested that era. We had just moved down to Texas from Ohio and this music constantly reminds me of bullying, sexual abuse, and divorce. Thanks.
You guys really all love this stuff? No revisionist history going on?
I couldn’t find anyone that wasn’t into date rape that thought that music was anything but small-minded pop trash.
In point of fact, the Urban Cowboy song has been proven to invoke senseless aggression in males under thirty that live below the Mason-Dixon line. This is indisputable.
Anne Murray? Come, come now. That has to be a fucking joke.
Living in Jersey Village in the early to mid 80s was damn near a punishment, and my memory more than serves me correctly.
I hate country from pretty much then on.
I hate your post for reminding me of it.
I hate you.
Ah Gilley’s.
I remember my mother leaving the trailer in Magnolia in her tight Chic jeans, with her red hair feathered and blue eyeshadow making her blue eyes seem like Oceans.
It seemed like a magical time, when my parents smoked inside the house, and I spent most of my time outside caring for a couple of dozen animals under the canopy of tall pines, who made midnight seem all the darker with no street lights anywhere.
I have said this before about music of that era. It reminds me of people getting away with murder.
I also remember thinking that Christopher Cross was Anne Murray.
I do wonder if I should buy some pink Ropers.
Thanks for the post! I’m off to toss salad!
I don’t really feel a need to defend my ten year old self but no I don’t love this stuff. I did when I was a kid but I still remember thinking it was a big put on. Me and my siblings and even my mom would start singing that Gatlin brother’s song and just start laughing.
We had moved to Houston from the Middle East and before that New York, so we thought all the cowboy stuff was a hoot and mostly ridiculous (we left with KC and the Sunshine band –as if that doesn’t say enough– when we went to our one and only Houston Rodeo).
I don’t get Ramon’s argument and I don’t buy it. Country was as fluffy commercial candy back then and saying that it crossed over shouldn’t be to Country’s credit since it just means that it was moving towards a more generic sound. I don’t like Merle Haggard much anyway but the bass heavy boring ass stuff he put out and Waylon and even Willie in that time is the pits.
Incidentally I went to Gilley’s a few times after it became a family attraction. Played my first Space Invaders there and went back a few years later as a YMCA Teen Counselor with a bunch of kids to ride the bulls. Boring.
My mon and dad played this shit non-stop in our house growing up. I have no choice but to relate my relatively happy childhood with this music. So Cramer, I’ll take some bullshit Crystal Gayle (sp?) over fucking Steve Miller right now, thanks. And yeah, I moved back to Sharpstown where I grew up. I hate you too. Dear musical snobs, see you at the Opeth show!