Conway...Warner Brothers...

Conway Twitty's Warner Brothers era is represented by an impressive streak of major Top-10 hits during a four year run, 1982-1986. In my last blog I had mentioned that Conway had left MCA Records after a 17 year association, 1965-1982. Conway debuted his Elektra/Asylum material in the spring of 1982 with the release of the somber heartbreak ballad "The Clown". His debut album for the label which included "The Clown" was titled Southern Comfort. The album featured the standard 10 songs with a mixture of material the fans and country music listeners came to expect from Conway. There was no surprises with Southern Comfort meaning that there was no so-called controversial themes explored or anything of that nature. The album was basically "safe" if one wants to interpret it like that. After "The Clown" hit the top, the second single became a huge hit in the summer of 1982. "Slow Hand" had been a huge pop/R&B hit for The Pointer Sisters in 1981 and Conway got the idea of recording the song from a man's point of view. This became one of Conway's signature songs, spending a couple of weeks at #1. Conway at the same time had re-recorded a lot of his previous hit songs. Elektra/Asylum issued the results in the form of two albums: Classics, Volume One and Classics, Volume Two. These 1982 re-recordings show up a lot on various low-budget CD's because the original recordings cost more money to re-distribute but a re-recording is cheaper by comparison so this is why a lot of record companies often use an artist's re-recordings of their hit songs instead of the originals. These recordings were also offered on an album sold exclusively at concerts, Solid Gold.

Twitty City opened up in 1982...several years later Conway rightfully admitted that 1982 was one the biggest years of his career. It was also the year he taped his only TV special, Conway Twitty On The Mississippi, which featured concert performances and interviews conducted on board the Mississippi riverboat as well as footage shot at Nashville's baseball park and in Friars Point, Mississippi where Conway was born. On the music front, Elektra/Asylum issued a new album late in 1982 called Dream Maker featuring a song Conway performed on the Riverboat special, "We Really Did But Now You Don't". The song was coincidentally Conway's new single, which hit the top spot in late 1982. The Dream Maker album was a bit more ballad heavy than the more up-beat Southern Comfort was. This album also consisted of 10 songs. An unusual aspect of this album is the first two songs were the two singles...while the rest of the eight songs were album tracks not issued to radio...usually, singles are sprinkled throughout an album instead of going in numerical order like that. In the winter of 1982, "The Rose" was issued as a single. It hit the top in early 1983.

The string of major #1 hits continued in tact albeit with a few lower ranked Top-10 hits added in. Elektra/Asylum merged with it's parent company, Warner Brothers, and as a result Conway's albums would carry the Warner Brothers logo.

The biggest hit single for Conway this year was "Lost In The Feeling", which featured lengthy steel guitar work by John Hughey and back-up vocals from Ricky Skaggs. An album of the same name was issued and it featured 10 romantic songs. In a few of the songs Conway gets playful...namely on "First Things First" about blind dates and the over amorous woman he comes in contact with. Then there's "I Think I'm in Love", a toe-tapper set in a bar that should have been released as a single but it wasn't. Lee Greenwood fans will recognize "You've Got a Good Love Coming", as that song is one of Greenwood's signature songs. Naomi Judd appears on the album's cover, playing the part of a nameless lover hanging onto Conway. The title track, "Lost In the Feeling", hit the top spot of several music publications and then Conway released back-to-back pop remakes.

In 1982 he had released "Slow Hand" which was a huge hit for him, originally a pop hit for The Pointer Sisters in 1981...then he released "The Rose" in late 1982 which had been a huge pop hit for Bette Midler in 1979. In the summer of 1983 he released the up-tempo rocker "Heartache Tonight" which was a pop hit for The Eagles. Conway's version hit the Top-5...which wasn't too bad...but it broke up his #1 hit streak. That winter he released his only Christmas album, Merry Twismas, and his TV special won the Music City News fan-voted award for TV Special of the Year.

The follow-up single to "Heartache Tonight" was his version of The Commodores "Three Times a Lady", which made the Top-10, but didn't enter the Top-5, in early 1984. The single's lack of acceptance on country radio can be traced to the on-going complaints from music critics angry over Conway re-doing pop hits for country radio. Perhaps as an answer to the complaining, Conway released By Heart in 1984 and it featured no cover songs of pop hits, which had become something of a habit during the late '70s/early '80s for most country artists. This album, by comparison to his previous three studio albums in 1982 and 1983, was stylistically more countrier...although it had it's share of experimentation specifically on the sexually charged song "Bad Boy" done in a groovy, urgent arrangement; and the soft-pop sound of "When The Magic Works". All in all, that album carried a countrier approach. The singles from the album were "I Don't Know a Thing About Love" and "Somebody's Needin' Somebody" and both of them hit the top of the charts in 1984. Warner Brothers then issued the compilation Conway's Latest Greatest Hits, Volume One to distinguish it from all of the various other Conway greatest hits albums available. As a trivia note, there wasn't a Volume Two.

The hits album featured the first nine singles Conway released during 1982, 1983, and 1984 after leaving MCA. A tenth song, the album's opener, "Ain't She Somethin' Else" was issued as a single in late 1984 and it climbed to the top spot in early 1985...number trackers and publicists were promoting the single as his 49th to claim a #1 spot...making somewhat of a deliberate marketing attempt at getting the next single to #1 as well, giving Conway an accomplishment of 50 #1 hits in the process. Could Conway reach #1 for a 50th time?? The answer is...of course!

Conway's 50th number one hit is a bit ironic because it's a funny song, more whimsical than laugh out loud funny...it isn't a lust-filled romantic rendering or top of his lungs vocal shouter. The song is "Don't Call Him a Cowboy" from the album of the same name. The song comes complete with sound effects of horses trotting...certainly not your typical Conway song...but the song succeeds because it's overall concept is a put-down on the Urban Cowboy era in country music...making pointed references to men who dress up and play cowboy in bars in an effort to win women over. After the thrilling feat of hitting #1 for the 50th time in his career, his next single "Between Her Blue Eyes and Jeans" peaked in the Top-5. The Don't Call Him a Cowboy album was another 10 song collection. The ballads were here and there were several mid-tempo songs as well. There were only three songs that I would consider as being fast/up-tempo and those are "Don't Call Him a Cowboy", "Between Her Blue Eyes and Jeans", and "Whichever One Comes First"....everything else ranges from mid-tempo to ballad. The following album, issued later in 1985, I already wrote about, Chasin' Rainbows, so I won't spend any time writing about it again.

He followed Chasin' Rainbows with Fallin' For You For Years in 1986. This album marked Conway's contemporary-country approach. Starting with this album he would deliberately look for songs that had a cutting-edge feel...songs that sounded more louder and energetic...his previous albums were all good, too...but Conway at the time remarked he was restless and wanted to get a louder sound on his recordings. This was accomplished throughout the 1986 album...the title track alone went a long way at showing just how incredible Conway's voice and vocal range was. The first single, "Desperado Love", was a catchy sing-a-long blending an old west image with a lusty lyric of a man who doesn't care if the woman he desires is with another man or not...the man in the song wants the woman no matter what the cost. The single hit the top...becoming his fifty-first #1 hit in the late summer/early fall of 1986. As previously mentioned, "Fallin' For You For Years" was simply amazing...it carried a lustful feel throughout the song, vocally comparable to his live performances of "Why Me, Lord?", "It's Only Make Believe", and 1983's "Heartache Tonight". The single became his fifty-second #1 in early 1987. After the release and #1 success of "Fallin' For You For Years" in early 1987, Conway left Warner Brothers and returned to MCA...and his first seven singles upon returning to MCA all hit the Top-10, 1987-1989.

Interested in song selections from his albums? Here's an over-view:

Southern Comfort; 1982 Elektra/Asylum
The Clown
The Boy Next Door
Love and Only Love
When Love Was Something Else
It Turns Me Inside Out
Slow Hand
Southern Comfort
Something Strange Got Into Her Last Night
She Only Meant To Use Him
I Was The First

Dream Maker; 1982 Elektra/Asylum
The Rose
We Really Did But Now You Don't
A Good Love Died Tonight
In My Eyes
One On One
Just When I Needed You Most
Close Enough To Love
Burn Georgia Burn There's a Fire In Your Soul
In My Dreams
Dream Maker

Lost In The Feeling; 1983 Warner Brothers
Lost In The Feeling
The Best Is Yet To Come
You've Got a Good Love Coming
We're So Close
Heartache Tonight
A Stranger's Point of View
I Think I'm In Love
Three Times a Lady
First Things First
Don't It Feel Good?

Conway's Latest Greatest Hits; 1984 Warner Brothers
Ain't She Somethin' Else; 1984
Slow Hand; 1982
The Rose; 1983
Somebody's Needin' Somebody; 1984
Three Times a Lady; 1984
I Don't Know a Thing About Love; 1984
The Clown; 1982
Heartache Tonight; 1983
Lost in the Feeling; 1983
We Really Did But Now You Don't; 1982

Don't Call Him a Cowboy; 1985 Warner Brothers
Don't Call Him a Cowboy
Somebody Lied
Between Her Blue Eyes and Jeans
The Note
Whichever One Comes First
Everyone Has Someone They Can't Forget
Those Eyes
Except For You
Green Eyes Cryin' Those Blue Tears
Take It Like a Man

Chasin' Rainbows; 1985 Warner Brothers
The Legend and the Man
All I Can Be is a Sweet Memory
Keep On Chasin' Rainbows
True, True Love Never Dies
What's a Memory Like You Doing In a Love Like This
You'll Never Know How Much I Needed You Today
Lay Me Down Carolina
She Did
I'm The Man in the Song
Baby I'm A Want You

Fallin' For You For Years; 1986 Warner Brothers
A Thing of the Past
Desperado Love
Steady As She Goes
Fallin' For You For Years
Riverboat Gamblers
Jennifer Johnson and Me
You're The Best I Never Had
You Can't Say I Haven't Tried
If I Didn't Love You
Only The Shadows Know

And so, this closes my look at Conway's Warner Brothers era: 1982-1987.