Conway Twitty: Media Timeline, Part Four

In this fourth installment of the media time-line in Conway Twitty's career I came across a small sampling of a June 1986 article taking pot-shots at the country music theme parks in existence at the time. Opryland, of course, and the brand new theme park, DollyWood, as well as the House of Cash. Obviously, the inclusion of Twitty-City in the discussion is what prompted me to create this blog entry.

"...If you're going to be a theme park in Nashville," says park flack Tom Adkinson, "you'd better be about music." But not just country music: Opryland's 120 acres embrace doo-wop and Duke Ellington in as many as a dozen simultaneous stage shows. Then it's 20 miles northeast to Hendersonville and a stop at Twitty City, the monument Country Star Conway Twitty has built to himself, including a guided tour conducted by a giant mechanical Twitty Bird. (Just down the road is Johnny Cash's House of Cash..."

I highlighted the area that reeks of ignorance on the part of the author of the article. The author apparently doesn't care about the truth or didn't do much research on the subject. Conway never built the theme park for himself...I happen to believe what Conway said back in 1982 and all the years afterward. That Twitty-City was built for the fans. In various interviews throughout the '80s and into the early '90s he always was citing the fans for all of his success and that he had Twitty-City built as a thank you gift for fans to stop by and take in all of the success they helped him achieve. Also, he knew that the fans loved the chance of being up close, or is close proximity, to their favorite singer and that's why he lived there, on the grounds...along with his children and his mother.

Now, obviously, that little article from 1986 didn't do any harm because the park remained in business on into 1994 before it was ordered shut down by the courts during the infamous estate battle. Anyway, I singled out the 23 year old article because it shows how ignorant people are when they write-up country music. The author writes from a slanted view point, filling the commentary with the most cliché driven rubbish imaginable. The commentary goes longer than what I quoted but I wanted to pin-point the Conway reference. The longer commentary is filled with other ignorant opinions.

The by-standers, or, non-country music fans, I feel have no right to deliver their opinion if they don't know what they're talking about. I mean, at least get some facts before writing a story or making accusations.

Because the comment wasn't based on facts and it was based on the writer's opinion, Conway is made out to be a gigantic egomaniac who built a palace devoted to himself for the pure sake of basking in his own success. That's what the author was hinting at even if they didn't come right out and say it...and the truth is, Conway built the complex as a treat for his fans and a place the country music fan in general could go to and learn about his career...but there are other things in the area besides Conway's park.

Just in case anyone out there may wonder "but didn't Conway make a ton of money from this theme park?".

Yeah...but big deal if he turned a profit and sold merchandise to fans in the gift shop?

I sometimes come across blog sites and message boards that make Conway and his people out to be bad guys because they ran a gift shop within the park, like it's some sort of crime. I suppose in a critic's view everything should be free and entertainers should have no capitalistic influence? When you think about it the entire music industry thrives on revenue from music buyers. Record companies want a profit for the money they put into marketing a singer. Advertisers want a profit from radio stations. Songs that "aren't commercial enough" don't become hits. It doesn't mean a song isn't any good...it simply means it lacks the qualifications of turning a profit. I assume a lot of people have heard of this before? It's capitalism.

But to all the belly-aching people out there today: America is a capitalist society and when did "turning a profit" or "making a buck" become such terrible phrases and looked upon with scorn!?

Music Village USA was the umbrella name for the area that featured Conway's place, along with a museum dedicated to Bill Monroe, plus destinations to museum's centering on the life and times of Ferlin Huskey as well as Marty Robbins. All of it was in Hendersonville, Tennessee and was part of the Opryland tour in nearby Nashville. I look back to those days and wish I could have experienced it.

Tennessee being so many miles away from where I live, I never went to Twitty-City in person but I've seen video footage of the place and I've seen pictures that had been taken from the inside and it was an incredible sight...and that's just the opinion of one that never went there in person...I feel I'd have even higher praise had I gone there in person. It seems funny, though, how polarizing Conway tended to be among the critics. One critic could be absolutely savage and blood thirsty while another critic was championing the style of songs Conway preferred to write and sing while writing glowing reviews of Twitty-City and then another critic could write about how puzzled he is that Conway's concerts defy common sense. It was always this back and fourth relationship.

I find it ironic, though, that in June 1986, the very same month and year that the commentary that I quoted was written, that very same month and year, we have a write-up in another publication on a more positive note revealing that Twitty-City drew an estimated 750,000 visitors during the summer of 1985 and that they predicted the tourist attendance would be in that same level for 1986 as well. There was another positive review of the theme park from August of 1986...it came from the Spokesman-Review...and the author of the glowing salute was Bob Garfield. Yes...that is the kind of commentary that is preferred. Plus, you don't get any cynical and anti-Capitalistic vibes while reading it, neither. Bravo write-up! It was in August of 1986 that Conway hit #1 for the 40th and final time on Billboard's country chart...with a song called "Desperado Love". When tallying up the #1 songs from other charts, this was his 51st single to reach a #1 position. His 50th #1 was "Don't Call Him a Cowboy" in the summer of 1985.

Conway Twitty Birthday

Today is Conway's birthday. He was born September 1, 1933 as Harold Lloyd Jenkins in Friars Point, Mississippi. He passed away suddenly on June 5, 1993 at the age of 59. I touched upon this in my previous blog entry back on June 5th. I haven't been updating the Conway blog too much because I crammed so much information about him in my earlier blog posts that it's difficult to come up with something new to write about. I've touched on his hits, his awards, and the critic reviews.

The album/cassette, Mr T, is a 1981 release on MCA Records. At the time it was his final album for the label. While the final single from that album was climbing the charts in late 1981/early 1982, Conway had departed MCA for the much smaller label, Elektra/Asylum. Conway's first single for this label, "The Clown", was released within weeks of his previous single on MCA, "Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night", which had reached #1 in early 1982. In addition to that #1 single, the album boasted "Tight Fittin' Jeans", which became a long-standing concert favorite and a #1 hit. It wasn't until 1994 that I learned that Conway's widow, Dee Henry, hated "Tight Fittin' Jeans". No matter...it was a huge hit for Conway and his audience loved it, as did country radio.

Interestingly after Conway left MCA they released two more singles off of the album. "Over Thirty But Not Over the Hill" made the charts in 1982, peaking in the Top-70 while "We Had It All" almost made the Top-40 in 1983. In fact, "We Had It All" was considered to be such a strong performance that it appears on the career retrospective box set, The Conway Twitty Collection, one of the few album songs to make the line-up. A fifth song from the album, a song that could have been a single, "Slow Lovemakin", appeared on a 1985 compilation called The Best of Conway Twitty.

Chasin' Rainbows is a 1985 release on the Warner Brothers label. It's one of the most under-rated and under-appreciated albums during this era of his career. Earlier in the year he had celebrated "Don't Call Him a Cowboy" becoming the 50th single of his career to achieve a #1 position. He followed it with the Top-5 single, "Between Her Blue Eyes and Jeans"...everything appeared to be going smoothly and then this album comes along. Chasin' Rainbows is it's title. The album consists of 10 exquisite songs...but there was something happening at country radio. Some say that the album being released in late 1985 and having it on the market through the latter part of 1985 and into 1986 hurt it's potential because this was the era that Randy Travis was becoming a super-star, and then on top of this you had George Strait cementing his popularity along with Reba McEntire rocketing into super-stardom, Ricky Skaggs blending country and bluegrass, and the country group Alabama. Even some of the more well-established acts like Hank Williams Jr, Ronnie Milsap, and Willie Nelson were continually grabbing onto a younger audience. The 1985-1987 time period was a pivotal time in country music...paving the way for the complete destruction and reconstruction of the format in the early 1990's where only a few survived.

And so, what was on Chasin' Rainbows you might be asking? There were 10 songs...two of them were issued as singles and both of them didn't do too well on country radio by comparison with a good majority of his singles up to this time. "The Legend and the Man" is a nice ballad and it reached the Top-20 in the late winter of 1985. He followed this in early 1986 with another ballad, this time a typical love song, "You'll Never Know How Much I Needed You Today". This song peaked in the Top-30. Due to the songs performing well under expectations you can see why the album is obscure and overlooked. The other songs convey a down-home feeling...some spiritual sing-a-longs. In hindsight, "She Did", should have been released as a single. It sounds like a Conway Twitty song...like something radio and music buyers are more familiar with from Conway. This album contains "Lay Me Down Carolina", a bouncy sing-a-long, and one of my favorites. Track number two, "All I Can Be Is a Sweet Memory", features a repetitive title throughout. It became a hit several years later for Collin Raye.

Conway Twitty: media time-line, part three

Looking through Conway history once again...back in July 1976 there was an article on Loretta Lynn and within the article she mentions that a period in time where Conway's fans sent her letters accusing her of breaking up the marriage between Conway and his wife at the time. Such nonsense...but back in 1976 it was a hot topic...and given that country music's only real out-let for news was monthly magazines or the syndicated country music shows on the weekend's, people generally tended to be less informed as they are now. A lot of Conway's fans would hear him and Loretta singing together and "believe it" meaning that people would think Conway and Loretta were an item off-stage. The article is mainly about Loretta and her marriage with Mooney. She goes on record by saying that her husband's nick-name, Doolittle, was acquired when he was a kid and that it didn't mean that her husband was lazy...which is how some have interpreted the nick-name. The nick-name of Mooney came about because of the moonshine fondness. Rumors and gossip about Conway and Loretta always swirled...and in hindsight it looks cruel. Here you had two of the biggest country stars of the day joining forces on records and in concerts and instead of the fans enjoying every second of it you have those kinds of stories that pop up which due to their gossipy overtone will have more wide-spread circulation than the important news. Elsewhere...a year earlier in 1975...Conway was at #1 with "Touch the Hand" in the summer. Those rounding out the Top-10 that week were: Tom T Hall with "Deal"; Dolly Parton's "The Seeker"; Narvel Felts unearthly "Reconsider Me"; Johnny Rodriguez's "Just Get Up and Close the Door"; Freddy Fender's "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights"; Charlie Rich's "Everytime You Touch Me"; Gene Watson's "Love in the Hot Afternoon"; and Olivia Newton John's "Please Mister, Please". Conway and Loretta's album, Feelins, was in the Top-10 that week. I found a music review that's just flat-out hilarious in places. It was written in 1977...I won't divulge who wrote it because if I did they would probably be embarrassed that they said some of the things that they did. Anyway, it was a review of Conway's 1977 album, Play Guitar Play, and the headline that screamed across the top of the review was this: "TWITTY'S NEW LP MAY WIN HIM COUNTRY MUSIC FANS". I found that headline to be highly comical because the album was released in 1977...nine years after Conway's first Top-10 success on the country music charts. The other 1977 album, I've Already Loved You In My Mind, featured a very casual, relaxed Conway on the album cover...one of the only album covers in his career to be so informal looking. It featured 10 recordings. As was the practice back then, only one single was released from the album. In a lot of cases the single would've already reached it's peak and then the label would issue an album named for the single...meaning the album contained just the one hit single and the rest were filler songs. As was the case with mostly all country albums, artist's would cover other artist's songs. "Leona" was a hit for Stonewall Jackson. "I Changed My Mind" is a solo recording...originally a duet with Loretta from their album, Country Partners, from 1974...Conway himself originally recorded the song for his 1974 album, I'm Not Through Loving You Yet. Several years after the release of the 1977 I've Already Loved You In My Mind album, Conway would re-record "My First Country Song" with pop singer Dean Martin in 1983.

Conway Twitty: media time-line, part two

Conway Twitty as he appears on the magazine, COUNTRY SONG ROUND-UP, from August 1978. This is the year that Conway recalled that promoted him to make changes in his career. Several of his singles weren't reaching the #1 spot on any of the various weekly music charts and he was accustomed to having #1 hits and he felt that he was the blame for his string of singles stopping short of #1. So, Conway decided to change record producers...and then he started to become a co-producer on his albums. This was only the beginning...from that point forward he insisted that his singles sound contemporary, meaning that no matter how un-country they may sound he wanted his records to compete and sound musically like the other songs on the radio. Also, he changed his stage appearance...dropping the formal suits and going with casual attire...also, he changed his hair...he went from slick-back pompadour that you see in this magazine picture to the curly style he would keep for the rest of his career.

A 1979 tour book that promotes Conway's change in hairstyle and his album at the time, CROSSWINDS. There are several pictures of Conway in the book that have never been widely circulated including a shot of him as a guest on the series, "Sha Na Na", which was a syndicated comedy-music program spoofing the late '50s rock music.



You can't talk about Conway's time-line and not mention Loretta Lynn. This CD is what I would suggest people search for...it has 20 songs on it. Yes, Conway and Loretta had only 12 hit singles and so that means there are 8 more songs on the collection. The two of them have a lot of fun with each other in song...and hearing 8 non-hits is not that big of a deal when the non-hits are just as entertaining as the hit songs are. This CD came along in 1987 as a teaser...the liner notes were written at some point in early 1987 prior to Conway's return to the label and so there was no official word yet that the duo would reunite or if Conway would return to MCA...at the time he was still serving out his contract with Warner Brothers with the album FALLIN' FOR YOU FOR YEARS. Finally, after the release of this CD, Conway left Warner Brothers and re-joined MCA and rumors swirled even more about a possible reunion now that he was back on MCA, the long-time label home of Loretta Lynn...a TV album arrived in 1987 simply called THE BEST OF CONWAY AND LORETTA. The two of them appeared on the commercial. It was released through Heartland Music. The collection featured five newly recorded songs...those who couldn't or didn't want to buy an album over TV were treated to MAKING BELIEVE in 1988. This album contained the five duet recordings the two did for the 1987 project combined with five songs they recorded in the past. The 20 songs selected for this 20 GREATEST HITS collection are as follows...I italicized and highlighted the singles that hit #1 in the various music charts and highlighted the singles that hit the Top-10:

After The Fire Is Gone; 1971
It's Only Make Believe; 1971
Pickin' Wild Mountain Berries; 1971
Lead Me On; 1972
Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man; 1973
As Soon As I Hang Up The Phone; 1974
Spiders and Snakes; 1974
Feelins'; 1975
The Letter; 1976
God Bless America Again; 1976
I Can't Love You Enough; 1977
From Seven To Ten; 1978
I've Already Loved You In My Mind; 1978
You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly; 1978
The Sadness of It All; 1979
That's All That Matters To Me; 1979
It's True Love; 1980
You Know Just What I'd Do; 1979
Lovin' What Your Lovin' Does To Me; 1981
I Still Believe In Waltzes; 1981

A sample of a weekly much chart from April 1982 shows Conway sitting at the top with a single entitled "The Clown".

Joining Conway in the Top-5 that week were Hank Williams, Jr with "A Country Boy Can Survive", Kenny Rogers with "Through the Years", Ricky Skaggs with "Crying My Heart Out Over You", and Anne Murray with "Another Sleepless Night". Not necessarily in that order.

"The Clown" is one of my favorite Conway Twitty hit songs. It's a clever way of saying that the man in the relationship is tired and fed up with the way a woman's reputation has become but he doesn't want to be by himself so he'll hide his frown behind a painted-on smile. It has a guitar solo that emulates the sound of a calliope. This was Conway's debut single for the Elektra/Asylum label in 1982...several months earlier he was enjoying his previous #1 for MCA called "Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night". Conway had decided to depart MCA Records for the smaller Elektra/Asylum label. He felt that it would give his career another boost of energy and it did...starting with "The Clown" hitting #1, he would rack up 11 consecutive Top-10 hit singles in just a 3 year span, 1982-1985, and when you factor in his first #1 from 1982 was his final single, at the time, for MCA Records, in total he had amassed 13 straight Top-10 singles in three years and here they are...

1. Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night- hit #1 in January 1982

2. The Clown- hit #1 in April 1982

3. Slow Hand- hit #1 in the summer of 1982

4. We Really Did But Now You Don't- hit #1 in Radio and Records in the fall of 1982

5. The Rose- hit #1 in early 1983

6. Lost In The Feeling- hit #1 in Radio and Records in the summer of 1983

7. Heartache Tonight- hit the Top-10 in Radio and Records in the fall of 1983

8. Three Times a Lady- hit the Top-10 in early 1984

9. Somebody's Needin' Somebody- hit #1 in the summer of 1984

10. I Don't Know a Thing About Love- hit #1 in the fall of 1984

11. Ain't She Somethin' Else- hit #1 in the spring of 1985

12. Don't Call Him a Cowboy- hit #1 in the summer of 1985

13. Between Her Blue Eyes and Jeans- hit the Top-5 in the fall of 1985

Competing in the Top-10 in January 1982 when Conway was at the top were "Only One You" by T.G. Sheppard; Don Williams "Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good"; Mac Davis "You're My Bestest Friend"; Juice Newton's "The Sweetest Thing"; Mickey Gilley's "Lonely Nights"; Kenny Rogers "Blaze of Glory"; Ronnie McDowell's "Watchin' Girls Go By"; the electronically edited "Have You Ever Been Lonely?" by two artist's long deceased, Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline; and "Someone Could Lose a Heart Tonight" by Eddie Rabbitt.

Conway's SOUTHERN COMFORT album of 1982 was a Top-10 hit success. It's the album that featured "The Clown" and "Slow Hand". Conway once remarked that 1982 was by far his biggest year in country music. He not only opened TWITTY-CITY but he recorded four albums that year: SOUTHERN COMFORT, CONWAY's #1 CLASSICS VOLUME ONE, DREAM MAKER, and CONWAY'S #1 CLASSICS VOLUME TWO. The #1 classics albums were re-recordings of his previous hit songs. He had the idea of re-recording them so that they would sound more modernized/up-dated. That's 40 songs total that we know about from 1982...not to mention songs that he perhaps recorded that never made it on any album.

Conway was a brilliant businessman. Although that side of his career was almost always downplayed and kept out of the spotlight the fact is that Conway's brilliance at finding songs that connected with country fans, specifically women, and the ability to emotionally manipulate a song...and I mean that as a compliment. He could put more emotion into one sentence than some artist's could fit into an entire song. His knack for finding hit songs is one of his greatest legacies.

His TWITTY-CITY theme park was a testament to the popularity that his fans and his songs gave him through the years. His theme park was never really out of favor during it's entire existence and in many cases during the late 1980's the attendance figures for the season rivaled those of the park's earliest days in 1982. Conway opened up his own house to the tourists in 1991...which up until then had been off-limits, and this naturally caused the attendance to continue to remain steady with an even better possibility of seeing Conway in person than ever before. Conway had been thinking about selling TWITTY-CITY since around 1989/1990 only because he felt that it was one of the major things that distracted his songwriting...trying to maintain a major tourist attraction plus deal with being affiliated with various minor league baseball teams, among other things, and so by 1990 he had gotten rid of a lot of the extra-curricular projects, except the theme park, but he often mentioned that in interviews that if anyone wanted to buy it and the price was right then he'd have no regret's selling it since he'd gotten a lot of years out of it, which was a way of saying he didn't lose any money keeping it up and running.



The attraction opened in the summer of 1982...it coincided with one of his biggest #1 singles of that era, the 2 week #1 "Slow Hand". A cute thing about TWITTY-CITY for those unaware was that the name was created by the music critics who made fun of Conway's idea of opening up a tourist theme park. Critics from far and wide couldn't help but joke about the idea...and Conway's last name of Twitty caused some critics to invent the phrase 'Twitty-City' as a joke but Conway heard about it and quickly seized on the name and the theme park's name was born. As we know, Conway never did sell TWITTY-CITY and in 1992 they were celebrating it's 10th anniversary.

Also in the works, in 1982, was a 2 hour TV special that would be taped/filmed on the Mississippi river. The special was called "Conway Twitty: On the Mississippi" and it aired on network television to a large audience. In 1983 the readers of Music City News named it the TV Special of the Year. The special featured a boatload of singers and personalities: In addition to Conway we had Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Ralph Emery, Dick Clark, Jerry Lee Lewis, George Lindsey, Charley Pride, and during a segment off the ship and on a ball-park we have Barbara Mandrell opposing Conway in a celebrity softball game. Conway and Barbara had an on-going mock feud every year during their Celebrity Softball game for charity as the two teams were pitted against each other.

Conway appeared on Barbara's TV show in 1981. His appearance was somewhat controversial according to his biographers. At the time the network censors objected to the phrase "redneck" and insisted that he choose another song to sing. Conway objected and threatened to not appear unless he could sing his new single as is...with no edits or changes. He won the argument and Conway performed "Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night" on national television. Conway had often ran into trouble with his love songs because they made some people blush and some people uncomfortable with the straight-forward lyrics in his material. "Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night" just one example...his previous single, "Tight Fittin' Jeans", was a big #1 hit for him but some were appalled about a song whose entire message is about how sexy women look in tight pants. Remember this was 1981...country music no less...so Conway as I've pointed out before in other blogs was no stranger to controversy.

A controversy erupted over "Saturday Night Special", a single from the summer of 1988 that reached the Top-10 for Conway. As you can see by the design on the sheet-music cover above, the title is written in a kind of pseudo-ransom fashion due to this song being about a man who uses a gun to force a pawn broker into giving a woman more money than what her wedding ring was worth. The couple fall in love in the pawnshop and head off to Texas and presumably get married.

Sheet-music/songbook featuring the duet single "I Can't Love You Enough". The single was released in 1977 and was a smash hit...but it didn't reach #1. This was Conway and Loretta's first duet recording to not make the #1 position on any of the weekly music charts: Billboard, Record World, or Cashbox. This broke the string of #1 duet hits at six. The song was written for the couple...it includes several references to each others hit songs throughout the recording. It's a nice up-tempo number.

A nice picture of Conway, Loretta, and Kenny Rogers from the American Music Awards...I believe this was taken in 1980 or 1981.

Conway's Silver Anniversary in country music was celebrated in 1990 and spotlighted on this CD of hit songs. MCA featured 25 songs on this collection...they went through and hand-picked one song from nearly every year of Conway's country career up to that point: 1966-1989. There were no hit singles in 1965 and there wasn't anything new from 1990 to add to the CD and so the collection spotlights 23 years worth of recordings, packaged as a Silver Anniversary collection due to Conway's cross-over in 1965 from pop to country. I do argue about some of the song selections...some sources say that the CD picked the "biggest hit" from each year and if that's the case some of the songs should be replaced with others. Examples being: "I'm Not Through Loving You Yet" was not Conway's biggest hit from 1974...in reality it was "I See The Want To In Your Eyes", which was a 2 week #1. "I Can't Believe She Gives It All To Me" was not his biggest hit from 1976...that distinction belongs to "The Games That Daddies Play". This CD features the wonderful "That's My Job", a Top-10 from late 1987...however, his biggest hit from 1987 was "Julia", which hit the Top-5. If you go with the source that says that the CD is built around the biggest hit single from each successive year then it's not accurate...I'd say the CD is comprised of the most popular songs from each year...not the most successful.

MCA Records issued this in 1993...the CD is actually a re-issue of an album that was released in 1987. The actual dated liner notes from 1987 accompany the CD. The picture of Conway is one of his last publicity pictures by the way.

Conway Twitty: media time-line, part one

In the days leading up to the anniversary of Conway's passing away back on June 5, 1993 I thought it would be neat to look at some of the vintage newspaper articles down through the years that I came across on-line. A lot of the articles are written from a critic's point of view...not a fan's viewpoint...so some of the commentary can be a bit rough especially from critic's that perhaps had a bit of envy or jealousy over Conway's connection to the female followers of country music...envy ran rampant for years from a lot of male music critics who took out their irritation in album reviews...anyway, here we go...

This is a write-up from 1990...you be the judge at how it comes across...

"The guy's so uncool, he has carried a pint carton of milk and a sack of cookies into the hotel lobby, where he sits in a red vest and a baseball cap, for Pete's sake, sipping and nibbling while strangers goggle.

"Hey, Conway, I grew up with you" says one passerby.

Conway Twitty, the Heartland Heart-Throb, shakes the guy's hand and replies jokingly: "A lot of people did".

Harold Jenkins is the real name of Conway Twitty. He is 56, a grandfather with curly gray hair, and after 34 years in the music business, he still turns out the hits and burns up the road.

He was a success before the Beatles, before Dylan, before Barbra, before Brubeck, before almost anyone anybody can name. Walter Cronkite played a Twitty song on an Evening News story about country music...and Twitty recorded "Hello Darlin'", a honkytonk smash...later singing it in Russian.

He was in New York for an appearance on the oh-so-trendy "Sunday Night", on NBC, where he sang "It's Only Make Believe", which was the song that made him a star.

That was a hit...wait for this...in 1958!

It was his only #1 pop song, but he has put 53 songs atop the various country charts, more than anybody in any musical category. His latest #1 was "She's Got a Single Thing In Mind" a few months ago.

"I've done 100, maybe a few more, maybe a few less. There are albums of mine out there I don't even know about. Somebody told me there were about five called The Best of Conway Twitty, Volume One!!" he says, laughing.

He keeps his albums in a warehouse at Twitty City, the 9-acre layout that he owns outside Nashville and where he lives amidst a museum, gift shops, snack bars, and homes for several relatives. Fans come by the bus load and if he's home, he comes out to pose for snapshots.

His longevity defies showbiz odds, even counting the traditional strong, enduring support country fans give their favorites through hits and flops.

"It's the songs. I've never reached the point where I thought that it was just me they wanted to hear."

Songs are so important that he discards his own...and he has written a roomful...if he hears something better.

More and More, he hears better songs. "I haven't recorded one of my songs since 1977", he says.

Mostly his songs are formula cheatin' and hurtin' ballads, delivered in his familiar low-register growl. The name helps: Conway Twitty is not a name easily forgotten. He adopted it after much thought...choosing Conway from a map of Arkansas and Twitty from a map of Texas."

That was the end of that write-up. In the hours to come I'll be sifting through a lot of vintage newspaper clippings found on-line and piece together a look-back, of sorts, through the eyes of critics and reporters...both positive and not so positive...but that's to be expected.

I won't be copying and pasting every single item that I come across but I'll try and feature a lot of quoted material that's long been out of print and out of circulation.

Conway Twitty: Classic Conway

Classic Conway is one of those various "best of" collections that record labels liked to issue on artists from time to time. Today, artist's have way more control over their album releases and you don't see as many compilation's being released year after year from record label's. The buying public, for the most part, looks down on greatest hits and best-of albums now-a-days because they feel it's a way for a record label to make money with previously released material. In the past, this wasn't the normal point of view, and so independent and small record labels could get away with releasing compilation albums and greatest hits albums on major label artist's and the fans didn't seem to mind it...most of the time these best-of collections featured an eye-catching album cover, which would really be what drew sales, if any, since the material was already available on previous albums. You don't see that many completists today, either. A completist is someone wants to own just about every release that was put out on a specific artist, regardless of the fact that they are duplicating their inventory with multiple copies of songs they already have. A completist would want Classic Conway to add to their collection...and as I was referring to earlier, it features an eye-catching picture of Conway performing on stage.



The album features 10 songs and not all of them were major Top-10 singles, either. Due to the album not being called "greatest hits", it doesn't contain only Top-10 singles. Here is a list of the songs highlighted on this album...released by MCA during Conway's stay on Warner Brothers. A lot of the songs on this collection were still recurrent's on the radio when this album was issued. A recurrent is a song that is still being played even though it's reached it's popularity peak on the weekly music charts.

1. Tight Fittin' Jeans; 1981
2. I Can't Believe She Gives It All To Me; 1977
3. Play, Guitar Play; 1977
4. The Grandest Lady of Them All; 1978
5. We Had It All; 1981**
6. Georgia Keeps Pulling On My Ring; 1978
7. Your Love Had Taken Me That High; 1978
8. Over Thirty But Not Over The Hill; 1981**
9. I Am The Dreamer, You Are the Dream; 1980
10. Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night; 1981

**-tracks number 5 and 8 were released as singles by MCA in 1983 and 1982 and they were on the charts competing with the contemporary singles he was releasing on Warner Brothers. "We Had It All" reached the Top-50 and "Over Thirty" hit the Top-70. I imagine radio stations in 1983 were sent copies of the single in the mail and they played "We Had It All" and loved it and kept on playing it even though it wasn't his official single. I do not know what Conway or Warner Brothers had to say about it...since Conway was known to only focus on whatever song and album he had out at the time. "We Had It All" received some hefty airplay considering it wasn't Conway's official single. It almost became a Top-40 hit as a result...I happen to think radio played this song in protest of "The Rose". Although "The Rose" was a #1 single in early 1983 for Conway, critic's didn't particularly like the idea of Conway doing remakes of contemporary pop songs.

"Slow Hand" became one of Conway's biggest hit singles of 1982, defying the grumblings from a lot of music critics wondering if Conway had lost his mind recording the song. The song had been a pop hit for The Pointer Sisters just a few months prior to Conway recording his version. Conway's version was a #1 single for two weeks. In spite of this success with that pop remake, "The Rose" in particular, drew the biggest complaints from critics as well as from radio stations that didn't want to play a country version of a pop song...and this was Conway's second such release when you consider "Slow Hand".

So, I think radio played "We Had It All" as a song they preferred...which could explain why it hit the mid 40's on the charts...most unofficial singles don't get the kind of airplay to really climb the charts but that single did. Not long after this, Conway released back-to-back singles of pop remakes: "Heartache Tonight" and "Three Times a Lady". Those two singles, however, would be the last. He never again released his versions of pop songs to radio...although a few of his future albums would contain his take on contemporary pop songs.

Conway Twitty Ultimate Collection

A Conway Twitty collection from 1999 emerged on a subsidiary label of MCA's called Hip-O Records. Ultimate Collection set about collecting hit singles from Conway's career that were considered his signature songs for the most part. The year that this collection was released, 1999, is the year Conway was finally enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Fame. This honor came 6 years after he passed away.

A lot of this material has appeared on countless other Conway compilations through the years but the appearance of original recordings is what sets this collection apart from others that were on the market that year. A lot of times smaller record labels and overseas imports tend to use the re-recordings Conway did in 1982 of his biggest hit songs...it's rare to come across a collection that features the original hit recordings. The project features an exhaustive essay/liner notes by Colin Escott and there are 18 songs included. I have the cassette version and 11 songs fill up side one and seven songs fill up side two.

Another thing about this collection is the later picture of Conway...taken I believe in 1992...which is used on the front of the CD. Usually record labels when putting together a compilation album use a familiar picture of the artist but not this time. As far as I know this was the first time this particular picture of Conway graced an album cover.



The songs that appear on the Ultimate Collection are as follows:

1. It's Only Make Believe; 1958
2. Lonely Blue Boy; 1960
3. Hello Darlin; 1970
4. Next In Line; 1968
5. After The Fire Is Gone; 1971 with Loretta Lynn
6. You've Never Been This Far Before; 1973
7. Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man; 1973 with Loretta Lynn
8. Linda On My Mind; 1975
9. Play, Guitar Play; 1977
10. I'd Love To Lay You Down; 1980
11. Tight Fittin' Jeans; 1981
12. Slow Hand; 1982
13. I Don't Know a Thing About Love; 1984
14. Desperado Love; 1986
15. Julia; 1987
16. That's My Job; 1987
17. Crazy In Love; 1990
18. Rainy Night in Georgia; 1993 with Sam Moore

A similar picture appears on the compilation CD, 20 Greatest Hits that MCA issued in 1993. This was among the several compilation albums that were issued following Conway's death. This particular collection was originally issued in 1987 to celebrate Conway's return to MCA after his four year stay at the Warner Brothers company, 1982-1986. MCA re-issued this in 1990 on CD and then re-released it again in 1993 but the interesting thing is the liner notes from 1987 were kept intact, which was okay, because you get to read commentary from a writer during that exact time-period, but because the original liner notes were kept there wasn't any indication that Conway had recently passed away. Another indication of this being an album re-issued after his passing away aside from the dated liner notes is the material abruptly ends in 1981...at that time it was Conway's final year on MCA prior to him going back in 1987.



The songs on that release are:

1. Hello Darlin'; 1970
2. Fifteen Years Ago; 1970
3. I Can't See Me Without You; 1972
4. Lost Her Love On Our Last Date; 1972
5. Baby's Gone; 1973
6. You've Never Been This Far Before; 1973
7. I'm Not Through Loving You Yet; 1974
8. Linda On My Mind; 1975
9. There's a Honky Tonk Angel; 1974
10. I Can't Believe She Gives It All To Me; 1976
11. I See The Want To In Your Eyes; 1974
12. Don't Cry, Joni; 1975 with Joni {his daughter}
13. Georgia Keeps Pulling On My Ring; 1978
14. I've Already Loved You In My Mind; 1977
15. Don't Take It Away; 1979
16. I May Never Get To Heaven; 1979
17. I'd Love To Lay You Down; 1980
18. Rest Your Love On Me; 1981
19. Tight Fittin' Jeans; 1981
20. Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night; 1981

The songs were listed based upon their recording dates. This is why several of the songs are out of order chronologically. For example, "I Can't Believe She Gives It All To Me" was a #1 hit for Conway in early 1977 but he had recorded the song at a session in 1974, according to the information, January 4, 1974 to be exact. "I'm Not Through Loving You Yet" was recorded on the same day as "You've Never Been This Far Before", April 4, 1973. As far as year of release is concerned, "I'm Not Through Loving You Yet" wasn't issued until nearly a year later, in 1974. So, there are a lot of instances where the songs that were being heard on the radio from Conway could have been recorded a year or two prior to their release. I do not know if that was as common back then as it is now...to sit on a song for at least 2 years before it gets released to radio as was the case with "Linda On My Mind", which was a huge hit for Conway in 1975 but it was recorded on June 19, 1973. "Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night", the CD's closer, was a #1 in early 1982 but it was released in late 1981...having been recorded in October 1980, a day after "Tight Fittin' Jeans" was recorded. As you can tell I'm fascinated by numbers.

Conway Twitty: Life, Music, Legacy in magazines...

I stumbled upon this magazine for sale on-line several years ago. When Conway passed away in June of 1993 I was 16 at the time and had no access to this magazine although I had heard about it from reading various country music publications at the time at the local grocery store. So, when I found this magazine for sale I bought it...and of course I am glad I did because it's a 75 page magazine looking at Conway's career from the start until his death...filled with a lot of pictures from his personal collection and some pictures that were featured in magazines. It features a lot of comments from Conway himself plus it offers a look at the 40 singles that hit #1 on the Billboard Country chart.


On the other side of the front cover is a picture of Conway taken in the early 1970's. The back of the magazine shows a rock and roll publicity picture of Conway with "It's Only Make Believe" shown off to the left. On the other side of this page is a display of 1982 and 1984 Nashville Sounds souvenir programs. It's a truly remarkable look at Conway's career and looking through the commentaries and pictures and everything else, it does make one wish those days were here again. It details the creation of Twitty-City in 1981, it's grand opening in May 1982, and the success that the attraction enjoyed during it's entire existence as part of various country music tours. Twitty-City was rightfully credited with being a major force in the tourism business during the 1980's and it's Christmas season every year was a lavish display of ornaments and lights. His duet career with Loretta Lynn is covered...featuring several picture of the two on awards shows and in the studio with Owen Bradley. There are a few mistakes in the writing, which are not really eye catching unless you are a person like I am and like to have statistics reported accurately. There is a passage in this magazine where it talks about Conway and his children as singers: Michael, Kathy, and Joni. It mentions "Don't Cry Joni" as a single that reached #11 on the country charts, which is an error. The single reached #1 in Cashbox and the Top-5 in Billboard...so I don't know where the #11 peak came from...the writer must have been looking at an overseas chart or the 1 on their key-pad must have been sticking that day?

There is also the omissions of Conway's solo awards. It has a section spotlighting awards that Conway won but it only shows the ones he and Loretta were given from the CMA, ACM, and Music City News. It doesn't show that Conway was named Male Artist of the Year by Music City News readers or that he was named the Top Male Artist by the ACM or that several of his songs and albums were honored by Music City News readers, either. It only shows the awards he won with Loretta at those various awards organizations...including their Grammy win for "After The Fire Is Gone".

This came from a 1983 magazine promoting his 1983 album, Lost In the Feeling. I also like the way his first several releases on the Elektra/Asylum label in 1982 were also spotlighted at the bottom of the advertisement.



This isn't one of the souvenir program's for the Nashville Sounds, by the way. This is actually a booklet promoting the charity baseball game that Conway and Barbara headlined for quite a few years in Nashville. Pieces of Conway and Barbara's charity event was included on the 1982 TV special, Conway On The Mississippi. The TV special is a wonderful program in my opinion. The rest of the fans thought so, too, because in June of 1983 it was awarded a fan-voted plaque at the Music City News awards as Television Special of the Year. In the special Conway's life is chronicled with the visual help of the Mississippi River and the overall scenery. Several notable peers and friends appeared on the special...including the likes of Ralph Emery, Jerry Lee Lewis, George Lindsey, Tammy Wynette, Dick Clark, Charley Pride, and of course, Loretta Lynn. At the time of the taping, Conway's current hit was "We Did But Now You Don't", which hit #1 on the Radio and Records chart. The special would re-air on The Nashville Network at various times in the 1980's, edited down from it's original 2-hour broadcast in 1982. A DVD release surfaced years later.

Here is a Music Row magazine promoting Conway's annual Christmas season at Twitty-City...

Conway Twitty: Early Years and King of Hits!

This is one of two VHS home video's that were issued in the early 1990's on Conway Twitty from the people associated with Willie Nelson. Willie, in fact, appears on the two video's at the beginning offering commentary about Conway and some background information for newcomer's to Conway's career. The Early Years focuses on material picked at random from the early to mid 1970's and material from the 1980's. Throughout the video, an off-screen narrator is heard between the songs. Each group of songs are fit under a banner like "Heart Throb" and "Hit Songwriter", etc etc. The performance of "Linda on My Mind" comes from an early 1980's appearance on Pop! Goes the Country. It's an acoustic performance...sitting in front of the host, Tom T Hall. The rest of the songs, pretty much, are selected from the era's in which they were recorded.

The play-list on this home video is as follows:

1. Linda On My Mind {1981)
2. To See My Angel Cry {1970}
3. Pickin' Wild Mountain Berries- with Loretta Lynn
4. God Bless America, Again- with Loretta Lynn
5. Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man- with Loretta Lynn {1985 awards show}
6. This Time I've Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me {1976}
7. The Games That Daddies Play {1976}
8. That's When She Started To Stop Loving You {1970}
9. Georgia Keeps Pulling On My Ring {1978}
10. Don't Call Him a Cowboy {1985}
11. Somebody's Needin' Somebody {1984}
12. Goodbye Time {1988}


On this particular home video, Willie Nelson appears in the beginning telling us about Conway's famous #1 hits... "over 50 and growing". Throughout the video a scroll of number one songs fly up the screen between song performances. When it comes to the song about ready to appear next, the title comes up onto the screen closer and fades into the performance. The graphics carry a baseball design...using the term "hitting one out of the ball park" to describe a #1 song. Conway's interest in baseball is highlighted as well. There is a minor problem with this certain video. I have a copy as you see in the picture and it lists "Rest Your Love On Me" as one of the songs in the list but it isn't on my video. It goes from "Tight Fittin' Jeans" to "The Clown"...even though it shows "Rest Your Love On Me" in between those two songs on the video song list, it isn't on the video. For those who want to see him perform that song, track down the various DVD's called "Country Legends Live" and search for it. Anyway, here is the video list...

1. It's Only Make Believe {early 1970's}
2. I'd Love To Lay You Down {1980}
3. Hello Darlin' {1981; performed acoustically on Pop! Goes the Country}
4. I See The Want To In Your Eyes {1974}
5. Touch the Hand {1975}
6. You've Never Been This Far Before {1974}
7. I Can't Believe She Gives It All To Me {1977}
8. Don't Take It Away {1979}
9. Tight Fittin' Jeans {1982}
10. The Clown {1982}
11. Slow Hand {1982}

Rest Your Love...on Conway...

Oh my...today we're spotlighting one of my favorite Conway albums. This one came along in 1980 and it features 10 love songs...the singles for this album, ironically, are featured well within the album. Usually one of the singles is the first song or one of the first three songs but not on this one. This is a ballad heavy album, too. The very first single taken from this album was track number nine...yes...you read that correctly...the song, "A Bridge That Just Won't Burn", hit in the fall of 1980 and reached the Top-5, going as high as #2 in some publications in early 1981.

The title track was written by Barry Gibb, leader of the Bee Gee's. It's a wonderful song...and rather lengthy...given the long musical solo's by the electric guitar player. The single hit #1 in the spring of 1981 on the heels of "A Bridge That Just Won't Burn", which had reached the Top-5 in January of 1981. During this particular point in Conway's career he was all over the radio not only with that song, and "Rest Your Love On Me", but several duet recordings with Loretta were still actively played from 1979 and 1980...as well as "I'd Love To Lay You Down", his huge #1 from 1980.

"A Bridge That Just Won't Burn" and "Rest Your Love On Me" were the only two singles released from this album. The rest of the album is filled with love songs...and only two of them were on the heartbreak side: "A Bridge That Just Won't Burn" and "You'll Be Back Every Night in My Dreams". This album featured a tag-along single...something rare but not unprecedented. "I Am The Dreamer, You Are the Dream" was featured as a B-side tag-along in 1981 for most of the chart run of "Rest Your Love On Me". A tag-along as far as I know is what you call a song that gets airplay and publicity benefiting from it's association with the A-side of a single, which gets the official publicity and promotions from a record label. So, for several weeks it was shown as "Rest Your Love On Me/I Am the Dreamer You Are the Dream" on the national charts.

Earlier I mentioned that this was a ballad heavy album...not only is the title track well over 3 minutes in length but "For All The Right Reasons" has a similar running time and it's a much shorter song, lyrically. If you were to write the lyrics down to that song on a sheet of paper you will see that it's a short song but the music interludes make it longer. These songs have a very intimate and personal feel...almost like this was an album recorded exclusively for the women...although women were who made up his audience for the most part. Listen to the way he performs the songs "Hero For a Day", a ballad about a man who tells a woman all that he thinks she's wanting in life. "We're Gonna Try It Tonight" is one of those conversational songs which features a lyric that goes like "...we're gonna lay love down and keep it warm 'til morning light so when the fire ignites hold on tight...".

"Once Is Not Enough Kind of Love" is track number two while the opening song is "I Still Believe In Waltzes", which would become a Top-10 hit for him and Loretta in 1981 when they recorded the song for their Two's A Party album. The album closes with "When The Feelin's Right", a song about male-female relationships and how to tell when a woman's feeling that feeling and what to do as a result.

For those not familiar with Conway or his style of songs I must interject this bit of commentary. He became famous for picking songs that he felt women would love to hear and he also used to say that he wanted to pick songs that said things men wanted to say to women but didn't know how to express their feelings or weren't articulate enough to do so. So, a lot of Conway's songs were about relationships...both good and bad...heartbreak and heartache...love, lust, and regret and agony. All of the emotions that go along with love were featured in Conway's songs. The more positive a song was the bigger it became a hit...or, for those who don't know that much about Conway, you'll perhaps be more inclined to say the songs that were the most sexy were the biggest hits since he gained a reputation for what critics call bedroom ballads. One of the nick-names tagged to him was Master of the Bedroom Ballad...other nick-names were Heartland Heart Throb...Mr T...The High Priest of Country Music...and The Best Friend a Song Ever Had. Jerry Clower dubbed Conway the high priest because of all the women that piled into venue's to watch Conway perform on stage...and how in his eyes it reminded him of religious revivals where the church is filled to the brim with worshipers.

1. I Still Believe In Waltzes
2. Once Is Not Enough Kind of Love
3. Hero For a Day
4. I Am The Dreamer You Are the Dream
5. Rest Your Love On Me
6. For All The Right Reasons
7. We're Gonna Try It Tonight
8. You'll Be Back Every Night in My Dreams
9. A Bridge That Just Won't Burn
10. When The Feelin's Right

Conway Twitty in your Dreams

We go back 21 years to 1988 when this particular Conway Twitty album was brand new. The single that was on the radio and in the stores prior to the album's release, "Goodbye Time", was unlike anything Conway had recorded to that point. It featured the piano as the main instrument and the vocal performance was one of a kind. This is just one example of how Conway put everything he had into a song...hearing it was like listening to a drama unfold in front of your ears. It was a story about a man and woman breaking up although the man doesn't want it to happen but if she won't change her mind given everything he's attempted at trying to convince her to stay then for the two of them it's goodbye time. As far as chart data is concerned, the single reached the Top-10 in the spring/early summer of 1988.

The summer of 1988 saw the release and success of "Saturday Night Special"...according to what I've read, the single created a controversy due to the way the pawnbroker in the song was depicted plus there was objections surrounding the song's overall violent under-tone, after all, the song is about a pistol. The single reached the Top-10, but barely...in the Cashbox chart it peaked at #6. The song is about a man and a woman who visit a pawnshop and fall in love while meeting there. She was there to sell her wedding ring and he was there to buy a pistol. The broker in the song offers a small amount for the ring...and the man uses the pistol he just bought to intimidate the broker into giving the woman a more higher value for the ring. They leave the shop and head off to Texas to presumably get married.

The third and final single from this album arrived late in 1988 and climbed up into the Top-5 in early 1989. The title of the album, Still in Your Dreams serves as part of the title of the opening song, "I Wish I Was Still In Your Dreams". The song is another dramatic reading of a man who see's a woman after a long separation. When I hear the song I always think of Times Square in New York...picturing a man seeing a woman sitting at a table inside a cafe. The song doesn't say what caused the couple to break-up only that the man wishes he was still in her dreams. Vince Gill provides the soaring harmony on this song as well as on all the songs.

Aside from the singles, the album contains a mix of songs, most of them on the heartbreak side and some not. "Throwing Good Love After Bad" is a song about a man trying to find the right woman. It has a slow ballad feel much like "Goodbye Time" and "I Don't Remember Going Crazy", which is track number seven. "Your Loving Side" is an up-tempo poppish song with a narrative passage while the album's closer, "When You're Cool The Sun Shines All The Time", is a rip-roaring rocker/blues song. If the clip is still available you can see Conway perform this song during a TV appearance that's been uploaded onto You Tube. Look up his name and the song title and the clip will pop up after the search.

"Jenny's Souvenirs" is a sad song about a married couple with a clever twist. My vote for song that could have been a hit single but yet wasn't released as one goes to "They Only Come Out at Night". The entire song...the sound...the style in which it's delivered...screams 'hit song' in my ears but it wasn't issued. I think there was a policy at MCA during the mid to late 1980's that only three songs were issued as commercial singles from albums and that's it...unless Conway only wanted three per album.

Conway rarely did re-makes of his previous songs...there were a few exceptions, though; back in 1976 he re-recorded five of his rock and roll songs for a project called Now and Then which featured five newly recorded songs on side two. He recorded several duets with Loretta of previous solo songs...both he and Loretta together recorded versions of "It's Only Make Believe", "I Changed My Mind", "I've Already Loved You In My Mind", "I'm So Used To Loving You", "Working Girl"...Conway had also recorded solo versions of "The Letter" and "I Still Believe In Waltzes", two singles that became huge hits for him and Loretta. Another occasion where Conway re-recorded some of his former hits came along in 1982 when he put together the mammoth two-part collection called Conway Twitty Classics, Volume One and Conway Twitty Classics, Volume Two. The project featured 20 re-recordings of a lot of his huge hits from the 1970's. The songs have been released several times by Sony Music on a wide variety of compilation CD's featuring Conway. Chances are a lot of the CD's currently on the market released by labels other than MCA which feature Conway are likely to feature his 1982 re-recordings than the original recordings. What does all of this mean when it comes to this 1988 album you may ask. Well, on this album, it features a song Conway originally recorded in the mid 1960's, "If You Were Mine To Lose", which he also wrote. So, we're treated to an updated version of that song on this album.

1. I Wish I Was Still in Your Dreams
2. Your Loving Side
3. Goodbye Time
4. If You Were Mine To Lose
5. Throwing Good Love After Bad
6. Saturday Night Special
7. I Don't Remember Going Crazy
8. They Only Comes Out at Night
9. Jenny's Souvenirs
10. When You're Cool The Sun Shines All The Time

Conway Twitty Millennium Collection

Well, this particular CD came along in 1999. It's part of a series of titles that various record labels were releasing at the turn of the century. Conway is showcased on this release, plus he's featured on a second volume showcasing 12 more songs, and he's featured in a collection of duets with Loretta all under The Millennium Collection banner. This particular CD in my hand is the first release...it features 12 songs that Conway recorded between the years of 1958-1990. This 32 year span is a bit mis-leading since there's only 12 songs...but it's 1970's heavy; of the 12 songs, 8 of them were recorded during the 1970's. The back of the CD features an early 1970's picture of Conway taken during the photo sessions for his album You've Never Been This Far Before. When you open up the CD you'll see a fold-out cover tucked away. You'll also see a 1990 picture of Conway taken during the photo sessions for the 1990 album, Crazy In Love. The picture used on the front comes from 1981...it was used as a publicity picture for a period of years. Within the fold-out cover there's a picture of Conway and his guitar taken in the late '70s prior to his hair-style change. It looks to be from 1977 or 1978. There is also a picture of Conway that was used on the 1980 album, Rest Your Love On Me.

The songs gracing this CD are as follows:

1. It's Only Make Believe; 1958
2. Hello Darlin; 1970
3. After The Fire Is Gone-duet with Loretta; 1971
4. I Can't Stop Loving You; 1972
5. You've Never Been This Far Before; 1973
6. There's a Honky Tonk Angel; 1974
7. Linda On My Mind; 1975
8. Touch the Hand; 1975
9. After All The Good Is Gone; 1976
10. Tight Fittin' Jeans; 1981
11. Rest Your Love On Me; 1980
12. Crazy In Love; 1990

The CD goes in chronological order pretty much until track #10 and #11. "Rest Your Love On Me" was a hit in early 1981 while "Tight Fittin' Jeans" was a hit in the summer of 1981. So, those two songs should have been flip-flopped when the CD was being put together. Colin Escott wrote the liner notes. He makes a minor error...he mentions that Conway left MCA in 1980 when in reality he left the label in mid 1981...joining Elektra/Asylum in 1982 before they were bought out by Warner Brothers in 1983.

The Volume Two collection features liner notes written by Rich Kienzle. He makes a slight error...he mentions the duet with Loretta, "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man" being their second #1 when it's actually their third, following 1971's "Lead Me On" and "After the Fire Is Gone". The CD features several pictures of Conway...the front side features a picture taken of Conway in 1987 for the Borderline album. The back of the CD shows a publicity picture of Conway from 1970. Inside you'll see a picture of Conway that was used on the 1990 Silver Anniversary collection plus a small picture of Conway and Loretta and a big picture of Conway from 1978. The first volume focused mostly on 1970's material, which this volume also focuses on but there's more of an even field this time around with this CD boasting 5 hit songs from the 1980's:

1. Next In Line; 1968
2. Fifteen Years Ago; 1970
3. Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man-duet with Loretta; 1973
4. I See The Want To In Your Eyes; 1974
5. Play, Guitar Play; 1977
6. Don't Take It Away; 1979
7. Happy Birthday Darlin; 1979
8. A Bridge That Just Won't Burn; 1980
9. Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night; 1981
10. Julia; 1987
11. That's My Job; 1988
12. She's Got a Single Thing in Mind; 1989

**-the single, "Happy Birthday Darlin" hit #1 in late 1979, in fact it was the last single to reach #1 in 1979 and it remained #1 on into 1980 as Billboard at the time froze all of their charts during the last week of the year because of the holiday's. "That's My Job" was released as a single late in 1987 and reached it's peak in early 1988.

The Conway and Loretta hits collection featured 12 songs...each of their singles were featured on this collection as they had exactly 12 hit singles together during a ten year period, 1971-1981. So, those wanting only the hits and nothing else from Conway and Loretta's duet career look no further than this:

1. After the Fire Is Gone; 1971
2. Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man; 1973
3. Lead Me On; 1971
4. As Soon As I Hang Up The Phone; 1974
5. Feelins'; 1975
6. The Letter; 1976
7. I Can't Love You Enough; 1977
8. From Seven 'Til Ten; 1978
9. You Know Just What I'd Do; 1979
10. It's True Love; 1980
11. Lovin' What Your Lovin' Does To Me; 1981
12. I Still Believe In Waltzes; 1981

The pictures of Conway and Loretta featured on the front and back of the CD as well as in the fold-out cover come from the 1970's. The liner notes were written by Todd Everett.

Conway Twitty's Fallin' For You

Changing music climates were underway in country music during the mid 1980's after the pop-country sounds of the Urban Cowboy craze had died down. Alabama, George Strait, Reba McEntire, Ricky Skaggs, and Randy Travis were just five of the country music acts who were ruling the charts with red-hot consistency during the 1980's...and so were well-established artists such as George Jones, Merle Haggard, Ronnie Milsap, and of course, Conway Twitty. Conway, in fact, was named the runner-up male country artist of the entire 1980's...he was the #1 artist the previous decade.

This particular album featured 10 songs, two of which became his fifty-first and fifty-second #1 hits: "Desperado Love" and the title, "Fallin' For You For Years". The music on this specific album was totally different from the sound heard on his previous releases.

Where as several of his previous releases up to this point carried a somber over-tone containing some terrific slow ballads and heartache songs, most notably his 1985 album, Chasin' Rainbows, as well as several others from the early to mid 1980's, this Fallin' For You For Years album from 1986 contained a lot of energetic, loud, and dramatic music by comparison.

First of all is the opening track, "A Thing of the Past", containing an intro that jumps from the speakers...it's this music sound and this style of song that set the stage for the remainder of the decade. When I speak of loud I am of course referring to the volume of the instrumentation...it has this jumping from the speakers sound...very different from his previous albums and something many of his contemporaries in the business had yet to adapt to their material. The vocal masterpiece of the album is the title track, "Fallin' For You For Years", which shows off Conway's range...which was remarkable...looking at Conway and hearing him sing on this album, I bet you wouldn't be able to tell he was hitting 53 that year. His voice, his choice of songs, and his demeanor never hinted his age...and those were some of the keys to his success year after year, decade after decade.

Ironically, though, the title track which hit #1 in early 1987 and was a vocal powerhouse isn't the most popular from the album. That distinction falls on "Desperado Love" which was another big hit for Conway...this time in mid 1986 as the first single from this album. This particular song has a bouncy feel that marries a western image to a story of a man who wants to have a woman, no matter if she belongs to someone else. The rest of the album features more big ballads like "Steady As She Goes", "You're The Best I Never Had", and the clever "Riverboat Gamblers". The album's closer, "Only the Shadows Know", is loosely based on the catch-phrase from the radio program, The Shadow. "If I Didn't Love You" is known more for being a hit for Steve Wariner but Conway performs it well. "Jennifer Johnson and Me" carries a nostalgic feel, as does the album's lead-off song, "A Thing of the Past". Those two songs, in addition to the title track, "Fallin' For You For Years", and "You're The Best I Never Had", each have a common theme: in each song Conway sings about years and the past.

The title track deals with the years that have gone by for a man who's been in love with someone for years. "A Thing of the Past" deals with a man who takes a look at his life while flying away from his past and how his former relationship is now a thing of the past as he compares the relationship to things from years gone by: cars that ran on regular fuel; war love letters; bell bottom pants; drive-in movies; etc etc. "You're the Best I Never Had" tells the story of a man thinking about a woman from years ago that he dated. "Jennifer Johnson and Me" is another memory trip as a small black and white portrait in a sport coat pocket triggers the thoughts of the past. "You Can't Say I Haven't Tried" is a song about a woman who wants to go off and find herself in spite of the fact that her boyfriend wants her to stay.

1. A Thing of the Past
2. Desperado Love
3. Steady as She Goes
4. Fallin' For You For Years
5. Riverboat Gamblers
6. Jennifer Johnson and Me
7. You're The Best I Never Had
8. You Can't Say I Haven't Tried
9. If I Didn't Love You
10. Only the Shadows Know

Conway Twitty cassettes

This Conway Twitty cassette was released in 1989. It's called House On Old Lonesome Road and it featured the Top-20 title track and the smash hit, "She's Got a Single Thing In Mind", which became the #3 song of the entire year and his 54th #1 hit. There was a third single, "Who's Gonna Know", which became a chart hit in early 1990...it was the first major release from Conway since 1967 to not enter the Top-40 of the country chart. It peaked in the Top-60...charting below #55. In an incredible display of chart discrepancy, the weekly Cashbox chart ranked the single at #19, making it a Top-20 hit...but Billboard ranked it in the Top-60. The rest of the album is a sampling of material that we've come to know from Conway...with a few surprises. "Child With Child" easily stands out as a song typically not associated with Conway's choice of material. It's a very topical song dealing with teenage pregnancy. There's another song on here, "Play Ruby Play", which makes long-time fans think of "Play Guitar Play" due to the similar title. That's where the similarities end, though, as "Play Ruby Play" is a kind of dance song...it has a roadhouse feel to it. One of my favorites is "Private Part of My Heart", track number six. It just has that feel to it...and it should have been released as a single in hindsight. The album closes with "Too White To Sing the Blues" which breaks up the overall theme of the album, which includes mostly somber songs dealing with various forms of heartache and heartbreak. "Take Me Home To Mama" is a 'boy meets girl/introduce me to your mother' song. It, too, is an up-tempo song. All in all it is a good album but it lacks a few monster hits and because of this it allowed the album to slip by and go out of print rather quickly. The main song, "She's Got a Single Thing in Mind", was being bought as a 45 RPM single...so a lot of people are not as familiar with this album.

This particular album on Conway was released in 1975. It's called The High Priest of Country Music and it contains two major hit singles. "Touch the Hand" and "Don't Cry Joni" appeared on this album...each song went to #1, specifically "Don't Cry Joni" hit #1 in Record World, a now out of print weekly chart publication, one of Billboard's main competitors. The single featured his daughter, Joni, playing the part of the girl who requests the boy wait until she's of-age so the two can be married. At the time, she's 15 and he's 22. The boy, named Jimmy, which happens to be the name of one of Conway's sons, moves off but Joni remains vigilant waiting for Jimmy's return. Well, five years pass and Jimmy returns, knowing Joni is 20, and anticipates marrying her but reality deals him a crushing jolt. "Touch the Hand" is an aching love ballad about a man trying to convince the woman not to leave him. The name of the album came from Jerry Clower, a label mate and a legendary southern comedian. Clower nick-named Conway "the high priest of country music". It is on this album that Conway performs his version of "Before The Next Teardrop Falls", a monster hit for Freddy Fender. Conway also gives us his versions of "Sally Was a Good Ol' Girl", "It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin", and "Amanda". The album was certified GOLD in Canada.

This project was released in 1983, called Lost in the Feeling. It features the #1 title track, a song that also features Ricky Skaggs as the harmony singer and several steel guitar solo's by John Hughey. The rest of the album is stocked with country-pop pretty much. "You've Got a Good Love Coming" is a Lee Greenwood smash hit...Conway's version is pretty much in the same arrangement. "First Things First" is a cute song about a blind date and how amorous the woman happens to be. "The Best Is Yet To Come" is a love song detailing the minute by minute account of a night together and the morning after. The album's second single, "Heartache Tonight", is a fabulous display of Conway's vocals. The song originates from The Eagles...they are the act who had a hit with the song first. Conway's version hit the Top-10 in the fall of 1983. "From a Strangers Point of View" is one of the few songs on the album that doesn't contain a pop over-tone with the others being "We're So Close" and the rollicking, up-tempo "I Think I'm in Love". The album's third single, "Three Times a Lady", became a Top-10 hit in early 1984...it had been a previous pop hit for The Commodores.

Not many country songs had quite touched the subject matter that a Conway Twitty song was known to touch and this album, well, this particular single, was touching forbidden places in the minds of music critics and radio DJ's. Pardon my shocked expression...I was acting like someone from the early 1970's upon hearing the song for the very first time. There were several radio stations that banned the song. You have to remember that it was 1973 when this album was released and not many, if any, country songs were accused of being naughty. I do not believe the song is naughty or dirty and once you hear Conway explain the lyrics of the song you, too, won't think the song is as naughty as some would lead you to believe. "You've Never Been This Far Before" became one of Conway's biggest hits...remaining a #1 single for multiple weeks and crossing over to the Top-30 on the pop chart, in spite of it's ban from several stations. The song is basically about a one night stand concerning a woman who's cheating on her husband with another man and she's nervous because she's never been that far before. The song's concept wasn't controversial...it was the choice of lyrics in a certain point in the song. Casual fans refer to this as the "bum, bum, bum song" because Conway says that phrase throughout the song to emphasize the sound of a heartbeat pounding harder as the married woman gets closer and closer to the other man. It's quite a song and one of Conway's signature #1 hits. The other material on the album, like much of the albums released in this era in country music, featured mostly cover songs. "Born To Lose", "Seasons of My Heart", and "Above and Beyond" had previously been recorded by others...George Jones and Buck Owens to name a few. "Baby's Gone", the other single from the album, hit #1 and it told the story of a man who comes home to find his wife has left him. It's a standard country music storyline but what sells the song is Conway's vocal performance. "I Love You More in Memory", "Til the Pain Outwears the Shame", and "The Easy Way Out" are good showcases for Conway's vocals but the drawing power remains "You've Never Been This Far Before". This was certified a GOLD album.

Conway Twitty: Borderline

Borderline is the name of the 1987 Conway Twitty album that was also known as his comeback album for MCA Records, following his four year run with the Warner Brothers company. This particular album featured a whole assortment of country songs designed to go hand in hand with the sound of country music at the time. Conway, more than any other artist of his generation, was always recording songs that were modern...he rarely recorded songs that sounded as if they were written in the past. This isn't to say that he never recorded his fair share of traditional sounding country music because he did...but for the most part, a lot of the songs that became singles all carried the contemporary country sound.

This album was unique in that the title track, "Borderline", was never issued as a single. He had previously issued albums in the past whose title's were not issued as singles such as quite a few of his Warner Brothers releases, but pretty much it's an unwritten rule that albums are named either for the lead-off single or a song that'll eventually become a single at radio. Anyway, this 10-song collection was a perfect comeback to MCA...the first single from the album, the bouncy "Julia", was a major hit single during mid 1987. It's highlighted by the twinkling piano accompaniment. The song became his fifty-third #1 hit.

"Lonely Town", not a single, is a great song...and if one listens to it, you would wonder why it was never issued as a single. "I Want To Know You Before We Make Love" was the album's second single and it is the most dramatic...with a fascinating climax. It, too, was a monster hit in late 1987. "Borderline", the title track, is a bouncy dance-friendly song...followed by the dramatic "Not Enough Love To Go 'Round". The last five songs feature more mid-tempo material than straight ballads. "Snake Boots" features a high-octane performance complete with loud, rock-like instrumentation. "I'm For Awhile" is a song about loyalty while "Fifteen To Forty-Three" is a song about looking back into one's history. "Everybody Needs a Hero", much like "Snake Boots", is an up-tempo rocker song. The album closes with a poignant ballad, "That's My Job", which has a running time of 4:51 by most counts. It's just a tad shy of being five minutes long...incredible running time for a country song since the standard country song was 3 and a half minutes or shorter, very few ran longer than 3 minutes. The song was released as a single in late 1987 and amazingly it became a Top-10 hit in early 1988...in spite of it's length. It became one of his most-requested songs, too. It's the story of a father and son and how the son moves away to start his own life but consistently asks his father's advice and help along the way.



That's me and my cassette copy of Borderline. As I found out it is a very rare album...by that I mean it's out of print. I lucked out and found a cassette copy that appeared at a local record store one day several years ago and I grabbed it. These are clickable thumbnail images...you can click them to get a bigger image.

This is a little bit more rare...this is a double collection...featuring one album on each side of the cassette. MCA released these sort of collections in the early 1980's...this one came along in 1983...it features the Heart and Soul and Rest Your Love On Me albums on one cassette...



My grandfather bought a Conway Twitty cassette in the late 1980's...at the time I didn't know how rare and obscure the collection was becoming but now I know how quickly it went out of print...so here I am with my Chasin' Rainbows cassette. Conway released this in 1985 and I wrote a blog entry about the album already. I have the vinyl album, too, along with the cassette that my grandfather let me have.



I have a lot of Conway's cassette's and vinyl albums and here's one more...the cassette copy of his 1983 album Lost in the Feeling.

Conway Twitty: Album Producers

Focusing on just the country music side of Conway's career, the producers of Conway Twitty albums are but a few. First off we have Owen Bradley who was a legendary record producer for the Decca/MCA label throughout the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's. Owen recorded artists in what was known as The Quonset Hut. He later bought a barn and converted it into a recording studio in 1961. This became known as Bradley's Barn and it was here that all of Owen's successes would emerge and it was here where Conway Twitty recorded all of his songs during a 12 year period, 1966-1978.



Conway and Owen parted ways in 1978 after the release of several hit recordings, including the Top-10's "Georgia Keeps Pulling On My Ring", "Your Love Had Taken Me That High", "Boogie Grass Band", and a duet with Loretta, "From Seven 'Til Ten".

Conway became a producer of his own albums starting in 1979. He and David Barnes produced the following albums during 1979-1980: "Crosswinds", "Diamond Duet", and "Heart and Soul". Conway then teamed up with Ron Chancey and the two of them produced the following albums during 1980-1981: "Rest Your Love On Me", "Two's a Party", and "Mr. T".

After Conway's move from MCA in 1982 he joined forces with Jimmy Bowen. Conway and Jimmy produced the following albums: "Southern Comfort", "Dream Maker", and "Lost In the Feeling" during 1982-1983. Dee Henry came aboard in 1984 as a co-producer and the three of them would produce the following album together: "By Heart".

Jimmy then headed off and eventually landed at MCA. Ron Treat became co-producer of the albums along side Conway and Dee Henry. The three of them produced Conway's final three Warner Brothers albums during 1985-1986: "Don't Call Hime a Cowboy", "Chasin' Rainbows", and "Fallin' For You For Years". Conway went back to MCA in 1987 and was reunited with Jimmy Bowen. Conway married Dee Henry in 1987. The three of them would produce the remaining MCA albums together, 1987-1990, but then Jimmy left MCA for Capitol Records. Conway and Dee produced the 1991 album together while Don Cook produced Conway's final album, "Final Touches" with Conway and Dee credited as "Associate Producers" of the project.