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.