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 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.

Mr T

Conway Twitty's 1981 album is called Mr T and it is one of Conway's nicknames thought up by his fans. The album featured two number one singles and a couple of other chart singles that MCA released later on.

This album at the time of it's release was speculated to be Conway's last with MCA, the label he had called home since 1965. In Conway's schedule in 1981 was the ground-breaking of a country music park that at the time was un-named but in time it would be called Twitty City. The first single to be released from this album was the instant Conway classic "Tight Fittin' Jeans", which is a song about tight fittin' jeans...it blends the urban cowboy atmosphere of a couple at a bar with a typical love song approach. Conway puts himself in the song...further adding to his appeal with female country music listeners. The single did create a minor controversy, though...the idea of a song being specifically about women in tight pants and the lust it created for the men looking at them had some critics riled up.

Like in the past involving other Conway songs, the controversies surrounding this particular song didn't affect the single's popularity, either. "Tight Fittin' Jeans" became one of Conway's signature songs, sung in nearly every concert from 1981 onward.

The album cover of Mr T shown Conway on a golf course with classic-era green car. I don't necessarily think it was golf balls on the ground on the album cover...these were multi-colored and way bigger than golfballs...but Conway had a golf club slid under his arm, pulling on his gloves.

After the smash success of "Tight Fittin' Jeans", MCA released a second single from the album in late 1981. The single, "Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night", is a party song. The title itself created minor complaints...not only did it contain the phrase "red neck" but it also contained "love makin" as well. I'm not kidding you, either...back in 1981 country music critics seemed embarrassed or awkward whenever love or lust was explicit in a country recording.

Nevertheless, the single continued to climb the country charts in late 1981 and it hit #1 in early 1982. Conway made an appearance on Barbara Mandrell's TV show around this same time and the producers didn't want him to perform the song because "red neck" may come across offensive to rural America. In his own kind of way Conway let them know that if he wasn't allowed to perform his current single then he wouldn't appear on the show. This was not the first or last time that Conway stood up for his choice of material...other artists may have gave in and changed song choices in exchange for the exposure a TV show would give but Conway wasn't like that. One of his nick-names, besides Mr T, is The Best Friend a Song Ever Had. This name has a couple of meanings...but mostly it refers to the way Conway treated songs and songwriters. He fought hard for the songs he recorded...feeling that country audiences are mature and adult enough to accept intimate love songs and he felt that love songs can be mature in nature without ever veering into sleazy or trashy lyrics. Simply put, he championed songs and their writers.

So, the TV producers of Mandrell's show gave in and let Conway sing "Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night" on national TV. After the success of this song and a couple of duets with Loretta Lynn in late 1981/early 1982, Conway did in fact leave MCA for the smaller Elektra/Asylum label, which was merged with Warner Brothers in 1983. MCA, in the meantime, released a compilation in 1982 on Conway called Number Ones which featured a few singles that came short of #1 but were still big Top-10 hits. MCA, also, issued a single on Conway in 1982 called "Over Thirty But Not Over the Hill", which is contained on Mr T. The single, an un-official release, made the charts and peaked in the Top-70. In 1983 MCA was at it again...they released an un-official single called "We Had It All", which is also found on the 1981 album. This un-official single, however, did a decent chart-run, peaking in the Top-45...it's airplay was in competition with his official single at Elektra/Asylum, "The Rose". MCA also released another compilation album on Conway, this one called Classic Conway featuring a familiar performance pose on the album's cover. This compilation featured the 1982 and 1983 singles that MCA issued on Conway from the 1981 Mr T album.

This album has never been issued on CD under it's official name and probably never will since we're in the MP3 era where songs can be bought and downloaded onto Ipod's and computers from the comfort of your own home or workplace, putting aside the trip to the shopping mall for the latest music. The album did get a CD release in the mid 1990's under the name of Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night but that CD wasn't promoted/distributed heavily and little know about it. Amazon has that CD as a digital album, available for purchase.

Here are the ten tracks on this album:

1. Cheatin' Fire
2. I Made You a Woman
3. Slow Lovemakin'
4. We Had It All
5. Red Neckin' Love Makin' Night
6. Tight Fittin' Jeans
7. Over Thirty But Not Over the Hill
8. Hearts
9. I'm Already Taken
10. Love Salvation

Track #9 was co-written by Steve Wariner who recorded and released the song himself in the late 1990's and it was a big hit for him. Track #3 appeared on a 1985 compilation called The Best of Conway Twitty released by MCA even though it wasn't a single. It also contained a 1979 recording, "Heavy Tears", and a 1978 recording, "That's All She Wrote" among it's eight tracks.