I Went Down A 60s Country Rabbit Hole…

As many people know, I listen to a lot of music, but there are a few types of music I don’t have in my collection, and one of them is country. I like some country music, but not traditionally modern stuff. I tried to get into a lot of 90s country, too, and I frankly didn’t care for a good chunk of it. I’ve wanted go to back to 40s - 70s country, however, because that’s when the genre exploded. I did what I tend to do sometimes when I want to get into something new, and I got a haul of 60s and 70s country albums, hoping to find a hidden gem among them. Instead of reviewing each album individually, I wanted to chronicle my journey into the genre, and how I’ve been enjoying the stuff that I’ve been listening to. I’ll talk about the albums that I picked up, but I wanted to also talk about my journey while listening to these albums.

The first album I picked up that initially started my journey was Glen Campbell’s 1976’s Bloodlines, but I didn’t listen to that album much when I got it. I listened to it a couple times, and I thought it was good, but I wasn’t in the mood for country. I was at the same Goodwill a week or so ago, and I found a nice haul of country albums, so I decided to pick up the few that I saw. The first one that caught my attention was Dolly Parton’s 1969 album, My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy, and I had to grab it.

Dolly Parton is one of the few country artists that everyone can agree is great, regardless if you enjoy country or not. Even people that don’t like country music can admit that Parton is good. It’s even more interesting, because this album is an early album from her career, but it’s an interesting piece of history. My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy is a rather depressing album, where each song is about the protagonist dealing with death, grief, or sadness of some kind. The songs may be kind of upbeat, but the album itself is very dour. This is before she blew up with “Jolene,” and there isn’t here that’s really essentially, but it’s an album a diehard Dolly fan should hear, nonetheless.

The second album I saw was another one that made my jaw drop — Loretta Lynn’s 1968 greatest hits album, and that album came out before “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” so that’s another early album from a universally beloved artist. I truly love this album, as each song is a catchy little number that references a lot of cheating men, but this album also includes an early single of “Blue Kentucky Girl,” so one of her early hits is here. This is an essential record for people that want to get into early country, because she’s one of the most influential and important artists in the genre, especially in the early to mid-1960s. If only I had more albums like this throughout my haul, but that isn’t necessarily foreshadowing.

The next album I saw was a collaborative album between Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell from 1968, but I was really curious about this. I didn’t know it existed, but Bobbie Gentry is a relatively successful singer-songwriter from that era with the song “Ode To Billie Joe,” and Glen Campbell was just starting to get famous. “Rhinestone Cowboy” was still a few years away, but he was already a popular country-pop artist. This record is fine, though, but it’s mainly mid-tempo and slower songs; the album shows off each of their voices well, but there isn’t a lot of energy. I haven’t been going back to this album much, and while I like it, I don’t know if it’ll stay in the collection.

I can say the same thing for the next album I found, which was the 1972 self-titled album from Jody Miller. I had never heard of her, and I can understand why, because this album isn’t anything special. There’s a solid cover of “Delta Dawn,” but that’s about it. So far, a lot of these albums are pretty underwhelming, or they’re fine, but nothing that I would go back to much. The same could be said for 1968’s Make Mine Country by Charley Pride; he’s always been known as the only Black male star of country, at least until recently, and I see why. This album is early on in his career, but it’s a solid little album of standards. It doesn’t really do anything that I need to rush back to, but it’s not half bad. It’s not an essential album, but it’s fine for what it is.

I got a couple more albums to talk about, those being Roger Miller’s 1969 self-titled and Glen Campbell’s Bloodlines, the latter of which I alluded to earlier, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Miller is most famously known as the singer of Robin Hood, singing the theme and a few songs within the movie, or at least, that’s how I know him, anyway. I was really curious about this album, and it’s a solid little folksy country album that, like Charley Pride, doesn’t do anything too interesting or worthwhile. The album has a cover of “Me And Bobby McGee” that’s pretty cool, but that’s about it. I’m just left feeling underwhelmed by these albums, but I’m happy with what I paid for them. For $1.50, these albums are worth that price, but I’m not necessarily wanting to go back to them.