Stand By Yer List -

Stand By Yer List - Now, I love all music. Or, I should say, I love the top 5% of every genre of music there is. It doesn't matter what - classical, opera, punk rock, bluegrass, jazz, folk, rock and roll, bagpipe music...

...and yes, Country and Western. I worked at the first of my two Country radio stations when I was a 19-year-old punk rock guy (at KDAK, in Carrington, ND), and I learned five fundamental truths about Country/Western Music:

1. When it's great, it's great.
2. When it's bad, it's horrible.
3. When it's mediocre, it's horrible.
4. The twangier, rootsier, more traditional it is, usually the better it is. Conversely, the slicker and more "crossover" it is (think Kenny Rogers' incarnations from '76 to '91), the worse it is.
5. Emmylou Harris is essential.

I caught this on Powerline the other day; Country Music Telelvision just released its list of the Top 100 Country Music Songs Of All Time. And while the whole thing is worth some dissection, we need to start with one big, showstopper problem right up front.

No Emmylou.

Now, Emmylou's big problem is that she bucked the Nashville establishment - the dozen or so Music Row moguls that control most of what gets written, produced and played on the air on country radio, coast to coast. Ergo, she gets almost no airplay.

And who owns Country Music TV? Yep. The same people who own everything else that comes out of Nashville.

But the notion that you can have a Country Music 100 without Easy From Now On or Boulder to Birmingham or To Daddy - a song that still kills me every time I hear it, and may be the ultimate Country song - is too absurd for the English language to convey.

But OK. With that line drawn in the sawdust floor, let's go through their list:

1. "Stand by Your Man" by Tammy Wynette

OK. Hard to argue here.

2. "He Stopped Loving Her Today" by George Jones

3. "Crazy" by Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson

4. "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash

5. "Your Cheatin' Heart" by Hank Williams

So far, so good.

6. "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks

I agree! Maybe not #6 out of the Top 100, but still way up here. Garth Brooks may not have made twangy, rootsy country music popular, but he made it possible for popular country music to be twangy and rootsy, which is nothing to sneeze at. The wave of C'nW that came along with Brooks' wake in the early nineties - Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, Kathy Mattea, Carlene Carter, Marty Stuart, Travis Tritt and any number of others - may not have gotten country music back to its roots, but they got it a lot closer than it'd been since the Outlaws ruled the charts

7. "I Fall to Pieces" by Patsy Cline

8. "Galveston" by Glen Campbell

9. "Behind Closed Doors" by Charlie Rich

Now, I know my country - sort of. And I was ready to write this one off with a snide rejoinder...

...until I read Big Trunk's very articulate defense of Rich's music a bit ago. Point, Trunk; Set, Rich.

10. "Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson

11. "Blue Moon of Kentucky" by Bill Monroe

12. "Amarillo by Morning" by George Strait

13. "Coal Miner's Daughter" by Loretta Lynn

14. "The Dance" by Garth Brooks

15. "Forever and Ever, Amen" by Randy Travis

16. "I Will Always Love You" by Dolly Parton

Right artist, wrong song. Dolly Parton is an amazing singer. If you like great roots Country, find a copy of any of her early albums. Oh, "I Wil Always Love You" is a good song - bastardized by Whitney Houston, which kills it for me - but holy cow, people...

17. "Hello Darlin'" by Conway Twitty

18. "Country Roads" by John Denver

19. "Hey Good Lookin'" by Hank Williams

20. "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" by Foggy Bottom Boys

21. "Okie from Muskogee" by Merle Haggard

22. "Wide Open Spaces" by Dixie Chicks

This is a good song. But should it really be sitting at #22, ahead of "Folsom Prison Blues" and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry? I think not.

23. "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" by Willie Nelson

24. "The Chair" by George Strait

25. "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash

26. "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers

27. "Fancy" by Reba McEntire

28. "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" by Alan Jackson

29. "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" by Hank Williams Sr.

30. "I Hope You Dance" by Lee Ann Womack

This is so wrong. The song - and Womack - are about as country as a day at the Edina Galleria. If it weren't for the background singer with the Arkansas accent, this song could be a Mandy Moore tune.

Worse? It came in ahead of...

31. "I Walk the Line" by Johnny Cash

32. "Rhinestone Cowboy" by Glen Campbell

"Galveston" deserved its' #8. But I'm sorry - this is crossover pop. Its most redeeming value as Country Western is that it sold a lot of records. Which is what this list is all about, of course...

33. "Always on My Mind" by Willie Nelson

34. "Harper Valley PTA" by Jeannie C. Riley

35. "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" by Tammy Wynette

36. "Will the Circle be Unbroken" by Carter Family, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

37. "King of the Road" by Roger Miller

38. "Breathe" by Faith Hill

I suppose if Britney Spears does a song and refers to a pickup truck and says "y'all" a couple of times, and it sells five million copies, CMT will call it "country", too.

39. "Make the World Go Away" by Eddy Arnold

40. "Hello Walls" by Faron Young

41. "Sweet Dreams" by Patsy Cline

42. "El Paso" by Marty Robbins

43. "Delta Dawn" by Tanya Tucker

44. "When I Call Your Name" by Vince Gill

45. "Guitars, Cadillacs" by Dwight Yoakam

Thank You, CMT.

46. "Desperado" by the Eagles

47. "Don't Come Home A Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)" by Loretta Lynn

48. "Boot Scootin' Boogie" by Brooks & Dunn

49. "I Can't Stop Loving You" by Ray Charles

50. "Independence Day" by Martina McBride

51. "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" by Kitty Wells

52. "On the Other Hand" by Randy Travis

53. "Walking the Floor Over You" by Ernest Tubb

54. "Coat of Many Colors" by Dolly Parton

I'm going to switch this and "I Will Always Love You". Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone.

55. "Act Naturally" by Buck Owens

56. "Mama He's Crazy" by the Judds

57. "If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time" by Lefty Frizzell

58. "Kiss an Angel Good Morning" by Charlie Pride

59. "Family Tradition" by Hank Williams Jr.

60. "Go Rest High on That Mountain" by Vince Gill

61. "Lovesick Blues" by Hank Williams

62. "Don't Rock the Jukebox" by Alan Jackson

63. "Tennessee Waltz" by Patty Page

64. "When You Say Nothing at All" by Alison Krauss

Emmylou Harris getting shut out is a bad thing. This takes a little of the sting off.

65. "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood

66. "Green, Green Grass of Home" by Porter Wagoner

67. "It's Your Love" by Tim McGraw with Faith Hill

68. "There Stands the Glass" by Webb Pierce

69. "Devil Went Down to Georgia" by Charlie Daniels

70. "Chiseled in Stone" by Vern Gosdin

71. "Don't Toss Us Away" by Patty Loveless

You like Patty Loveless' version? Dig up a copy of the original Lone Justice album. As great as Loveless is (and she is great), Maria McKee's version could strip chrome off a trailer hitch.

72. "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash

73. "You Are My Sunshine" by Gov. Jimmy Davis

74. "Flowers on the Wall" by Statler Brothers

75. "Strawberry Wine" by Deana Carter

76. "Good Hearted Woman" by Waylon Jennings

77. "You're Still the One" by Shania Twain

Still the one, perhaps - but still not country.

78. "My Home's in Alabama" by Alabama

79. "Is There Life Out There" by Reba McEntire

Reba is like Garth Brooks - very misunderstood. Great singer. She did many songs much better than this, though.

80. "She's in Love With the Boy" by Trisha Yearwood

This one came out long before Yearwood became a huge star. It was one of the brighter spots at my last C'nW radio job.

81. "Smoky Mountain Rain" by Ronnie Milsap

In the mid-eighties, most country artists were trying follow Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers to the pop charts. Ronnie Milsap was saved from being the worst example of this only because Eddie Rabbitt existed.

82. "Should've Been a Cowboy" by Toby Keith

83. "Rose Garden" by Lynn Anderson

84. "Please Remember Me" by Tim McGraw

85. "Blue" by LeAnn Rimes

86. "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" by Freddie Fender

Si! Muy Perfecto

87. "Passionate Kisses" by Mary Chapin Carpenter

88. "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You" by Gene Autry

89. "Here's a Quarter" by Travis Tritt

90. "He'll Have to Go" by Jim Reeves

91. "Seven Year Ache" by Rosanne Cash

Roseanne, and her ex-husband Rodney Crowell (who wrote "Ache"), along with Dwight Yoakam and Cash's half-sister Carlene Carter and George Strait, kept Country from becoming a complete arid wasteland of pop crossover pap in the eighties. That alone was a reason this song should have been in the top twenty on this list.

92. "Sunday Morning Coming Down" by Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson

93. "Take this Job and Shove It" by Johnny PayCheck

94. "Something in Red" by Lorrie Morgan

95. "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" by Flatt & Scruggs

96. "I'd Be Better Off in a Pine Box" by Doug Stone

97. "Amazed" by Lonestar

98. "Faded Love" by Bob Wills

99. "Back in the Saddle Again" by Gene Autry

100. "Killin' Time" by Clint Black

Again - any such list without Emmylou Harris is more or less invalid.

Hm. Maybe I'll do my own someday...

Posted by Mitch at June 7, 2003 06:13 PM