The Best Country Albums of 1964, Part 1

David with a big-tent take on the 20 best country albums out sixty years ago

Billboard had been publishing some sort of country singles chart or other since its launched its “Most Played Juke Box Folk Records” survey in 1944. Billboard’s first “Hot Country Albums” chart didn’t appear until the week of January 11, 1964. (Debuting atop that debut countdown was a 1963 release, Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash.) Country albums from this era are often derided as hits-plus-filler, full of covers and subpar new songs, but note that approach was standard across genres (All hail 1964’s The Beatles’ Second Album!) and confuses an evaluation of releases for their means of production. As I’ve stressed before (when writing about “The Best Country Albums of 1973”) dismissals of pre-Outlaw country albums typically overlook the way all those new versions of old songs both nurtured community and underlined individuality.

Every country music year, I’ve come to find, is a good year. 1964 was particularly interesting. Bakersfield was on the rise. While the classic Nashville Sound moment had peaked (Jim Reeves died that year, Patsy Cline the year before), it wasn’t going anywhere. After Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, a crossover aesthetic dominated in all directions—as evidenced by the 1964 release of Eddy Arnold’s Pop Hits from the Country Side, Floyd Cramer’s Country Piano, City Strings, and Slim Whitman’s Country Songs, City Hits, to name three titles that I may or may not get back to when I collect my 1964 country album Honorable Mentions later this week. As always, the scene was varied and the best way to hear the best of it was to listen big-tent: Bluegrass, folk music, R&B, southern gospel, honky tonk, Christmas music, rock and roll—they all made their contributions to the Best Country Albums of 1964.

Here’s my Top 20, alphabetized by artist…

Red Allen, Frank Wakefield and the Kentuckians – bluegrass

Peak traditional/folk-revival bluegrass. Chances are you’ve heard the songs here many times, but on bluegrass (aka Folkways – 2408) guitarist Red Allen’s high lead is unexpectedly husky, and Frank Wakefield picks a wild and (you’ll pardon the expression) rocking mandolin, especially on the instrumental “Catnip.” A few times, innovative banjo player and former Bluegrass Boy Bill Keith rounds out a fantastic trio blend. The group’s “Little Maggie” still has a “five-string” on her knee, yet Allen’s fatalistic mandolin does most of the sobbing before kissing her off and hitting the road. Their go at Monroe’s “The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake” remains haunted but lands like a horror still fresh, frantically told. If I were ranking these albums, instead of just alphabetizing them by artist, bluegrass might still land here in the No. 1 spot.

Doris Akers & the Statesmen Quartet w/ Hovie Lister – Sing for You

African American gospel singer-songwriter Doris Akers was born in Missouri but gained fame in Los Angeles where she eventually directed the mass, multi-racial Sky Pilot Choir. A member of the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame, “Miss Gospel Music” is working here with Southern gospel legends the Statesmen Quartet, including a version of her best-known song, “Sweet, Sweet Spirit.” Akers addresses a beloved community before her, basking in fellowship, “liftin[ing] our hearts in praise,” and leaving revived to face a dangerous world outside.

Ernest Ashworth – Hits of Today and Tomorrow

You probably know Ashworth’s career record, his trembling version of the John D. Loudermilk number “Talk Back Trembling Lips,” which topped the country charts. Ernest Ashworth’s debut album collected that career record, as well as the Top Tens that preceded it (“Everybody but Me,” Louvins’ co-write “I Take the Chance”) and the one that immediately followed (“A Week in the Country”), records you also probably know if you know Ashworth. So check out album out cut, a Buddy Holly-leaning go at Don Gibson’s “Love Has Come My Way.” With the Jordanaires chiming in behind his twangy signature tremble, and Floyd Cramer soloing away, it's just another swell reminder that even workaday Nashville Sound works pretty damn well.

Chuck Berry - St. Louis to Liverpool

What’s this king of rock ‘n’ roll doing on a country list? Country acts had been incorporating Berry’s songs (Ernest Tubb and Marty Robbins had each landed a Chuck-penned Top Ten all the way back in 1955) and sounds (if you couldn’t play some Berry licks, you wouldn’t get too far in the Bakersfield club scene) for nearly a decade. Liverpool opens with an answer record to “Memphis” (which Buck Owens would cover the next year), then backs it up with “Promised Land” and “You Never Can Tell,” providing the sources for future country Top 10s from Freddy Weller and Emmylou Harris respectively. The album closing “Brenda Lee” may not be about that Brenda Lee, but it just had to be partly inspired by her, right? St. Louis to Liverpool, via Nashville.

Solomon Buke - Rock ‘N Soul

What’s this king of rock ‘n soul doing on a country list? Burke’s version of country standard “Just Out of Reach,” which couldn’t possibly have sounded more like a Nashville Sound recording and which was a hit the year before Ray Charles got around to “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” is included here, so that’s reason enough. But the album ends with a Jim Reeves cover, “He’ll Have to Go,” that’s accompanied by a swinging acoustic strum. What’s more, “Won’t You Give Him (One more Chance)” is driven by twangy acoustic picking, and “Can’t Nobody Love You” opens similarly—like it was Solomon’s contribution to the Tennessee Ernie Ford album recommended down page. Most importantly, Burke’s soulful husky croon anticipates so many country singers to come, from Joe Stampley to Razzy Bailey to Chris Stapleton and beyond.

Martha Carson - This Old House and Other Gospel Favorites

Martha Carson was a proto-rock ‘n’ rolling gospel singer, best known for her own good-news standard “Satisfied” and for her influence on Elvis Presley’s Sun sides, gospel sound and late-career stage show. For This Old House…, on little Scripture Records, Carson rode her inviting alto over Pentecostal piano and zippy ‘lectric pickin’, backed on most cuts by one of two vocal trios, the female Sunliters or the male Rangers. This is Southern gospel, in other words, with a twang knob that goes to eleven, which rhymes with heaven.

Anita Carter – Anita of the Carter Family

Certainly the Carter Sisters’ best singer and, excepting her aunt Sara, the finest vocalist in the entire storied clan, Anita Carter shines on this intense-yet-delicate folk-revival set. Side One is devoted to “I Never Will Marry,” “Wildwood Flower” and other songs associated with the original Carters. Side Two includes traditional numbers plus songs by Tom Paxton and Bob Dylan. The version of the latter’s “Farewell,” where Anita’s soprano is tethered safely to ground by sister Helen’s harmony, is my favorite.

Skeeter Davis – Let Me Get Close to You

With her career record, 1962’s “The End of the World,” and through the chunk of the sixties that followed, Skeeter Davis and her producer/arranger/backing vocalist Anita Kerr achieved some surreal, and Skeeter-specific, variants on the Nashville Sound. Here that means children’s rhymes that land like Victorian ghost stories (“Now I lay Me Down to Sleep”), spooky modern parlor ballads (“My Happiness”), chilly girl-group pop complete with Sedaka shooby-doobys (“I Can’t Stay Mad at You”), and teen melodramas that counterintuitively feel less heartsick than just plain numb (“He Says the Same Things to Me,” the Top Ten “Gonna Get Along without You Now”). It’s all Skeeter generis.

Bob Dylan – Another Side of Bob Dylan

“All I Really Want to Do” sounds like a template for John Prine, “To Ramona” predicts Kris Kristofferson, and “It Ain’t Me Babe” gave Friend-of-Bob Johnny Cash another country hit. And this was before Dylan even made it to Nashville.

Tennessee Ernie Ford - Country Hits… Feelin’ Blue

In the early 1960s, ABC’s The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show often featured a segment where the host would sit down to croon some old country classic, with guitarist Billy Strange and standup bassist John Mosher providing quiet accompaniment. Country Hits... Feelin’ Blue models itself after the same approach, with Ford and his warm basso baritone more breathing than singing his way through a few recent hits (“Funny How Time Slips Away,” “Sweet Dreams”) and several more midcentury gems from the songbooks of Ted Daffan, Jenny Lou Carson, Hank Williams and others. Few albums have ever channeled such a cozy late-night vibe, as if the family’s all in bed and Ernie’s up late, feeling blue but careful not to wake anyone. Just a perfect little record.

George Jones – I Get Lonely in a Hurry

I Get Lonely in a Hurry marked the first time that Jones’ “The Race Is On,” a No. 3 hit and one of his several signature songs, was included on an album—and not 1965’s The Race Is On, go figure. But it’s hardly the best thing here in any event. The title track is an appropriately speedy earworm with Luther Perkins-styled guitar, “She’s Mine” is a poignant fake out, but the real keeper is “Book of Memories,” where Jones sounds so gut-punched he can barely breathe: “Inside the book of pages black with photographs that take me back I hide the dreams that used to be…”

George Jones and Melba Montgomery - Bluegrass Hootenanny

George and Tammy would be great together later, and they certainly had bigger, more memorable hits, but I’m telling you Jones’ greatest duet partner was Melba Montgomery. This bluegrass-with-Buddy-Harman-on-brushes set shines instrumentally, especially whenever Shot Jackson rips off another break, but it’s George and Melba’s keening harmonies—her high, him lonesome—that’ve kept me retuning to this album since I first heard it back in the ‘80s.

Brenda Lee - Merry Christmas from Brenda Lee

I’m just so pleased we’ve been giving the 79-year-old Brenda Lee her poinsettias now, what with her “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” topping the Billboard Hot 100 this time last year. But after you stream her 1958 Xmas icon again (yes, that’s the version here), gift yourself a listen to this entire album, particularly my personal favorite Lee holiday song, “Christmas Will Be Just Another Lonely Day.” In the song, it’s Christmas Eve and everything is set up perfectly at Brenda’s place for Santa’s arrival—except that her lover’s been gone since summer ended. Drums thunder about her, strings swirl, singers moan—producer Owen Bradley is building a real Wall of Nashville Sound here—while Brenda weeps and wails. Poor Breanda, rockin’ sad and solo ‘round the tree.

Jerry Lee Lewis – “Live” at the Star Club, Hamburg

Jerry Lee had already gone country with his hurtling, ecstatic way of getting real, real gone when he topped the country charts with “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On” and “Great Balls of Fire” in 1957 and by going Top 5 with Hank Williams’ “You Win Again” in ‘58. During his so-called “Locust Years,” after being exiled for marrying his cousin but before his country-radio resurgence, Lewis still made plenty of swell music, this raging Star Club set best of all. He comes in hot, declaiming “High School Confidential” like he’s been popping bennies and listening to “The Auctioneer.” He closes on fire too with a “Whole Lotta…” that pounds more than shakes. His Brit backing band, the Nashville Teens, match his wildness, even on the solitary slow one: a menacing “Your Cheating Heart” that proves, hardly for the first time, and definitely not for the last, that rocker Lewis is also a master of the sad, sad ballad. On the short list of greatest live albums ever.

Loretta Lynn – Before I’m Over You

Loretta Lynn’s second album collected her first pair of Top 5 hits, “Wine, Women and Song” and the title track—both written by Loretta’s early career secret weapon, the Betty Sue Perry songbook—alongside cover versions of songs already made famous by Marty Robbins, Carl Smith, and Skeeter Davis, among others. Lynn would become known for her songwriting but here the focus is on Lynn the interpreter. Her hard Butcher Holler twang works well within producer Owen Bradley’s smooth Nashville Sound. I mean, which is better, Bradley’s countrypolitan setting on Brenda Lee’s “Fool #1” or the brittle music box setting he devised for Loretta’s version? Don’t worry. It’s all country, and you don’t have to choose.

Roger Miller – Roger and Out

Roger and Out is a big goofy smile of a record, jampacked with jokes, joyful scatting, nonsense rhymes, and hooks, hooks, hooks with Miller mostly backed jauntily and jazzily by Nashville cats Ray Edenton, Bob Moore, Pig Robbins and Buddy Harman. “Chug-A-Lug” and “Dang Me” were the irresistible crossover hits, “The Moon Is High (and So Am I),” “Squares Make the Girl Go Round” and “It Takes All Kinds to Make a World” are as strong, and it’s similarly hilarious novelties all the way down. That is, until you realize the yucks are all indistinguishable from life lessons for negotiating a rough world. “Lou’s go the flu and he’s laid up…,” but, Roger notes, “He’ll have to get well pretty soon though.” What else is there to do?

Buck Owens – Together Again / My Heart Skips a Beat

Buck Owens didn’t make any bad albums in the ‘60s but he didn’t make many great ones either. Together Again / My Heart is a clear exception. It’s so loaded with Buckaroo hits and just-as-good album tracks that, when Rhino put together its four-disc The Buck Owens Collection box, they made sure to pull fully half the album: the chart-topping, two-sided single/title tracks; Owens’ aesthetically prescient hit version of “Save the Last Dance for Me”; and exemplary Bakersfield covers of standards-to-be “A-11,” “Close Up the Honky Tonks,” and “Hello Trouble.” Even the comparative throwaways are aces: The desolate “I Don’t Hear You” is a showcase for pedal steel man Tom Brumley; “Amazing Gracie” is a silly love song but also slyly blasphemous. Essential.

Ray Price – Love Life

Love Life was Ray Price’s follow-up to what’s long been regarded as his masterpiece, Night Life. It’s a real sequel, not only because it was cut almost exactly a year later but because it’s in the same bluesy-jazzy-honky-tonk style. That’s recommendation enough, but as unpopular as this take might be, I prefer Love Life to its predecessor, if only just barely. For one thing, the songs, mostly covers of recent hits, are consistently just a scooch better: The album-closing “Cold, Cold Heart” is maybe my favorite of that standard. The versions of “I Fall to Pieces” and of Bill Anderson’s “Still” are delirious and haunting, respectively. And “This Cold War with You,” foregrounding the pedal steel of Jimmy Day and Price’s forlorn vibrato, is my bluesy-jazzy-honky-tonk gold standard.

Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadours – Blue Christmas

Ol’ E.T. had a hit with “Blue Christmas,” featuring glistening organ and backing vocals from the Beasley Sisters, back in 1949. This LP gathers Xmas sides cut over the following decade or so, including a “Blue Christmas,” sans both organ and Beasleys, but featuring Troubadour guitarist Billy Byrd and a lineup of A-Teamers. The exact bands from track to track differ wildly. Near as I can tell the great take here of Harlan Howard’s “Christmas Is Just Another Day,” for example, is with guitar star Leon Rhodes. Some cuts feature the Beasley Sisters reprising their Andrews Sisters thing. On others, it’s The Three Troubadettes doing the Beasleys. But here’s the takeaway: The lead singer is Ernest Tubb. Merry Christmas.

Various Artists - Top Rhythm & Blues Artists Do the Greatest Country Songs

More than three decades before the Country Music Hall of Fame released its essential From Where I Stand: The Black Experience in Country Music in 1998 (I wrote about the new expanded version of that box set back in the summer), King Records collected some of the country sides their roster of R&B stars had been cutting straight along. The liner notes boast that most of its sides had been cut before Ray Charles hit with his Modern Sound albums: “It had always been sort of an unwritten rule that country artists could sell country songs and that for anyone else to record them was unacceptable. Well, this old hat theory went the way of the winds as proven by the inspired renditions of these twelve blockbusters.” Indeed! The album’s never been reissued—I could only “listen to it” by bouncing between individual tracks on different streaming services—but it needs to be, ASAP. Check out James Brown covering Roy Drusky, Little Willie John covering George Jones, Charles Brown crooning “I Don’t Want Your Rambling Letters” and all the rest. My favorite is probably Eugene Church turning “Sixteen Tons” into the Coasters.

Coming Friday: A bunch more Honorable Mentions from 1964’s country albums. Need more best country albums lists? Check out the picks for 1973, 1993 and 1994.

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