The Top 20 Country Love Songs of All Time - Number 9

by Jim Poulton

Charley Pride - Kiss An Angel Good Morning

Photo courtesy of Torrentsland.com

This little slip of a song – it’s barely longer than two minutes – made a helluva splash when it was released in 1971. It wasn’t the first song by Charley Pride to reach the top of the charts, but it earned him the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year and Top Male Vocalist prizes – quite an accomplishment for a guy who had pitched for various teams in the Negro American League until 1960!

Pride sings Kiss An Angel Good Morning in an understated and mellow baritone, while the accompaniment – especially the piano – offers just enough contrast and punch. The song’s short duration makes you want to listen to it over and over, and it doesn’t take long before you’re singing the refrain to yourself – ‘Kiss an angel good morning … and love her like the devil when you get back home’. Now that’s a mark of a top 10 song!

Visit Pride's website here. Buy Kiss An Angel Good Morning at Amazon MP3 or ITunes.

The Top 20 Country Love Songs of All Time - Number 10

by Jim Poulton

Patsy Cline - I Fall to Pieces

If my wife had her way, every song in our top ten would be by Patsy Cline … Not that there’s anything wrong with that ... Cline was responsible for a string of Country love songs that all but single-handedly defined the genre. There’s just something about her: an innocent hayseed (she was the daughter of a blacksmith and a seamstress), always just a little bit awkward, appealing but not runway-model beautiful. But when she started to sing, the strength of her character, and maybe the realities of her own losses, came out in every tone and nuance.

Cline rose to national fame between the years 1957 and 1963, when she tragically died in a plane crash. She recorded I Fall to Pieces in 1961, and the song became her first #1 hit on the Country charts, and was her second song to cross over into the Pop charts. Written by Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard, I Fall to Pieces at first worried Cline – she thought it’s Pop style didn’t suit her own. When the recording was completed, however, she said that she had finally found her own voice.

See a biography of Patsy Cline here.

The Top 20 Country Love Songs of All Time - Number 11

Ray Charles – I Can’t Stop Loving You

I Can’t Stop Loving You was written and originally recorded by Don Gibson (one of the originators of the Nashville Sound) in 1957. In 1958, Gibson’s version climbed to #7 in Billboard’s Country Singles charts. Gibson’s success, though, was eclipsed four years later, when Ray Charles released his version of the song. In 1962, Charles’ recording reached #1 in three separate U.S. charts (Hot 100, R&B Styles and Adult Contemporary), and in both the UK’s and Australia’s Singles charts.

Gibson sang I Can’t Stop Loving You as a straight country song with a hint of TexMex in the accompaniment. Charles, in a stroke of musical and marketing genius, transformed it into an amalgam of country, blues, jazz, soul and pop styles – with the heaviest emphasis on the blues, of which Charles was a master. The song suited his voice and his wry performing style perfectly.

Here’s Charles doing a live version of I Can’t Stop Loving You on the Dick Cavett Show:

Here’s Gibson’s original version:

Puttin' the Pedal to the Metal

by Jim Meyer

The heart and soul of any good country song is the pedal-steel guitar. Think of Don Helms’ distinctive playing on just about any classic Hank Williams, Sr. recording. In the 1950s and 60s, the legendary Ernest Tubb provided a showcase for two of the all-time great pedal-steel players – in his band The Texas Troubadours: Buddy Emmons and his successor, Buddy Charleton (who died last month at the age of 72).

Here’s a sample of Charleton tearing it up with guitarist Leon Rhodes:

And here’s (sorry, embedding isn't available for this video) Emmons at the 1997 International Steel Guitar Convention in St. Louis.

I’d just moved to Washington, DC, in 1985, and I saw in the paper that Emmons was playing that evening in a bar somewhere out in the Virginia countryside. It cost me $60 to drive out there and back in a taxi, but it was worth every cent. I sat right down front, and watched The Master at work.

I’d have done the same to see Buddy Charleton, but I never got the chance.

The Top 20 Country Love Songs of All Time - Number 12

Kris Kristofferson - Me And Bobby McGee

Images courtesy of Savingcountrymusic.com and Showbizireland.com

Nobody is going to pretend that Kristofferson is a great country singer, but it’s hard to imagine a singer who is more authentic, who shows more of his emotions, and who pours more of his soul into his songs. This version of Me And Bobby McGee – a live rendition from The Essential Kris Kristofferson – is partly sung and partly spoken into his beard, but it’s entirely believable all the way through. The accompaniment will draw comparisons to the musical backgrounds for Jimmy Buffet, but the weird conjunction of party-style country/folk music with the poignancy of the lyrics somehow multiplies the effect. A great song, sung by one of Country’s best songwriters.

Here some of Kristofferson's newest songs at Daytrotter.com

Purchase Me And Bobby McGee on Amazon MP3 or iTunes.