1969 - Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Hillbilly Music

Various - Country & Western Hit Parade

1-CD Deluxe album with 72-page booklet, 28 tracks. Total playing time approx. 87 mns.
'Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Hillbilly Music 1996'
Country & Western Hit Parade 1969
On January 20, 1969, Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States. Later that year, he adopted the phrase silent majority to connote the preponderance of people who did not protest, take drugs, or excoriate him. And 1969 was the year that the silent majority's preferred music, country, invaded television. Perhaps for the first time, country music was unavoidable. One week before Nixon's inauguration, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour was first broadcast on CBS-TV, and who needed a goodtime hour more than the silent majority circa '69? Campbell's potential as a personable TV host was spotted in 1968 when he'd hosted the Smothers Brothers' summer replacement show. And then, when CBS saw that Campbell's entirely uncontroversial show was doing well, the network abruptly canceled the anti-authoritarian Smothers Brothers. Campbell boosted the careers of Mel Tillis and Jerry Reed, and his theme song, Gentle On My Mind, was usually sung by John Hartford, but most of his guests were from mainstream entertainment.
The Smothers' timeslot wasn't taken by Campbell, but by Hee Haw. With The Beverly Hillbillies, Mayberry RFD, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and Glen Campbell's Goodtime Hour running concurrently with Hee Haw, it seemed as if rural values and rural music were omnipresent, and this at a time when traditional values were under assault. In addition to network shows, The Porter Wagoner Show and The Wilburn Brothers Show were still in syndication in 100 markets throughout the South and elsewhere.
Two of Hee Haw's three creators were Canadian and the third was a New Yorker, Bernie Brillstein, so it was hardly surprising that the show pandered to stereotypes. Brillstein and his partners formulated Hee Haw as a country version of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. As Brillstein said later, "I turned to [my wife] Laura and said, 'What does a donkey say when he makes that godawful sound?' 'Hee-haw,' she said. 'That's it!' First week, we got a 41 share [41% of all televisions turned on in that timeslot were tuned to 'Hee-Haw'].
Even then, CBS didn't want to pick it up after the summer. They put on Leslie Uggams who tanked, and who did they turn to? 'Hee Haw.'" (In fact, Uggams was replaced by Campbell while Hee Haw was rescheduled for mid-week). After CBS canned Hee-Haw in July 1971, the producers found sponsors market by market, and it ran in syndication until 1992. If the cornpone humor was ghastly, the music was often first rate. Buck Owens hosted the show until 1986 and nearly every major country star of the day appeared. Even Elvis Presley wanted to appear, but the Colonel wanted otherwise.
One week before Hee Haw first aired, The Johnny Cash Show began its three-year run on ABC-TV. The show was filmed at the Ryman Auditorium, the increasingly decrepit home of the Grand Ole Opry in the heart of the rapidly deteriorating downtown core of Nashville. The first show featured Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, and made a star of Doug Kershaw. The guest list was eclectic, running the gamut from old time showbiz royalty to cutting-edge folk, rock and R&B artists. In the middle of every show, Cash would do his Ride This Train segment, further embellishing his role as a curator of Americana. Merle Travis was conscripted to write some of the dialog. And in England, Cash's San Quentin special, filmed by Granada-TV in February 1969, aired in April before the accompanying album and the single of A Boy Named Sue were released.
For most of the 1960s, Cash's Sun recordings along with those of other Sun artists had been hard to find. On July 1, 1969, Sun president Sam Phillips sold the catalog to Shelby Singleton, catapulting Sun into the age of plenty. Greatest hits collections by Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis hit the stores during the first week of September. Sagely, Phillips hung onto the music publishing and kept a twenty percent stake in the newly formed Sun International Corporation. Even before the first LPs were released, Phillips had probably alerted Singleton to the fact that Jerry Lee Lewis's last Sun sessions were an unerring blueprint for his newfound success on Mercury-Smash. Singleton released those abandoned recordings, and they became hits. No one would ever want for a Sun record again. Singleton also started a new label, Sun International, and the first release, in July 1969, was former Sun rockabilly Billy Lee Riley singing Kay. It's our bonus track.