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Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles

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Ain't debating musical favorites fun? Especially stuff like what are the greatest songs or albums, who are the all-time greatest singers or performers. Recently, CMT aired specials on the 40 Greatest Men and 40 Greatest Women of Country Music that certainly stirred up some discussions. Now there's a new book Heartaches By The Number that is bound to create even more heated deliberations.

Using Dave Marsh's The Heart Of Rock And Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made as a model, music critics David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren selected what they felt were the 500 most important country singles. In the introduction, these writers point out that their love affair with music began during the "crossover years" of 1967 to 1973. This helps to explain the hefty numbers of selections from this period, starting with their number one ranked single Sammi Smith's rendition of "Help Me Make It Through The Night": a 1971 country hit that also crossed over to the pop top 10.

Country superstars of the '60s and '70s show up a lot of this list, George Jones with twelve entries and Loretta Lynn with nine, for instance. Of course, Jones and Lynn would undoubtedly be featured a lot in this type of book regardless of who wrote it. But Glen Campbell meriting four entries, Sammi Smith three, and Charlie Rich a staggering six (including the non-hit remake of Sinatra's jazzy "Nice 'n' Easy") while two of the most acclaimed artists in modern country Vince Gill and Mary Chapin Carpenter received none is clearly biased.

The crossover period of country music also seems to have influenced the authors to stretch the boundaries in order to classify different types of popular music as country. Gladys Knight and the Pips' "Midnight Train To Georgia," Joe Simon's "The Chokin' Kind," and Otis Redding's "Sittin' On the Dock Of The Bay" are some soulful numbers whose country setting helps to make their selection somewhat plausible. But the Monkees "Last Train To Clarksville" and the Rolling Stones "Honky Tonk Woman?" To quote Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life: "you're screwy!"

There are only 16 recordings selected from the 1990s and merely one (Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance") since 2000. Responsible at least in part for this dearth is the authors' decision to omit recordings not released commercially as singles. In recent years, most singles have been marketed only to radio to promote an album and are not available in stores. But since the average country listener isn't aware if their favorite radio hit by, say, Tim McGraw or Toby Keith was available as a commercial single, they don't know if it was snubbed by the authors or omitted on the technicality.

Okay, I've been pretty picky. This book does actually have a lot going for it. The entries are informative, concise, and well-written. The selections from the '20s through the early '40s are particularly interesting to read about and it is hard to find fault with the authors' choices from this era (including The Carter Family's "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" and "Wildwood Rose," Jimmie Rodgers "T For Texas" and "Waitin' On A Train," Patsy Montana's "I Want To Be A Cowboy's Sweetheart" and Lead Belly's "Midnight Special" - the latter a landmark fusion of country with the blues).

Ultimately, the book provides plenty of material to debate and teaches the reader a lot about music (not just country) history. This alone makes it a worthwhile purchase.

Although its subtitle ("Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles") presents this book as a list of great recordings, it's only nominally a countdown. Grumbling that your favorite single didn't crack their Top 200, while always entertaining, is largely beside the point. These two authors even admit in their introduction that they have bigger fish to fry here. Heartaches By The Number wants to define, offer a history of, illustrate the influence of, and revel in the pure sonic joys of country music. The amazing thing is that David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren manage to do all of these simultaneously--and do them well.

There's lots to learn here. The two authors are obviously well-versed in country's history--equally comfortable discussing Dock Boggs' 1927 "Country Blues" or Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance"--and are able to share their knowledge, when appropriate, without slipping into a textbook-style lecture. And that's good because more than explaining history, this book slowly begins to reveal and argue for an aesthetic, a conception of what country music is and why it has a place in the lives of its listeners.

This aesthetic is going to trouble and confuse some listeners, downright anger others. Cantwell and Friskics-Warren conceive of a country music that includes The Stones and Dusty Springfield as well as Hank and Lefty. Why, in their Top 10, Elvis is flanked by Ray Price and The Carter Family. But it's this broad definition that provides much of the fun and the challenge here. How do these two have the gall to even call the Monkees country music, let alone include them among the creators of its greatest singles? Since when has Chuck Berry (or Otis Redding, or Lynyrd Skynyrd, or Fats Domino, or CCR--all here) been redesignated "Country"? It's exactly this default categorization that the authors want to challenge. Much of their discussion attempts to show how fluid the boundaries are between country and almost every other style of music.

And that's what it finally comes down to in this book: the music, what's actually down there in the grooves, or in the binary code. As much as anything, Cantwell and Friskics-Warren are great listeners, and they share a rare knack for translating the experience of listening into words. In a stunning discussion of Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors," Cantwell reveals himself as a guy who has listened to this song enough times to identify with the singer AND with the song's narrator (he distinguishes between the two) from the inside. Vulnerable but not maudlin (just as the song is), he refuses to slip into cheap emotionalism, but shares a clearly heartfelt love and appreciation for the entire experience of this single--singer and song, meaning and music. Likewise, Friskics-Warren, in a tour-de-force discussion of three singles--G.B. Grayson's "Ommie Wise (1927), The Blue Sky Boys' "Banks of the Ohio" (1936), and The Louvin Brothers' "Knoxville Girl" (1959)--sees thematic and musical traditions stretching from 18th Century English ballads right up to rapper Eminem. Not surprisingly, the entry appears amid a stretch of several, all addressing themes of murder and prison ("Pistol Packin' Mama," "Life To Go," "Green Green Grass of Home," "Sing Me Back Home"). Theirs is a world of connection, not dissection.

This impulse for connection is seen most vividly in the context the authors create for their discussions throughout. They encourage readers to listen to, and think about, this music here in the real world, a world that includes Betty Friedan and Horatio Alger, Harlan County USA and The Daily Worker, LBJ and V-E Day and POW's and TM, Dorothy Allison and Carson McCullers, Jim Crow and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Beatles and the Buddha and Bonanza, Times Square and Teamster Strikes, Designing Women and Smokey & the Bandit. For Cantwell and Friskics-Warren, music, like the rest of the world, affects our hearts AND our minds, our outer lives AND our inner lives. Great singles allow us a glimpse at what Friskics-Warren describes as "the point at which the personal and the political converge."

And lest this all sound a bit too heavy, let me assure you that Heartaches By The Number is a FUN read as well. The counting format offers bite-size portions that read well on their own (sort of intellectual bathroom reading) but are always part of the larger discussion. And these guys can be FUNNY (and cynical), too. Complimenting the musicians backing Tennessee Ernie Ford on "Shot Gun Boogie," Cantwell notes, "Then again, Henry Ford could swing with this group behind him!" And introducing Glen Campbell's signature single, Friskics-Warren asks, "'Gentle On My Mind' might have played well during the Summer of Love, but was its load of bull for real?" Like many of their musical heroes here, these two are straight-shooters.

About the best compliment I can pay this book is that it makes you want to go back and listen to the recordings. The authors encourage us to return to these singles--sometimes songs you didn't think you liked, songs you didn't even think were country--and listen again. They encourage us to really open our ears--and as a result, our hearts and minds.

My biggest problem with Heartaches By The Number: I don't own all of these records. Next step: the Time/Life Heartaches By The Number companion box set. Bear Family Records, are you listening?

Several things you need to know first: If you're looking for a "countdown", that's not what Cantwell and Friskics-Warren were after here. In fact they state "The choices we've made aren't necessarily the country singles we believe are the 'best' (that would've made for a very different book-TWO very different books, in fact), though of course we're convinced that every record included here is emotionally powerful, musically compelling, or both." They even go so far as to say if they couldn't say something NEW about a single..no matter how good it was...it didn't make the list.

The authors used Dave Marsh's "Heart of Rock and Soul" as the template for their book so it tries to be readable as a BOOK..entries aren't RANKED so much as ordered. For example, thematically linked 'cheating' songs "Back Street Affair" by Webb Pierce, Leroy Van Dyke's "Walk on By", "slipping Around" from Floyd Tillman and Randy Travis' more recent "On the Other Hand" (a rejection of adultery) all sit akimbo at positions 154-157 respectively. They also place songs together that they argue advance a narrative as in the argument for Cajun influence in country music for "Fais Pas Ca" by the Hackberry Ramblers at #235 and "One Step des Chameaux" next door to it.

There's a good reason to go for a more song-based approach: country tends to not 'play well' in album form. For every truly "great" country album there are probably 5 others that, though popular and high-selling, constitute little more than 1 or 2 indelible singles, a few pieces of decent filler, and perhaps a song or two of festering hackwork. (Much like your average pop or R&B album...lest you think I single country out.)

Since these are all "singles", keep in mind many great album tracks..or even songs that were never put out as 45's even if they were heavily played on radio..won't be here.

STRENGTHS:
In arguing for a more inclusive country definition, Friskics-Warren and Cantwell recognize both the streams that helped feed into country like Cajun, blues, bluegrass, and Southern gospel, but also the branches it led to such as rock and roll and R&B.

The entries written are usually enlightening, mostly entertaining, and will probably help the average reader get a better understanding of country music even if they don't agree with all the choices.

WEAKNESSES:
In some ways the desire for inclusiveness weakens the book: I love the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville" and might even argue it would belong among a list of 500 or 1000 greatest singles, but I can't really think of it as "country". Same goes for Chuck Berry and "Maybellene" though I believe it's unquestionably one of the greatest songs ever recorded.

Also, several more modern numbers chosen are iffy at best: Mark Chesnutt's "Bubba Shot the Jukebox" might fit Friskics-Warren and Cantwell's aesthetic but it's gonna be hard for me to agree that it's "emotionally powerful, musically compelling, or both." Likewise, Faith Hill's frothy "This Kiss". If they needed to place more songs from the 90s and later on there, I'm sure they could have found weightier tunes, perhaps by considering "alt-country" folks like the Jayhawks who don't have enough of a presence here. (Only Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle are here from the alt-country movement.)

BOTTOM LINE:
If you have any interest in country music, this is worth your time and money. I'm using it as a list of 'suggested listening' to widen my country vistas a bit..particularly for pre-1950 material.

I'm a huge fan of classic country and I purchased this book and read it as soon as it came out. I found both authors to be highly qualified for the daunting task of picking the top 500 country singles of all time. Their comments are insightful and always interesting. My main complaint was that the majority of the singles they chose are from the very early years of country music - 1920 to 1940. I'd never heard any of them (although I had heard of many of them) and so it sort of felt like a museum exercise to read entry after entry about songs I'd never heard. And there are very few songs from the 1991-1996 period, when I feel country music made a huge comeback in terms of quality. It's still an interesting read, but it might have been even more effective if they had been able to include a CD or two of the songs they chose so you could actually hear why some of their early choices are so important.

Nashville's schtick is to put some gorgeous babe (male or female) in a hat and boots, have him or her sing some souped-up arrangment, and voila...a "country" hit. Never mind that Nashville's idea of a "country" hit is not far removed from any other top forty hit cluttering up the Clear Channel airwaves. Never mind that in 3 years nobody, except the most hard core trivia hounds, will even remember the tune. Never mind that it just ain't country!

Which is not to say that each and every one of the 500 singles outlined in this book is in fact "country." Many of them aren't (at least not how I'd catalogue 'em). But each and every one of these tunes is in fact "great" and has its place in whatever bin is labeled "country" at the local Wal-Mart.

Any collection like this is going to be highly subjective and is bound to create arguments over inclusions and exclusions. Hell, I think that the Rolling Stones' "Exile On Main Street" is one of the greatest country albums ever reduced to vinyl. I'm sure not everyone is gonna agree with me. the point is that this book is not a compendium of the 500 Best Acts....so whoever it was whining that a single from that hack band Alabama wasn't included, please....re-read the damn thing.

Besides, even if this book was supposed to serve as some country music survey, Alabama would barely rate a footnote.

So, having said that, is this book any good?

Actually, it is very good. There is a lot of very good, insightful writing here. What Cantwell and Friskics have done is essentially survey popular country music, in virtually all of its permutations. In constructing this survey, the authors, under the guise of critiquing each selected tune, present an idisyncratic critical theory of country music which holds up very well to scrutiny. And they've done it without academic jargon.

This book is going to an essential component in any country music fan's library.

Now, can anyone explain to me why there isn't a single version of "Dark As A Dungeon" included here?

It seems unfortunate to me that there are reviews in this forum that judge this book negatively because the reviewers happen to disagree with the authors' choices. Of course you're not going to agree with all the choices (or even most of them), but even if you don't, the simple fact is that Cantwell and Friskics-Warren have crafted a beautifully-written, well-argued text that will start conversations and promote deep and appreciative listening of one of America's finest musical forms. Bravo.

I found this a really poorly done vanity project of the authors. They frankly write like a individual fan would, not like historians. I mean really THREE Sammi Smith records in the top 500?? That very talented lady only had THREE top ten hits period!! Some of the selections (MANY of the selections) seem deliberately chosen to provoke rather than being there for being truly outstanding recordings.

The fact that this listing is not a serious attempt to acknowledge ground-breaking or important recordings can be judged by the fact that so many recordings are grouped together in entries with their neighboring song on the list (ie: two Merle Haggard songs ranked side by side or Dolly Parton & Norma Jean's "working girl" songs ranked consecutively). This even goes on into the "alternate 100" list with three completely forgettable different songs called "The Other Woman" ranked side by side. The research here isn't very good either, most country music buffs won't learn a thing here. Sometimes it doesn't even appear the authors even really LISTENED to the record! For example discussing Norma Jean's record HEAVEN HELP THE WORKING GIRL they quote the line "we'd both be sorry if I did go home to your wife and your kids" as if some guy trying to pick Norma Jean up was inviting her home for supper!! Norma Jean actually sings "We'd both be sorry if I did, (pleading) GO home to your wife and your kids" ie: a man has propositioned her and she is pointedly reminding him of his family at home. How could they not understand that?? Similarly, they ludriciously compare Dottie West's A LESSON IN LEAVIN' to Aretha Franklin records, it has about as much in common with a Franklin disc as it does with A Beverly Sills' one.

And the authors make one of the most offensive (if unintentional) slams I've ever read on a country songwriter in their comments on Merle Haggard's recording "I'm A Lonesome Fugitive" (written by Liz Anderson with some assistance from her husband Casey) stating it was a song Haggard himself could have wrote. Well, dear authors, Mr. Haggard DID NOT write it, he had written almost nothing at this early point in his career and in fact his later songwriting was clearly inspired by the bitter and lonesome themes in the Liz Anderson songs he rode to fame with such as "Fugitive" and "Strangers". THAT would have been a more appropiate comment. Country songwriters are usually highly praised within the industry so it's strange to read comments in a book belittling their actual contribution.

I suspect the authors knocked this book out in a couple weeks. At least that's how it looks.

Not just a list of 500 of the greatest country singles (that's singles, the authors take pains to stress, as opposed to songs) but a series of almost 500 mini-essays which provide a new way of looking at the history of country music. Yes, it's very much the authors' personal selection and a great many of the singles are from that period which the authors term the "crossover years" of 1967-1973 but they make this clear from the start, setting out their stall in a masterly introduction which is more or less a manifesto for re-listening to country music. Cantwell and Friskics-Warren touch on much that has shaped and continues to shape country music including the increasingly homogenised state of US radio (which, sadly, sounds very similar to the condition of radio in the UK today). If this makes the book sound dry and academic, let me assure you that it isn't: it's intelligently written without being pretentious and the authors never lose sight of the fact that this music comes from the heart. This is a book that can be dipped-in to but it's best read sequentially as each essay forms part of a non-chronological history of country - as the authors state: the entries are ordered, not ranked. Some of the choices may well inspire puzzlement and debate (every time I've heard Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay" - and that's many, many times - I've never EVER considered it a country single!) but it's a fascinating volume and anyone interested in the history of American popular music should own a copy.

I've always been skeptical of musical "best of" publications such as Rolling Stone Magazine's "500 Best Albums" and "100 Best Beatles Songs". And this, "Country Music's 500 Greatest Songs". These compilations are, of course, reflections of the authors' musical tastes; however, one hopes the authors have researched their selections to the extent that they may have something interesting to tell us about the artists, the stories behind the songs, or insights into the recordings and production. Unfortunately, none of that comes through in this book. The authors offer long-winded, personal "analyses" of the songs, but add nothing of particular interest or enlightenment. After reading several dozen entries, the reader can almost predict how the next few hundred entries are going to read. In short, the reader will gain nothing here that can't be gained by simply listening to the songs.

The song selection here is a bit bizarre. For example, the authors list several songs for Charlie Rich, but they're obscure, little known, and certainly lesser quality songs... all the while ignoring Rich's biggest single of all, "Behind Closed Doors". While (rightfully) including entries for greats like Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard, the credibility of the project suffers with drivel such as Deana Carter's "Did I Shave My Legs For This", "This Kiss" by Faith Hill, and other "neo-country" songs that have helped bastardize the genre.

Musical taste is, of course, subjective. Many of the songs listed, to my taste, belong here. But honestly, I bought the book hoping to gain insight into the songs, the artists, and the eras. After reading a considerable way into the book, I realized this was not to be the case.

Thought this book had music and the words to many songs. NO, none, not one song in this book. Not words, not chords, not notes, nothing!!! If you want some facts about the songs (without music or words) that's all you will get. Otherwise, absolutely worthless.

Regis