Debut of Twangy Tuesday: The Twitty Mystique
Getting at why this king of hitmakers is not as revered today as most.
I am trying to bring some order out of the chaos that is this Substack by theming days.
I mean, y’all never know what’s coming next, and some of y’all are not interested at all in some of the things I write about, but very fond of others….And on my end, I need discipline, assignments, the imposing of writing about certain things on certain days, or at the very least, writing extensively in advance on certain things so I can run them on their designated days, if that makes any sense.
Anyway, for the debut of Twangy Tuesday, we will examine Harold Jenkins, a.k.a. Conway Twitty, a.k.a. the Casonova, the Valentino, the Loverman Par Deluxe of post-Countrypolitan C&W music.
I was goaded to this topic by a post on Tyler Mahan Coe’s 20th Century Country Facebook page. Member Garret Cash described at length what he called the "Conway Twitty problem."
Which was: Twitty recorded great songs, either by himself or others; enjoyed top producers and studio talent, “sang with a grit and simmer missing in most country artists that was palpably intense,” and remained more or less traditional through various pop-leaning phases for the genre, notably the early 1980s.
“He also had a highly successful duet team with Loretta Lynn, and let's not forget the fact that the man's insane record of 55 number one hits has only been beaten by George Strait,” Cash wrote.
And yes, Cash allowed, Twitty is, of course, in the Hall of Fame, but…and here is the Conway Twitty problem in a nutshell:
He does not receive the adoration today afforded to Merle, Willie, Buck, Dolly, Cash, Jones, or his long-lasting duet partner Loretta Lynn.
Cash again:
As for Jones, I think it would be safe to say that Conway Twitty's 60's-70's style can be fairly close to George Jones to the point that neophytes could get them confused (I've seen this happen multiple times firsthand). So why do many people get into Jones but don't seem to ever express appreciation for Twitty?
He goes on to mention the very short shrift Twitty received from Ken Burns in his country doc. I haven’t seen much of it, but I am assured by people I trust who did see the whole thing that it was one of Burns’s most glaring omissions.
Cash again:
[The] general attitude taken now if people know about him at all seems to be that Twitty had some classic hits like "After the Fire is Gone" and "Hello Darlin," that he's ripe for memes, and that he had a lot of hits. What's missing here? On paper he sounds like he should be a fan favorite to this day, but his presence seems diluted.
So…yeah, I have theories.
Number one, Conway’s audience was, by design, female.
Unlike those other male singers, Conway sang directly to women, as opposed to about women. To take Willie as an example, he’d sing about a good hearted woman in love with a good timin’ man (kind of a casually abusive song, when you think about it), an angel flyin’ too close to the ground, or the blue eyes cryin’ in the rain he was leaving behind.
George would turn inward for shame cycle songs about how he himself (“If the Whiskey Don’t Kill Me”), or some other train wreck of a man (“He Stopped Loving Her Today”), was losing or had already lost the one he loved; and well, all the rest of those guys would sing songs of love and heartbreak that were primarily from a male point of view and mostly directed at men.
Men in the audience could relate with Buck when he sang about the tiger he caught by the tail or even (cringe) the girl who was “Made in Japan”; or Merle singing about shared hard times in “If We Make it Through December” or marital strife in “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink” or a dirty New Orleans weekend with a girlfriend as in “Livin’ With the Shades Pulled Down.”
Not Conway: Conway, that silver-tongued devil in a Member’s Only jacket and rockin’ that white boy Gheri curl, whispered pretty love words directly in the ears of the women in his audience.
“Conway’s secret was that he looked like their husbands, but he told them everything they wanted to hear from their husbands, but their husbands wouldn’t tell them,” says Greg Ellis, Head Honcho in Charge of Groovers Paradise Record Shop outside Austin, and a music sensei of mine for decades now.
Ellis cites words like these, from “I’d Love to Lay You Down”:
There's so many ways your sweet love made this house into a home.
You've got a way of doin' little things that turn me on.
Like standin' in the kitchen in your faded cotton gown
With your hair all up in curlers, I'd still love to lay ya down.
And then there are these, from the same song, which to me, now, at 51 years old, reveal McCartney’s “When I’m 64” lyrics as the charming juvenilia they were:
When a whole lot of Decembers are showin' in your face.
Your auburn hair has faded and silver takes its place.
You'll be just as lovely and I'll still be around.
And if I can, I know that I'd still love to lay you down.
“If I can.” Lol. Well, Conway died pre-Viagra…But, I mean, what aging married woman still anywhere close to still in love with her husband doesn’t want to hear words like those? Conway promised not only undying love, but eternal fucking, or at least so long as he was able. (And he’d still be admiring you if he wasn’t.)
So my initial theory was that Twitty’s fading reputation came from…well, I guess the patriarchy? Maybe the men of his time had grudges over these sexual jealousy issues stemming from the wives’ crushes on the permed one? Ellis doesn’t think so, and as usual, he’s right. He says the more enlightened men among his fans saw him as a Love Coach.
“He didn’t cut the men in his audience out — he was telling them what they needed to do,” he says. “Which was, ‘I will throw you down on this table and give it to you even when you are old and your hair is in curlers.”
Still, most country historians and archivists and Deciders of the What’s Cool from the past are men, and men might have had issues with Conway. Though classic country radio plays the hell out of him still, you won’t hear the cool kids mention him in reverent tones the way they do Merle or the Possum, because while his is undeniably a stalwart of the commercial canon, he lies just afield of the cool kids testament.
Maybe their moms stared a little too ardently at the album covers, or were disproportionately passionate after a concert experience, or shit, I don’t know, maybe those words just don’t resonate with the straight dudes of yore who tend to be the keepers of various flames. For whatever reason, Conway is regarded as lesser.
Perhaps it was his wholesomeness. While he was far more frankly sexual than most others of his era, or, really, any other, it was always in the context of marriage.
Except when it wasn’t:
“He would get exotic from time, as with ‘Linda on My Mind,’” Ellis points out. “But even then it was, ‘I’d really like to be fucking my neighbor’s wife, but I still kind of enjoy fucking my own.’” He might be a heartbreaker, but it was agonizing, and the women in the audience identified with Linda, not the one of whom he sang:
“Lord it's killing me to see her crying
She knows I'm lying here beside her with Linda on my mind…”
Because they knew they were the ones who could squeeze his hand the way Linda did, that night they first danced close, and she confessed she was so hot for him, even though she was her best friend’s husband. (See how this inverts the norms? Usually it’s the dude in love with his best friend’s wife, and variations…)
Or…maybe I am overcomplicating things. Merle, Dolly and Loretta sang about subjects ranging far from romantic love. Buck had a far more distinctive sound and his own Swiss-watch tight band. Willie is the Cosmos, and Jones plumbed Dostoevskian misery with a Big Thicket tenor that will never be duplicated. Twitty really was a one-trick pony: the husband you wished you had. But he did it very well and for a very long time, and as a Love Doctor, a High Priest of Hot Monogamy (most of the time), some of his advice still attains.
Part of the issue is visual - Willie and George were memorable-looking in a Serge Gainsbourg-kind of way. Twitty just looked like your average beefy 70s Southern guy - he could have passed for my Aunt Jean’s 2nd, 3rd or 4th husband.
Persuasively argued!