Countrypolitan.... Guilty Pleasure or Blight on the Cosmos?

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Dateline 1975
Back in the late '70s, somebody thought it would be an absolutely capitol idea to merge Country & Western with Disco...
the end result was the short-lived "Countrypolitan" style and such weird crossover hits as Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy".
This thread exists so that the ILM collective can dismantle, dissect and discuss this weird blip on the radar.

to refresh your memory, here's a list of the hits of the Countrypolitan fad.

Barbara Mandrell - Sleeping Single in a Double Bed

Bellamy Brothers - If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me

BJ Thomas - (Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song

Charlie Rich - Rollin' with the Flow

Crystal Gayle - Talking in Your Sleep

Don Williams - Tulsa Time

Eddie Rabbitt - Every Which Way But Loose

Emmylou Harris - Together Again

Freddy Fender - Before the Next Teardrop Falls

Freddy Fender - Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

George Jones - Golden Ring

Glen Campbell - Southern Nights

Kendalls - Heaven's Just a Sin Away

Merle Haggard and the Strangers - Always Wanting You

Oak Ridge Boys - Sail Away

Ronnie Milsap - It Was Almost Like a Song

Ronnie Milsap - Cowboys and Clowns
Statler Brothers - Do You Know You Are My Sunshine

so... Countrypolitan: Classic or Dud, Search and Destroy, or just call the whole thing off...?

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:39 (nineteen years ago) link

Classic guilty pleasure, absolutely. BJ Thomas and Charlie Rich churned out some great cheeze-pop in that period. Maybe it all makes more sense after one hears the Jayhawks cover Rich's "Life's Little Ups and Downs" in concert.

Was Anne Murray countrypolitan?

― Joseph McCombs, Friday, 6 August 2004 15:46 (nineteen years ago) link

Obviously some of it is really, really bad, but I can't help but love most of Billy Sherrill's (over)production work in the mid/late 70s.

― Avi (Avi), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:47 (nineteen years ago) link

Rhinestone Cowboy was my first favorite song. There's an 8mm of me singing it, age four. CLASSIC.

― frankE (frankE), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:51 (nineteen years ago) link

hmmm, that's not the definition of countrypolitan that i grew up with. to me, and i thought to most people, countrypolitan meant country with "pop" arrangements, especially strings, in the manner of owen bradley's patsy cline productions, billy sherrill's charlie rich productions, and things of that ilk. its heyday was well before disco.

and at its best it was absolutely great.

and charlie rich is not cheez-pop. he's one of the all-time great pop (and country, and r&b, and a few other thing) singers. and from the '50s through the mid-'70s, he as often as not had absolutely worthy material to go with that voice.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:52 (nineteen years ago) link

Wait, Chuck didn't start this thread?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:53 (nineteen years ago) link

There's a book about the Countrypolitan Sound (it actually started way back in the days of Patsy Cline but reached it's cheesy apex in the late 70s.)
Gimme a sec to google search for the title and author.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:56 (nineteen years ago) link

i agree with fact checking cuz (who reminds us all how he got his name, um, except for the "cuz" part), countrypolitan was the whole billy sherrill/chet akins sound: country with beefed-up (often string-laden) arrangements and very high production values. much of it is absolutely sublime; but there was a lot of it (country singers had a habit of releasing like 10 records a year for a while there) and inevitably a lot of dross.

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Friday, 6 August 2004 16:00 (nineteen years ago) link

anyway country didn't discover disco (in a big way, at least) until the very late 70s/early 80s by which point the "new traditionalists" were right around the corner.

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Friday, 6 August 2004 16:01 (nineteen years ago) link

and "Outlaw Country" was rebelling against it as well.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, 6 August 2004 16:07 (nineteen years ago) link

but anyhow...
Classic or Dud, Search and Destroy, say something interesting about... etc etc etc.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, 6 August 2004 16:10 (nineteen years ago) link

speaking of outlaw country, anybody heard this guy? I thought this was great:

http://www.furious.com/perfect/garystewart.html

― mikey, Friday, 6 August 2004 17:41 (nineteen years ago) link

didn't get an answer in the 70s soft rock thread so i ask here. is this the same stuff as things like Lee Hazelwood, "Wichita Lineman", "Afternoon Delight", etc?

― JaXoN (JasonD), Friday, 6 August 2004 18:02 (nineteen years ago) link

five years pass...

i'd love to hear a really sweet compilation of this stuff. anyone know if that exists?

jaXoN, i could see those examples lumped in with this category for sure... any slick overorchestrated country music is cool by me!

wikipedia includes elvis presley's "suspicion minds" as an example of countrypolitan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_sound#Examples_of_Countrypolitan

― akaky akakievich, Saturday, 26 September 2009 01:52 (fourteen years ago) link

I love "Heaven's Just a Sin Away" so much.

― clotpoll, Saturday, 26 September 2009 16:29 (fourteen years ago) link

five months pass...

search:
Don Williams "Tulsa Time" "Good Ole Boys Like Me"
Glen Campbell "Wichita Linemen" "By the Time I Get To Phoenix" "Rhinestone Cowboy"
also, Charlie Pride has a good country voice

destroy: kenny rogers & ronnie millsap

all things considered I prefer willie, kris & waylon

― lukevalentine, Sunday, 14 March 2010 22:42 (fourteen years ago) link

I guess Willie has his crossover hits & pop production too, but I am thinking of the Red Headed Stranger period

― lukevalentine, Sunday, 14 March 2010 22:43 (fourteen years ago) link

Classic - Most of these tunes listed are pretty great.

Dud - It probably led to the de-countrynization of country music, where a good portion of country music now sounds like Bryan Adams instead of George Jones.

― earlnash, Sunday, 14 March 2010 23:17 (fourteen years ago) link

Ronnie Milsap has some good stuff, actually.

Ronnie Milsap

And though I agree lots of country sounds more like commercial rock used to now, it's also worth saying that country's de-countinazation has probably been in process almost as long as country's existed. (George Jones didn't sound like Jimmie Rodgers, either.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 14 March 2010 23:36 (fourteen years ago) link

George Jones definitely sounds country, if more to Hank Williams than Jimmie Rogers. You could have the Possum singing in Opeth and it would probably still sound like country with that voice.

It is what it is, probably Anne Murray was one of those singers that was hugely popular on country music radio in the 70s and 80s, that really didn't sound country, but it does make sense next to many of the female artists that have dominated country music over the past couple of decades.

― earlnash, Monday, 15 March 2010 00:08 (fourteen years ago) link

- fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, August 6, 2004 8:52 AM (5 years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzBt-2jQ3Iw

― that's not my post, Monday, 15 March 2010 04:14 (fourteen years ago) link

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