Various - Country & Western Hit Parade 1953 - Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Hillbilly Music

1-CD-Album deluxe with 72-page booklet, 28 tracks, playing time: 75:06 minutes.

One event towered over 1953, and it happened between midnight and dawn on January 1. Somewhere in West Virginia Hank Williams died in the back seat of his Cadillac. As often happens, there was an immediate uptick in demand for his records, and MGM cut back its mid-January release schedule from twelve to six records to meet the orders. Its plant in Bloomfield, New Jersey worked around the clock cranking out Hank. Acuff-Rose's two Hank Williams song folios usually sold around 700 copies a month, but both sold 5500 copies in the three weeks after his death. Dee-jays block-programmed his music in segments as long as two hours. The tribute records flooded out (we have a selection of them on 'Songwriter To Legend', BCD 16286) and, more than fifty-five years later, the tributes still appear. Arguably, no one ever had a greater impact on country music.

In sales terms, Hank Williams wasn't the best-selling country artist of his day. Eddy Arnold and Red Foley way outsold him, but younger artists were drawn to the enigma of Hank Williams in a way that they were never drawn to Arnold or Foley. That said, two of 1953's breakthrough artists, Jim Reeves and Marty Robbins, owed far more to Arnold than Williams. For Hank Williams, death was the best career move he ever made. In terms of forging a legend, no one would ever do better. Within a few years, most of his contemporaries had to figure out how to come to terms with rock 'n' roll and then the Nashville Sound. Hank was painfully ill-equipped to deal with either, and death spared him the indignity of trying. Ironically, three artists who came to the fore after his death, Hank Locklin, Jim Reeves and Webb Pierce, were older than him. His rise and fall had been that meteoric.

Many of the big country hits of 1953 were up-tempo novelties. In fact, RCA's top-selling disc in all categories for a couple of weeks was Homer & Jethro's How Much Is That Hound Dog In The Window, but we've omitted it together with Eddy Arnold's biggest hit of the year, the crassly self-referential Eddy's Song (the lyrics were his song titles strung together). We've also omitted Goldie Hill's answer song to Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes and Hank Thompson's nursery-rhyme-like Rub A Dub Dub, both of which topped the charts. In their place, we have grittier, if poorer selling, songs like Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Loud, Loud Music and Let Me Go, Devil.

The next volume in this series, covering 1954, will mark the debut of Elvis Presley, and while Elvis was strikingly original, there was already something stirring in country music. In 1953, Curtis Gordon released Rompin' And Stompin' (available on a Bear Family CD devoted to Gordon's work), Red Foley covered Faye Adams' R&B hit Shake A Hand (available on 'Sugarfoot Rag' in Bear Family's 'Gonna Shake This Shack' series), and both Lucky Joe Almond and Little Jimmy Dickens covered Piano Red's Rockin' With Red (the latter also available on Bear Family). In that vein, we've included Merrill Moore's Red Light and Tommy Duncan's cover version of Big Mama Thornton's Hound Dog.

In the broader industry, 1953 marked the fifth anniversary of the introduction of the LP, and that year the dollar sales of LPs to home consumers outstripped the dollar sales of singles and EPs (ten-inch LPs still outsold twelve-inch LPs, but by 1955 the sales would be roughly 50/50). Of course, jukebox operators only bought singles and the ops still accounted for a large slice of the business, but the trend toward long-playing records was gathering steam. Acknowledging that, Columbia Records started its Epic subsidiary primarily as an LP label. Country music, though, was still a singles-driven market, and these are some of the best country singles of 1953.

Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Hillbilly Music

Country & Western Hit Parade

“Collecting an anarchic mix of sex and sentimentality, earnest paeans to family and fanciful tales of drinking and cheating, DIM LIGHTS… affords a fascinating glimpse into black-and-white ‘50s polemics… Established stars, inspired wannabes proffer an intoxicating brew of dancefloor honky tonk, hillbilly boogie, bluegrass, western swing, incipient rockabilly, goofball novelty, and sentimental country-pop.” (UNCUT magazine)

 

The reviews are in and everyone from Australia to Los Angeles to London is raving about Bear Family’s definitive year-by-year country series. Starting in 1945, DIM LIGHTS, THICK SMOKE, AND HILLBILLY MUSIC (COUNTRY & WESTERN HIT PARADE) tells the real story of country music record-by-record. The hits are here, but so are groundbreaking records that went nowhere at the time. This is the true and uncensored history of country music. Everything you need to hear, year-by-year. Stars like Hank Williams, Bob Wills, Eddy Arnold, Ray Price, and Hank Snow are here, but so are beerhall legends like Eddie Noack and Sonny Burns, and roots music mavens like Charlie Feathers and the Stanley Brothers, as well as overlooked giants like Carl Belew and Floyd Tillman. You’ll also hear the incredible original versions of songs like Duelin’ Banjos, Release Me, Lonely Street, and many more!  Every CD is full to the brim with great music, and they’re all individually packaged in hardcover 72-page books by Colin Escott that tell the story of every song as well as the broader music history of the time. Fabulous photos, original record labels, and period advertisements round out the packages.

Bear Family began its journey into year-by-year anthologies with its groundbreaking and award-winning BLOWIN’ THE FUSE/SWEET SOUL MUSIC series that tells the story of R&B from 1945-1970. Look for the series to continue into the Funk era. And look for a year-by-year Rock ‘n’ Roll anthology coming soon.

# After the volumes covering 1945-1955 were released, the word was out. This series is definitive, fabulously packaged, and faultlessly remastered! Everything you'd expect from Bear Family…and more!

# Jack Clement, who produced Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, Don Williams, and many others, said, "This is the best country series of all time. No doubt. No question." Robert Hilburn in the 'Los Angeles Times'said, "An invaluable album project…enables fans to step back in time and listen to the radio just like Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, and Bob Dylan did."

# Now the story continues from 1956 until 1960. Every CD is generously full. Every booklet is extensive and chocked full of rare photos and illustrations, as well as complete stories behind the songs!

# In addition to the hits, the series contains rarities that went on to influence country music…and all music…in the years ahead, like Wanda Jackson's original version of Silver Threads And Golden Needles, Carl Belew's original Lonely Street, and Chet Atkins' influential Walk, Don't Run.

# This series is designed to introduce new listeners to the very best that country music has to offer… while keeping longtime fans entertained. Every volume is a fabulous time capsule.

 

Here's the story

For many years, we'd received requests to do a truly definitive country series, but it wasn't until the success of our year-by-year R&B/Soul series, 'Blowin' The Fuse' (now 'Sweet Soul Music' and soon to be continued into the Funk era) that we decided we needed to do something comparable for country music. The first volumes of 'Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Hillbilly Music' took us from 1945-1955, and now the story continues into the era of the Nashville Sound.

The series has been compiled with today's fans in mind. Sure, the big hits are there, but so are the classic performances that weren't necessarily hits at the time, but became influential in the years ahead. Every volume has incredibly detailed behind-the-scenes stories, fabulously rare photos, and an ongoing history of country music set against the backdrop of the broader American music business. The booklets alone are 72 pages! Definitive? You bet!

Superlatives are often overused, but we feel that this series is part of our mission to bring this incredible music to new fans ... as well as entertaining older fans. We pick up the story in 1956....just as country music was coming to terms with the upset of rock 'n' roll!

And, keeping in the spirit of the releases, some of the artists' listings are as they originally appeared - like Jim Edward and Maxine Brown and Bonnie, Wayne Raney - Raney Family (Wayne, Wanda and Zyndall) and Marty Robbins with Ray Conniff -  while the cd in each set is stored in a reproduction of a 45 rpm record label bag appropriate to that year.

Country music author and historian Colin Escott is responsible for these remarkable releases, an obvious labour of love that has taken considerable research effort, offering a valuable insight into the development of country music over the years. Many of country music's foremost entertainers are included alongside others who may have only earned a place in the footnotes of country music history, but all present a variety of voices and differing musical styles that have virtually disappeared, over half a century later, in contemporary country music's conveyor belt output. The songs were also different back then: sometimes relating to current events, they also regularly centred upon themes like boozin', honky-tonking and slippin' around, now generally considered non-pc in these over sensitive times.

Country & Western Hitparade - CD-Album-Series by Bear Family

Read more at: https://www.bear-family.com/bear-family/country-series/country-und-western-hitparade/
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