Various - Country & Western Hit Parade 1966 - Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Hillbilly Music

1-CD Deluxe album with 72-page booklet, 31 tracks. Total playing time approx. 83 mns.

As far back as the mid-1940s, 'Billboard' magazine had polled dee-jays, including country dee-jays, to tabulate the year's top records, labels, artists, and industry guys. On October 19, 1966 the magazine announced its nineteenth annual country winners in one of the Grand Ole Opry's early homes, Nashville's War Memorial auditorium. Minnie Pearl hosted the event and received the 'Man of the Year' award. The show was filmed for television, and parts were aired on Dick Clark's morning TV show, 'Swingin' Country.'

The 'Billboard' awards were held during Country Music Week, an industry event that began in 1950 when someone in the advertising department at the Opry's parent station, WSM, suggested bringing country dee-jays from around the nation to Nashville for a celebration. Fewer than fifty showed up for the first gathering in 1951, but it became the annual Disc Jockey Convention, and soon morphed into Country Music Week. Artists thanked dee-jays and labels pitched new acts. It was an industry schmooze-fest out of sight of the record buying public, and, by the mid-1960s, it was a big event with lots of drinking, eating and whoring.

Today's televised country awards shows, all of them aimed at the industry and the public, had their roots in the mid-1960s. They were the ACMs (the Academy of Country Music awards), the CMAs (Country Music Association awards), and the CMT (Country Music Television awards).

The Country Music Association was formed in Nashville in 1958. In 1967, the CMA eclipsed 'Billboard' by launching its awards show during October's Country Music Week. There Goes My Everything was Song of the Year, Single of the Year, and Album of the Year, and its performer, Jack Greene, was Male Vocalist of the Year. Meanwhile, the Association's Country Music Hall of Fame was expanding. There had been annual inductions since 1961, and the 1966 inductees were Eddy Arnold, Jim Denny, Opry originator George D. Hay, and recording pioneer Uncle Dave Macon. Aged 48, Arnold was the youngest living inductee. Hay, aged 72, had long since fallen out with the Opry, and was living in Virginia Beach. The awards were displayed at the Tennessee State Museum until the Hall of Fame Museum opened at the apex of Music Row on April 1, 1967.

Faron Young's 'Music City News' magazine launched its own awards in 1967, and the show finally made it to television in 1978. The 1967 Song of the Year was There Goes My Everything. In 1988, the MCN awards were taken over by a cable TV operator, The Nashville Network, and when TNN disappeared, the fan-voted awards became known as the Country Music Television (CMT) awards.

But the winner for first country music award show was the Country & Western Music Academy. Launched in Los Angeles in 1963 to challenge country music's Nashville-centrism, the Academy’s first get-together was held the following year at the Red Barrel nightclub in Los Angeles. The host was Tex Williams, and most of the early members were Hollywood cowboys rather than Bakersfield honky tonkers. The first awards show was held on February 28, 1966 at the Hollywood Palladium, making it, by common assent, the first-ever all-country awards show. By then, most of the top California-based performers were on board and the association soon became known as the Academy of Country Music. The show was televised from 1973 and stayed in Los Angeles until 2003 when it moved to Las Vegas.

Two more country music industry awards began around this time. The Nashville Songwriters Association was launched in 1967 by Eddie Miller (Release Me), Buddy Mize (The Shoe Goes On The Other Foot Tonight), and Bill Brock (I'll Just Have A Cup Of Coffee). The NSA immediately began issuing Songwriter of the Year awards for the previous year's best work. Dallas Frazier won for There Goes My Everything. Not to be outdone, BMI launched its Songwriter of the Year award in 1967 (Don Gibson was the first country winner, ironically so as he had almost stopped writing) together with the Robert J. Burton award for the writer and publisher of the previous year's most performed country song (won by Glenn Sutton and Billy Sherrill for Almost Persuaded).

On October 15, 1966, 'Billboard' acknowledged country music's growing popularity by increasing the number of positions on its Hot Country Singles chart from 50 to 75. There were just five positions in 1945—our starting point for this series. 'Billboard' also began a new method of tabulating radio airplay, and this was at a time when airplay figured into chart positioning. One consequence was that hits came and went more quickly. In 1967, twenty records topped the charts compared with eight in 1947. In 1986, a new record topped the country charts literally every week of the year.

As a postscript, it's worth reiterating that charts and award shows celebrate the most successful records, but we don't. This series gives equal prominence to the year's most influential and groundbreaking records, successful or not.