Plethora of Pop’s Rate-A-Record

1959: There Goes the Smoke Drifting Past Our Eyes

Or when certain lonely teardrops fall

Photo by Pascal Meier on Unsplash

It might be a good thing that artists don’t look back and fixate themselves on the what-might-have-been’s or the what-actually-was’s of Pop/country/R&B chart history.

For instance, if he were here to tell us, I bet Johnny Horton would be mighty proud to know that in 1959, his “Battle of New Orleans” topped both the year-end Pop and Country charts. That’s a victory worth celebrating, and while it’s a pretty cool song — one I heard a guy in college perform as if he were channeling Horton right to us — I wouldn’t have predicted it would top two charts given what lay waiting underneath.

For instance, what could Marty Robbins have thought about “El Paso” coming in three spots behind on Country’s Hot 100? Or, what did Ray Price think when his epochal “Heartaches By the Number” failed to make the Top Twenty, sliding in at #22?

And I see that Lefty Frizzel’s The Long Black Veil,” which definitely was covered by both Johnny Cash and The Band, climbed in at #44 on the Country charts. There’s no lone justice, for sure, so instead, let’s make this one the first song we’ll be rating today: