Pretty Mary Sunlight - Jerry Reed
Wildfire.
Broken Lady - Gatlin Brothers.
I’m remembering Queen of the Silver Dollar but it’s not the Dave & Sugar version or the John Lee Hooker version. I must be remembering a different song, just sounds like Silver Dollar.
Thumbs up, up, up. Two songs that I really love.
Emmylou Harris covered that one too…might be the version you’re thinking of?
SS
Shel Silverstein wrote “Queen of the Silver Dollar.” It was first recorded by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, but it was strictly an album cut.
The first version of “Queen of the Silver Dollar” that was a hit on the country charts was by Doyle Holly, who was the bassist in Buck Owens’ Buckaroos. It’s likely this version that you remember hearing on the radio.
It probably isn’t any of these three songs (which, though they fit your theme to varying degrees, come from ten years later than your time frame), but it’s a good excuse to post them anyway.
The late and definitely great Vern Gosdin, aka “The Voice.” Amazingly, these three were successive single releases from him, and he had many other great hit songs as well.
Well she’s not exactly obscure, but you just never hear much about Crystal Gayle any more. (Makes my brown eyes, y’know…)
Oh man I could post a hundred songs and not even run out of choices. For now
Joe Stampley
Jerry Reed
A younger, less poppy Crystal Gayle
Tanya Tucker, with a song they’d never get away with today
Merle Haggard, also with lyrics you couldn’t get away with these days
Remember how good country songwriting was when pickups, Jesus, and the flag didn’t have to jammed into every song?
MIss Donna Fargo
(You Can’t Be a Beacon If Your Light Don’t Shine)
and Miss Dottie West
(Last Time I Saw Him)
I think this is pretty obscure: Eddie Rabbitt’s Rocky Mountain Music.
Well, only if you consider a song that hits #5 and is on the Top 40 country charts for 12 weeks to be obscure!
This might not be as obscure as I think but I was certainly surprised when I found out The Pointer Sisters not only recorded but actually wrote a C&W song.
The only version I know of is the Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show version and I know I’ve never had any of their albums. I remember hearing it many times (it was one of my favorites at the time) on the radio. So by album cut do you mean it wouldn’t have been played from an album in a station?
I mean it wouldn’t have been played on a Top 40 radio station the way Dr. Hook’s singles — such as “Sylvia’s Mother” and “Cover of the Rolling Stone” — were. (Double-checking…“Queen of the Silver Dollar” was the B-side of “Cover of the Rolling Stone.” If it didn’t chart independently…which it didn’t…then Top 40 radio didn’t play it.)
It’s possible you would have heard their “Queen of the Silver Dollar” on “underground” FM stations, which along about this time started morphing into AOR (Album-Oriented Rock) stations.
Meanwhile, virtually all country music stations played only singles, almost never album cuts. So the Billboard country charts, where Doyle Holly first hit with his version of “Queen of the Silver Dollar,” were analogous to the Billboard Hot 100, which tracked pop and rock singles play.
To further confuse things, the AM/FM distinction starts becoming meaningless along about the mid-1970s, as more Top 40 stations started moving to the FM band. And just as with the change in terminology from “underground” to AOR, Top 40 morphed into CHR (Contemporary Hits Radio).
Does this count? Doug Sahm - “It’s Gonna Be Easy”
Here’s a 70’s favorite of mine: Heaven’s Just a Sin Away, by the Kendalls, a father-and-daughter duo. I think they were pretty much a one-hit wonder.
Two hits! Pittsburgh Steelers (Or “Stealers?”)
70’s country, my first and strongest memory Luckenbach Texas
Waylon dominated 70’s country radio.
2nd memory, jessi colter I’m not Lisa
