I read that site and all I can say is that I would of course not know anything at all about popular music acts in the UK, being English myself and also being an enthusiastic member of the music buying public during the time that Boxcar Willie was supposed to be ‘massively succesful’.
That article reads just like an advertisement, which when you look at the albums available for sale, is just what it is, and it dresses up the truth somewhat.
Why do you assume that just because someone or some organisation has posted on the net, that their opinion is actually more authorative than someone who lived through it, saw what little there was was of it.
I look in my Guinness book of British hit singles and what do I find on the page which includes the Boxtops ?
Nothing, absolutely nothing about Boxcar Willie, not even one single song reaching 100 or higher in the charts for one week.
Even Barbara Streisand made it to the top spot in 1980 which is supposed to be Boxcar Willie’s best year over here.
Doesn’t seem like he was all that great a success over here.
At the time I was 22, well paid and rapidly expanding my record collection.Music at the time was one of the mainsprings of my liofe.
Country music in the UK pretty much died out in the 1970’s and became a real minority thing, Tammy Wynette and others were simply sources of parody to folk like Billy Connolly.
During the late 1970’s right through to perhaps the early 1990’s mainstream country music was regarded in the UK as a bit of a joke.
There has been a bit of a comeback but US aficionados of the genre would probably cringe at what we in the UK call country music, being as the biggest sellers are the Dixie Chicks, the genre is sometimes described as ‘New Country’
I remember Boxcar Willie being on a couple of chat shows with Terry Wogan, and Des O’Conner but as far as the UK is concerned, he rose with hardly a trace, I haven’t even seen his albums in the cheapies at the car boot sales (which would be what you Americans call trunk sales ?)