The Smiley Smile Message Board

Does anybody else have the affliction, that as they get older, they see more and more talent in people they just completely ignored when they were younger?

When I was a kid, lots of old people liked Conway Twitty.  I thought "tight fittin' jeans" was pretty decent.

Now that I'm older, when they play something like "I Don't Know a Thing About Love" my heart hurts.  I mean he was so damn good, when you're listening to his good songs, you forget that anybody else ever knew how to sing.  EASILY one of the most talented singers I've ever heard.  His style dates well, too, that song should be a standard by now, I don't know who wrote it, but good god. 

It seems like every few weeks I find another one I've either never heard or forgotten that's flawlessly good. 

Am I alone in this affliction?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dpba4DB6-I

Not really, no. :=). Thanks to other posters on various boards I've been reacquainted with the likes of Freddie and The Dreamers, Herman's Hermits and other sixties bands that I used to sneer at in my youth. Maybe it's because YouTube and the like give us greater access to their less well-known stuff, B-sides and album tracks, which makes for a more rounded picture. Same goes for The Monkees. Masses of stuff, in fact.

I sh*t on Joe Meek as a kid, probably because at that age you tend to look at the artists and the songs, when Joe was all about production. Now he's one of my big heroes.

I like some stuff of Conway Twitty but he's not really one of my favorites (and I'm a country music fan). He had talent for sure, but there are much better singers imo. Don't really care for his Sun recordings either

I think he had a way of sounding pretty authentic when he sang something.  He made a lot of cheezy stuff for the women, and they loved ever minute of it, but some of his ballads are top f*cking notch in my opinion.  Something like his cover of the Rose at first listen sounds kind of like an overly dramatic stage production of the song or something, but the more you hear it, you start realizing that he's singing it pretty honestly, that's how he carried himself.  It's very different than the divine Ms. Midler's.  He was a very confident dude, and it came through in all his music.  He always had the ability to show emotion in his songs, but not come across as just dialing it in or faking it.  He was a master at nuance and inflection, every syllable was thought out.  I've got a ton of respect for him.  

At the end of the day, in every song he always had that 'switch' he could turn on and take the vocal to that zone he sang so well in.  "The best friend a country song ever had".  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO59ITNCxzk&feature=related

I like anything he did from 1957-63.

This is a fantastic version of "It's only make believe" ! Easily beats the great studio recording:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&hl=en&v=kipXyKxRW_E&gl=US (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&hl=en&v=kipXyKxRW_E&gl=US)

He was great.  You have to resist the urge to just listen to his biggest song, however. 

Pretty amazing though how he plays around with the notes a little bit in that version.  He must have really been feeling it that day.  He almost loses it several times but walks the line with it. 

That's the difference between him and Elvis.  Elvis walked the line and never even came close to losing it, lol. 

I don't think my english is good enough to understand what you mean with "losing it"

The writers of Family Guy either really like him or hate him. I'm not sure which.

I was wondering about that too. But since they don't make any jokes about him, I guess they like him

Oh sorry... what I meant was, Conway plays around with the notes a little bit, and he almost does it too much, where it hurts the song.  He "loses" the melody.  He doesn't quite, though. 

Elvis played around with notes and melody as much as he wanted, and never even came close to hurting the song. 

I'm basically just saying they were both great singers in my opinion. 

Sorry, I just didn't understand it but now I see what you mean. Thanks for the explanation.

I think the biggest I learned from listening to his early stuff is that he had a real feel for R&B. Don't You Cry No More is great in particular. Too bad he didn't get to cut more at Sun.

Conway was just awesome and a lot more progressive than he gets credit for.

You've got guys like Gram Parsons who get most of the credit for creating country-rock, doing country from the rock'n'roll side of the fence, but guys like Conway and Buck Owens were doing rock from the country side. I realize Conway began as a rockabilly singer, but after he crossed over to country he kept pushing the envelope by injecting rock tunes into his repertoire. He did a really rockin' version of Proud Mary for instance in the early 70s.

here's another good example. these two songs are from a 1967 appearance on the Porter Wagoner Show. the show aired out of Nashville and had probably the whitest and most conservative audience of any show on the air. the first song is a stone country ballad, and the second one speaks for itself. both top-notch:

If You Were Mine To Lose (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1V9OLco-_I&feature=plcp&context=C3e5aba4UDOEgsToPDskJrA-gkGcwIvsKuHQURBMsV)

Working Girl (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOZ4AWWLtXw)

I see where you're trying to get, but it wasn't THAT unusual for country singers to play some bluesy stuff like this. Johnny Cash's version of "Goin' to Memphis" comes to mind. Jerry Lee rocked up the songs too (I can't stop loving you, Jackson), the Everly Brothers did some great records in this vein, too. Even Faron Young did a very nice "Memphis Tennessee".


And your right, the songs are cool. I like "If you were mine to lose" the most of these two performances. I'm a fanatic for tear-jerkers

My dad didn't like the Beatles.  He felt that they changed music for the WORSE, away from the Motown stuff he liked.  So: even though most people LOVE the Beatles, he saw what they did as a negative thing.


Similarly, lots of people didn't like what Conway did to country music.  He was capable of singing about anything, and he really, really 'rocked' country up, like you said bossaroo.  He had a great voice for rock.

Also, he made some really begging, pleading, sex-injected music.  Country music wouldn't play a lot of this stuff unabashedly even TODAY, so it's amazing to me the stuff he got away with back in the 70's and 80's.  I mean some of it was dripping wet. 

Here's a song of his I really like.  He sings it, almost embarassingly hokey.  I feel though that he was doing it on purpose, knowing how fucking GREAT the hook sounded with that rock sound he sprinkled on everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Twl7-ocPc

If anybody else would have sang that, it would have sounded laughingly bad.