Chart Week: January 7, 1978
Song: “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” – Crystal Gayle
Chart Position: #16, 22nd week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for three weeks in November/December 1977.
What is the first American Top 40 show I remember listening to? If you know me, you understand that I wish I could identify that broadcast to give it the appropriate commemorative post. My first vivid memories of hearing Casey’s voice for which I can clearly identify the year are from 1978. Mostly in the spring, after my parents separated for the first time, and my mom and I moved in with a friend of hers for a few months until we got our own apartment.
However, there are murkier memories from earlier that year in which I remember specific songs, but can’t be sure whether I recall hearing Casey introduce them on his program.
When I listened to this countdown there was a flood of recollections from this moment in my life. Specifically of a big snowstorm that hit southeast Missouri in January 1978, wiping out several days of school. Snow days are always awesome, but this time the Star Wars action figures that my parents got me for Christmas, which famously had to be shipped to kids all over the country weeks after the holiday, arrived the day before this bonus break. I remember sitting in my room playing with the most prized possessions I had owned to that point in my young life while we were stuck inside, the biggest hits of the day playing on the very cool, European clock radio my aunt and uncle had sent me from Germany.
I’m guessing that storm came a little later in January than this countdown aired. So let’s say that sometime in the opening month of 1978 was the first time my brain registers me listening to Casey countdown the 40 hottest records in the country.
What entries sparked memories of that snowy month? Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “What’s Your Name,” “Sometimes When We Touch” by Dan Hill, “I Go Crazy” by Paul Davis, ELO’s “Turn to Stone,” “Just the Way You Are,” by Billy Joel, “We Are the Champions/We Will Rock You,” by Queen, and Styx’s “Come Sail Away.” I can hear them coming out of the speaker of that little radio as the sun reflecting off the piled up snow lit up my room. I can even feel the cold radiating off the window.
The tune that stuck out the most was Crystal Gayle’s biggest pop hit, “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” which spent three weeks at #2 in late 1977. I think it registered the most because my dad loved it, and, under the tree for him on Christmas morning was a copy of Gayle’s We Must Believe In Magic album. I remember that LP vividly for two reasons. First was Gayle’s striking appearance. She was a dazzlingly attractive woman. I might have been just six, but I wasn’t too young to sneak peaks at her pictures on the album sleeve when my parents weren’t looking. I’m sure the photos were super wholesome, but it felt like I was getting away with something when I sat in the corner next to our record player and stared at them. Second, we had no country music in our house. Nothing even close. So, even as a wee youngster, I was surprised by the addition of an album by a “country star” to the family album collection.
I think my dad, and tons of other people, liked it because it doesn’t sound country at all. It has a more jazzy, adult contemporary vibe. There’s just a hint of swing to it, as well, the gentlest cocktail hour nudge. Unlike Dolly Parton, who was at #5 this week with her delightful “Here You Come Again,” Gayle sang without any twang. “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” certainly leans more towards cheesy, country club cotillion schmaltz than Hee Haw honky tonk.
That lack of true country character is remarkable because of Gayle’s geographic origins and sibling connection. She was born in Paintsville, KY, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. You would expect her voice to drip of that hilly country, just like her oldest sister, Loretta Lynn. There was no mistaking where Lynn was from. On this song, at least, Gayle could just as easily have been from Southern California or New York as deep in the mining country of Kentucky. Some of that is explained by her family moving to Wabash, IN when she was four. Compared to rural Kentucky, Wabash was much more urban, which led to Gayle listening to all kinds of music other than country. And, apparently, softening her accent.
Casey referenced that biological link as he introduced “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” this week. He noted that despite her reputation as one of THE queens of country music, Loretta Lynn had never had the kind of Top 40 success her baby sister was having. For years there were rumors the sisters didn’t get along because of professional jealousy. They both tried to quash that talk, but for some reason it came to define their relationship in the music press. You wonder if it started with relatively innocent comments like Casey’s. Or if it’s just because people suck.
Gayle would crack the pop top 20 a couple more times in the Seventies as a solo artist, then hit #7 with the Eddie Rabbit on the duet “You and I” in 1982. She was a monster in the Nashville world, though. She hit #1 a staggering 18 times on the country chart, with 16 other singles reaching the top 10. That’s a hall of fame career. I haven’t listened to any of those tracks, so I don’t know if she sounded more traditionally country on them, or if her voice always landed in that sweet range where no genre could entirely claim it.
I don’t love this song, but I don’t hate it, either. While lacking any regional identifiers, her voice is very nice. Gayle does an effective job portraying her sadness about a romance that is ending, but adds a subtle smokiness that should make her man want to come running back to her. Legend has it that it features the first studio take she recorded of “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.” She took a couple more cracks at the tune, but the producer told her to stop, as her initial effort could not be topped. She doesn’t show off a huge range, but stays in a pocket where every note is perfect. To bad the rest of the track kind of stinks. But a pretty face and a pretty voice can go a long way. Especially when you are six. 6/10
