Favorite BIG #1 HITS Through the Years: 1960 Country

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As I mentioned, when counting down pop songs that topped the Billboard country charts I'd be a little more tolerant if you say you've never heard them. Still, all of these songs did top the country charts, and most of them are classics. Here's a song that was number one the year I was born. 1960 (Country): Alabam - Cowboy Copas You've probably heard of Cowboy Copas. Much like the Big Bopper, he's an afterthought to a tragedy: he was one of three country singers killed in a plane crash on March 5, 1963 near Camden, Tennessee. Most people, however, refer to it as "the Patsy Cline plane crash." Well, as my hero Eddie Stubbs says every time he plays a Cowboy Copas song on WSM, Copas did a whole lot more in country music "than just die in a plane crash with Patsy Cline." His career goes back to the late 1930s. In 1943 he joined King Records in Cincinnati (not too far from his Adams County, Ohio birthplace) and released a number of big hits. Copas was the first person to record "Tennessee Waltz;" and, as it's been told numerous times, if he'd had $50 with him, he would have been credited as the writer of that song! (It was very common for songwriters to sell the rights to their songs for food or rent money. Willie Nelson has only recently been credited as the author of the Claude Gray hit "Family Bible," because he sold the rights to the song to Gray in exchange for grocery money. A friend has researched Knoxville resident Arthur Q. Smith, showing that he wrote a lot of country classics, and then traded them for his bar tab.) In 1960 Copas roared back into popularity with this terrific song. It introduced him to a new audience and rekindled the memories of his hits from the 40s with the older fans. There were only four #1 songs in country music in 1960. That shows how special this song was. Alabam Written by Lloyd Copas Recorded by Cowboy Copas Released as a single, 1960 #1 for 12 weeks I caught three in my cornfield: