Favorite BIG #1 HITS Through the Years: 1975 Country

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When I began this series I said that people know how, ahem, peculiar my tastes are, so I was going to try to prove that I do know and like some #1 songs. I also said that I'd give people a pass on the country side of this series, simply because not everyone likes country music as much as I do. So, with that said, here's a song that hit #1 in country music....that you've probably never heard. 1975 (Country): Blanket on the Ground - Billie Jo Spears Billie Jo Spears had a pretty minor career in country music. She only had five hits, but two of them were doozies. One was the late 60s song, "Mr. Walker, It's All Over," about a woman who left Garden City, Kansas because she thought the grass was greener in New York City. The other one was this, her only #1 hit. Every now and then you can find a song that sounds like it's right in that country music groove of adultery, but if you listen just a little casually you see it's not. Bill Anderson had that with "Wild Week-End" in the 60s, with a song about "slipping out of town on a wild weekend" but at the end you find out his partner on this "adventure" is his wife. That's a similar thing here. There were some reservations about this song because of the line, "Just because we are married don't mean we can't slip around." Well, you can if you're slipping around with your spouse! Controversy is good for a song (or, at least it was back then). Despite the fact that some program directors couldn't listen and comprehend what was going on in the song and banned it (country music programmers worrying about that? Oy!), it was a very popular song for Billie Jo, and remained so throughout the rest of Spears' life. And, just to show you how things can go, this was written by Roger Bowling, who also wrote one of the songs on the "songs that make me cringe" list, "Coward of the County." Oh well, at least he hit the mark with this tune. Blanket on the Ground Written by Roger Bowling Recorded by Billie Jo Spears #1 for one week I'll get the blanket from the bedroom: