1956 Top Ten: The Waltz of the Angels (#2)

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Well, the bad news is that you’re stuck with another 70-year-old classic country music song for today’s celebration. The good news is that it’s the last one. Yes, and we’re revisiting the 100 favorites list yet again (also for today’s 1966 song and tomorrow’s 1956 song). Good years for music! Here’s today’s song, with the “Linda? NO!!!!” tag. #2: The Waltz of the Angels - Wynn Stewart Oh, wow, I love this song. It’s a hard song to butcher (but Johnny Paycheck did ). The Wynn Stewart version, from his first stint on Capitol Records (he would return to Capitol in the mid-60s for his biggest hit, “It’s Such a Pretty World Today”), is the gold standard…simply because he did the second verse. The Lefty Frizzell version (also released in 1956) is spine-tingling, but he didn’t do the second verse. I guess most of the subsequent versions omitted that because it made the song too long. If you look at the video linked below, you’ll see that Stewart’s version clocks in at just over three minutes…which was too long back then. (Yes, record company executives had a cow when Marty Robbins’ 4 1/2 minute epic “El Paso” was released in 1959.) Funny how those things cycle: in the 40s, songs had to be three minutes long because of the way jukeboxes and close-out grooves on 78s worked together. Most of you have never heard it, or even heard of Wynn Stewart. That’s sad. He was an underrated great in the days of the Bakersfield Sound era, so much so that Merle Haggard said that, without him, there would have been NO Merle Haggard. The Waltz of the Angels Written by Dick Reynolds and Jack Rhodes Recorded by Wynn Stewart Released as a single, 1956 I’ll love you forever and keep you from harm: