I did what I do. I stuck my hand in and pulled out…….. Conway Twitty, The High Priest Of Country Music. Um, mom? Past couple of times I’ve said, “can’t do this, not today,” and picked again. I am not going to do that this time. But to gear up, I’m making more coffee and listening to Dan Mangan’s Oh Fortune. I watch the needle get perilously close to the center of the vinyl and my stomach is churning a little bit.

Conway Twitty was a name I have been familiar with since a spending a winter week in Minocqua, Wisconsin with my family and our friends at their lake house. After snowmobiling, wherein my little sister uttered her first audible swear word, we would settle in and watch All My Children and eat lunch. During the commercial breaks there would be those old commercials to buy albums or cassettes, pre-cd. Conway Twitty was apparently very popular up there, he featured A LOT.

A little wiki search to get my brain in the game shows me that, wow, highest amount of #1’s until George Strait overtook him in 2006. Mr. Twitty had died in 1993, extremely impressive hold on that record. (disclaimer, I’m a George Strait fan, have a cowboy sing you a song of his and you will be too). This album, The High Priest Of County Music, came out in 1975 and had two tracks that went to the top of the charts. “Touch the Hand” spent two weeks at the #1 placement of the country charts starting on July 19th, while “Don’t Cry Joni” a duet with his daughter, Joni, made it to #4 later that summer. I think that’s good for some background, yeah?

Ok, and away we go….

This is the story-telling, lost my wife, my dog, my truck, my house, country music. They’re good, they’re what you would expect. He’s got an excellent voice and musically it’s pretty standard for the genre. As he sings on the last track, “I’m goin’ crazy, she’s just goin'” I’m thinking, yeah, I would probably go too.

… annnnnd I think I’m depressed now.