The Billboard Hot 100 Number Ones

[Kapitan]

"It's Only Make Believe," Conway Twitty
(Nov. 10 and Nov. 24, 1958)

"It's All In The Game" stayed atop the Hot 100 for six weeks, from Sept. 29 through Nov. 3, but for the week of Nov. 10, there was a new song and a new artist atop the charts.

Harold Lloyd Jenkins, a 25-year-old U.S. Army veteran was an aspiring rock 'n' roll or rockabilly singer and songwriter who, after returning from the Far East in the service, toiled at writing and finding his sound. He even recorded with Sam Phillips at Sun Records. (While none of those recordings were released, Roy Orbison did release a version of Twitty's "Rockhouse" in 1956.)

Looking for a more commercial-sounding name, in 1957 he changed he became Conway Twitty--getting the names by scanning a map and seeing Conway, Arkansas, and Twitty, Texas. He released his first single, "Just In Time," in 1957. It did not chart.

In early 1958, Twitty was touring Canada with drummer Jack Nance, and between sets, the two wrote a song titled "It's Only Make Believe." They recorded it in Nashville in early May 1958, and by July 1958 it was in stores as Twitty's fourth single. Four months later, it stood at the top of the Hot 100, knocking off the record-setting "It's All In The Game." Twitty, heavily influenced by Elvis Presley to enter the business in the first place, reportedly often was mistaken for The King on this song because of the vocal similarities.

Its stay atop the charts was brief, just one week, although it returned to the top one week later. The second trip was the same, just one week long. But Twitty continued releasing songs that became hits on the Hot 100 for nearly a decade before reinventing himself as a country artist. (He did not reach the Billboard Country charts until 1966; his previous hits were all on the Hot 100.) "It's Only Make Believe" remains his only #1 song on the Hot 100, though he reached that position on the Country charts numerous times in subsequent decades. 

After a very successful country career, Conway Twitty died in 1993. He became ill during a performance, collapsed on the tour bus afterward, and died of an abdominal aortic aneurism in the hospital. He was 59.

[lonelysummer]

The last time I can remember competing versions of the same song on the Hot 100 was when Leann Rimes and Trisha Yearwood both recorded "How Do I Live". Trisha had the bigger hit on country radio, but Leann got the pop hit.
It surprises me looking at the 60's charts how soon a remake could follow the original hit. Jose Feliciano with "Light My Fire" was only a year after the Doors. Johnny Rivers covered "Tracks of My Tears" and "Baby I Need Your Lovin" only a year or two after the Miracles and Four Tops.
It's Only Make Believe" is another one I've heard many versions of. Glen Campbell had a hit with it in 1970. Robert Gordon did a version of it on his "Rockbilly Boogie" album. I'm surprised Elvis never did it.

[Sheriff John Stone]

Another late 50's classic. This wasn't doo-wop. Country/rockabilly was very influential during this period. I love these ballads of "heartbreak". They were so to the point and laid out there. "It's Only Make Believe" is another one of those familiar songs that pops up on most late 50's Best Ofs. And, yes, there have been many covers of this song through the years. As lonelysummer mentioned, Glen Campbell did a nice version (in 1970 it reached #10 on the Hot 100 chart, #3 on the Country chart, and #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart); I have a live Campbell CD where he performs a great version. Yep, "It's Only Make Believe" is a good one. Not bad for a B-side!

[Kapitan]

And Twitty himself revisited it a few times, including with Loretta Lynn on their joint 1971 album We Only Make Believe and a collaboration with Ronnie McDowell in 1988.

[jk]

Lovely song. Can't beat those piano triplets!

I like the way the melody optimistically works its way up though an octave before falling back in resignation when CT sings the all-important title.

[Sheriff John Stone]

Go Conway!

...and an early Glen Campbell performance, right around the time he was a Beach Boy:

[kds]

I can't say I'm overly familiar with this song, though I feel like I'd heard it somewhere before. Maybe my grandfather played it way back when he used to have the radio tuned into a station that played older country music. I couldn't tell you what that station would've been as my folks never played it, and I'm fairly certain is ceased to exist before the dawning of the 21st century.

[Kapitan]

Aug 1, 2023 12:24:22 GMT kds said:

I can't say I'm overly familiar with this song, though I feel like I'd heard it somewhere before. Maybe my grandfather played it way back when he used to have the radio tuned into a station that played older country music. I couldn't tell you what that station would've been as my folks never played it, and I'm fairly certain is ceased to exist before the dawning of the 21st century.

I don't recall having ever heard this song before this week. 

If I had heard it, I probably would have assumed it was an early non-hit by Elvis Presley. Instead it was a #1 hit not by Elvis Presley.

My only recollections of Conway Twitty from my youth are about seeing his name or image on TV, probably for various compilation albums like they used to sell via TV ads (Freedom Rock! "Turn it up, man," the burnout on the ad said like a stoner) and thinking he both had a funny name and a funny look. I had no idea he'd done anything other than country, either.

[kds]

Aug 1, 2023 13:01:00 GMT Kapitan said:

Aug 1, 2023 12:24:22 GMT kds said:

I can't say I'm overly familiar with this song, though I feel like I'd heard it somewhere before. Maybe my grandfather played it way back when he used to have the radio tuned into a station that played older country music. I couldn't tell you what that station would've been as my folks never played it, and I'm fairly certain is ceased to exist before the dawning of the 21st century.

I don't recall having ever heard this song before this week. 

If I had heard it, I probably would have assumed it was an early non-hit by Elvis Presley. Instead it was a #1 hit not by Elvis Presley.

My only recollections of Conway Twitty from my youth are about seeing his name or image on TV, probably for various compilation albums like they used to sell via TV ads (Freedom Rock! "Turn it up, man," the burnout on the ad said like a stoner) and thinking he both had a funny name and a funny look. I had no idea he'd done anything other than country, either.

I probably wouldn't have been able to pick Twitty out of a lineup until he became a running cutaway gag on Family Guy. 

[Sheriff John Stone]

Yeah, I first heard the name "Conway Twitty" before I ever saw him, and yeah, I expected to see some little, skinny, maybe-nerdy guy despite his voice. But, Conway Twitty was actually scouted by the Philadelphia Phillies!

Conway Twitty was huge in country music. The guy recorded about a hundred albums and released as many singles. He was one of those country artists who was always touring. I remember he used to come to Hershey, PA a lot. I had a friend who mentioned to me one time - excitedly - that she was going to see Conway Twitty in Hershey. I almost chuckled...I was ignorant. I also remember that Conway was on all of those country music TV shows like Hee Haw and Porter Wagoner and stuff. It's a shame he died so young. I also had a friend who died suddenly and tragically of a stomach aneurysm. Sad.

[Kapitan]

"Tom Dooley," The Kingston Trio
(Nov. 17, 1958)

This one's for good ol' Al Jardine. 

The song that knocked Conway Twitty from the #1 spot in November 1958--and which was knocked from the #1 spot by Conway Twitty just one week later--was a murder ballad dating back at least 30 years that describes a murder that occurred nearly a century prior.

The Song
Tom Dula was a North Carolinian who had been a lover to Anne Foster from the time he was 12 years old (in 1856; she was 14) until he joined the Confederate Army in 1862. When he returned home in 1865, he rekindled that romance despite Foster having married, becoming Anne Foster Melon. But he also took up affairs with Melon's cousin Laura Foster and their cousin Pauline Foster. 

In May 1866, Laura Foster left her father's home on horseback--according to folklore so she could marry the father of her unborn child, Dula. Based on comments from Paula Foster, Laura Foster's dead body was recovered and both Dula and Melon were suspected of the crime. By this time, Dula had fled to Tennessee and begun working under the pseudonym Tom Hall for Col. James Grayson, who did not know Dula prior to hiring him (as Hall), and helped a possee detain Dula.

Details about the murder remain a mystery. At his hanging, Dula reportedly said that while he "did not harm a single hair on that lady's head," he also deserved his punishment, leading some to suspect he was involved in the plot but that a jealous Melon was the murderer. Other rumors said that the murder was punishment for Laura having given Dula syphillis. (All four lovers, Dula and the three women, had syphillis.)

The song "Tom Dooley" is credited to local poet Thomas Land, reportedly written soon after the events. ("Dooley" being a regional pronunciation of the name Dula, similar to the Grand Ole Opry being the phonetic spelling of the formal name Grand Ole Opera.) An Appalachian musician named Frank Proffitt recorded a version that, while not the earliest known recording (by about a decade), is largely responsible for the song's preservation. Proffitt learned the song from his aunt, who learned it from her mother, who actually knew the parties to the murder! Proffitt's version was recorded by Frank Warner, a man who collected folk music. Warner later recorded the song himself.

The Singers
By the early '50s, Hawaii natives Bob Shane and Dave Guard and San Diego native Nick Reynolds, all college students in northern California, began performing folk music around their campuses (Stanford University and Menlo College). Sometimes they were a trio, other times their group expanded to include other friends and musicians, often under the name Dave Guard and the Calypsonians. It was an unserious college group. Shane returned to Honolulu after graduation to work in his family's business while Guard and Reynolds--and occasionally others--continued performing around the Bay Area.

Eventually a publicist began working with the group as they became more serious, and they re-recruited Shane back to the mainland in March 1957 to join what would become known as the Kingston Trio (Kingston being the capital of Jamaica, and Jamaican-inspired calypso music being popular and a part of their sound).

Their publicist worked with the group on uniforms (three-quarter-sleeved striped shirts) and rehearsed them up to eight hours a day, not just on music but on "spontaneous" stage banter. They were able to parlay a week-long engagement at the Purple Onion into six months, turning that into a national club tour. They demurred offers to record singles, eventually signing an exclusive 7-year recording contract with Capitol Records that would allow them to release full-length LPs.

The Recording
The Kingston Trio spent three days in February 1958 recording their debut album, which was released on June 1 of that year. That album included an old Appalachian murder ballad they'd heard and learned from some random auditioner at the Purple Onion: "Tom Dooley."  (Of interest to this board, this popular album also included a traditional Caribbean folk song known as "(The Wreck of the) 'John B.'" That song played a major role in the Beach Boys' catalogue.)

While the non-album track "Scarlett Ribbons" was the group's first single, "Tom Dooley" became their second. It remained on the charts for four months, including one week at the top, and remains the group's only gold single. Its sucess helped catapault the album to #1 on the charts, as well, and is sometimes credited with starting the "folk boom" of the late '50s and early '60s.

In later years, based on testimony from an assortment of relevant people including several named above, courts ordered the Kingston Trio to pay royalties to Proffitt. (In a 1967 interview, Reynolds acknowledged the issue of folk groups including his own taking songs that may have been copyrighted but crediting their recordings to themselves, and having been sued repeatedly for this practice.)

Here is the Kingston Trio's biggest hit, the #1 song of the week of Nov. 17, 1958, the pop-folk version of the Appalachian murder ballad "Tom Dooley."

[kds]

This is one with which I'm somewhat familiar. Although, vocal harmonies aside, it doesn't do much for me.

Perhaps it's because I associate it with a friend I had in elementary school who played the song at the school talent show three years in a row. He would play electric guitar and sing solo. Now, I'll give him credit for going up there and playing / singing in front of people solo at such a young age. That takes a level of guts I don't possess. But, he also used to claim to be taking guitar lessons, but his performances never got better.

[Kapitan]

This is one I've known my whole life, more or less. My dad, born in 1944 and a huge fan of harmony singing, was the right age to be influenced by that "folk boom" of the late 50s and early 60s. We had both this version and the Smothers Brothers' 1961 version from their live ...At the Purple Onion album. But mostly I remember it from my dad singing and playing it on his old late '50s Martin dreadnought acoustic, with various brothers, aunts or uncles harmonizing.

That said ... I don't think it's much of a song. I was very interested to dig in to the history of it, though!

[Sheriff John Stone]

Yes, "Tom Dooley" is another one of those familiar folk songs and AM radio hits that you hear various places through the years. I most recently saw a older (age-wise) version of The Kingston Trio perform the song on a PBS special highlighting the folk music years, though the special was a good ten years' old. The chorus is memorable, it's one of those sing-along types that was popular in the folk music era. The lyrics are quite graphic for the late 1950s. I'm curious if other folk songs displayed such dire(?) lyrics. I guess Dylan hit a nerve with some of his songs.

Yes, The Kingston Trio's "(The Wreck Of The) John B" made an impact on Al Jardine which manifested itself a few years' later on Pet Sounds, but I also wonder if the spoken intro (to a song) also stuck with Al. I'm thinking of "Santa Ana Winds" and A Postcard From California.

Oh, and another thing...did the Kingston Trio's garb directly influence The Beach Boys' future look?

[jk]

Aug 2, 2023 16:25:30 GMT Kapitan said:

This is one I've known my whole life, more or less. My dad, born in 1944 and a huge fan of harmony singing, was the right age to be influenced by that "folk boom" of the late 50s and early 60s. We had both this version and the Smothers Brothers' 1961 version from their live ...At the Purple Onion album. But mostly I remember it from my dad singing and playing it on his old late '50s Martin dreadnought acoustic, with various brothers, aunts or uncles harmonizing.

That said ... I don't think it's much of a song. I was very interested to dig in to the history of it, though!

I prefer The Four Preps' send-up of the song in "More Money For You And Me" (after 3:30).



Your introductory post is a fabulous read, Cap'n.