VA - Dim Lights Thick Smoke & Hillbilly Music: Country & Western Hit Parade 1961 (2011) Lossless

Bear Family's fine ongoing series of country chart hits year by year is not only an eye-opening history of country music's various trends and fashions, it also serves as a reminder of how a pop music genre builds, grows, and evolves while still retaining its commercial viability and audience, and given country's longstanding lip service to tradition, it serves as proof to the old axiom that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This volume takes on 1961, and includes such enduring genre gems from that year as Don Gibson's "Sea of Heartbreak," Rusty and Doug Kershaw's romping "Louisiana Man," Jimmy Dean's "Big Bad John," Marty Robbins' "It's Your World," and Patsy Cline's two biggest and most immortal hits, "Crazy" and "I Fall to Pieces."