VA - Dim Lights Thick Smoke & Hillbilly Music: Country & Western Hit Parade 1963 (2011)

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 1963, and includes such enduring genre gems from that year as Buck Owens' "Act Naturally," Dave Dudley's original version of "Six Days on the Road," Bobby Bare's "Five Hundred Miles Away from Home," Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," and Ray Price's "Night Life."