VA - Dim Lights, Thick Smoke & Hillbilly Music: Country & Western Hit Parade 1965 (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 1965, and includes such enduring genre gems from that year as Roger Miller's iconic "King of the Road," Eddy Arnold's beautiful "Make the World Go Away," Merle Haggard's "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers," Dick Curless' "A Tombstone Every Mile," and Buck Owens' "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail."