'60s Country

"The Nashville Sound" was going strong as the 1960s begin, yet one of its standard bearers, Patsy Cline ("Crazy," "I Fall to Pieces") would live only three years into the decade before her untimely death in a plane crash. In turn, Cline's young protégé, Loretta Lynn, emerged with her breakthrough hits, "Don't Come Home a Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind)" and "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)." Offering a more down-and-dirty alternative to "The Nashville Sound," Buck Owens ("My Heart Skips a Beat") began the decade as a leading proponent of "the Bakersfield Sound," and then closed it out as a co-host of the landmark TV show Hee Haw.

As the 1960s got underway, Hank Locklin's plaintive honky-tonk tones sent "Please Help Me, I'm Falling" to the top of the charts, where it stayed for months. Midway through the decade, smooth country crooner Eddy Arnold hit it big with "What's He Doin' in My World?" and Johnny Cash hit bottom after being banned from the Grand Ole Opry for smashing out its footlights in a speed-induced frenzy. And as the '60s concluded, Beach Boy-turned-country star Glen Campbell, host of TV's Good-Time Hour, scored a haunting hit with the Jimmy Webb composition "Wichita Lineman."

A hero of "The Bakersfield Sound," real-life outlaw Merle Haggard became a star in the '60s, hitting throughout the decade with such future country standards as "The Bottle Let Me Down." The decade also saw Conway Twitty successfully change his image from rockabilly roustabout to superstar with lush chart-toppers like "Next in Line," and "The First Lady of Country Music," Tammy Wynette, made her indelible mark on the genre with standout vocals on her first single, "Apartment No. 9."

The 1960s was a decade of radical change in all aspects of American life, and that quintessentially American music form, country, was no exception. The '60s saw massive shifts in country's sonic landscape, as the polish of "the Nashville Sound" — embodied in its first wave by such stars as Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline, and later by Tammy Wynette, George Jones, and Conway Twitty, among others — led, in turn, to the rock-tinged, electrified honky-tonk of "the Bakersfield Sound," a movement spearheaded by Buck Owens and then Merle Haggard. The crossover strains of country-rock were heard in the music of late-'60s stars such as Glen Campbell, while American icon Johnny Cash defied definition and forged his own distinctive identity.