12 country songs that will make you love the genre

I spent my formative adolescent years in a decade that saw rock and roll hit a peak and then begin a long, slow decline. It was the 1970s. It was the mid-Atlantic region of the USA. At the crossroads of north and south. Maryland, where I grew up, is south of the Mason-Dixon line and, therefore, technically a part of the South. But the Old Line State is pulled in many directions, from both north and south, and due to its proximity to Washington, DC, from whatever directions the prevailing winds are blowing in the nation's capital.

Despite that diversity, there was one thing we all knew. We did not like country music. We listened to rock & roll – be it hard, heavy, prog, or pop. We dabbled in soul and funk. Were early adopters of punk. Some of us even grooved in secret to bubblegum and disco. But country? No way, no how.

The closest we came to country was country rock – bands like the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, etc… We didn’t identify them as country. They were just rock bands with a twang. Had we been paying attention, we would have realized that one of our absolute favorite bands back in the day – Little Feat – was playing a hybrid of music that relied on country music as much as it did on rock and funk. How could we sing along to “Willin’” and profess to hate country music?

12 fantastic songs that will make you love country music

Alas, we were young.

To be sure, there were plenty of reasons to disdain country music back in the 1970s. When I talk to people today who have never warmed to it, they say the same things we used to say. It was redundant. Every song was about heartbreak. If sung by a woman, she cried. If sung by a man, he got blitzed. But the heartbreak was constant and quite frankly, it grew maudlin.

The most popular examples we heard were soft and bathetic. They were bathed in strings and rinsed in choirs. The drums were metronomic and the guitars rarely grabbed attention. This was Countrypolitan country – Nashville’s corporate-conceived attempt to win widespread popularity by appealing to the broadest and blandest. It was the result of one area’s iron-fisted control of the product.

Motown may have dominated early soul music, and New York may have birthed hip hop, but in short order, Philly and L.A., Chicago and Atlanta, and plenty of others all developed their own versions of the genre. That diversity helped the music grow.

But not in Nashville. At least not early on. Nashville was country music. What its powerbrokers decreed is what defined the length and breadth of the genre.

And yet, country music has created an abundance of sensational music from every corner. Traditional voices, as well as revolutionaries, have presented the world with countless songs that rival the best of any genre. My task here today is simple. I’m going to give you a playlist. It will be divided into parts, but each song serves the same purpose. Each song is guaranteed to make a listener who is not currently a fan of country music, become one.

By the end, you will have 36 songs. Today, in part one, we are looking at the early days, from the pre-rock and roll era to the birth of the outlaw movement which began breaking up Nashville’s ascendency.