The year 1974 certainly was not bereft of hit country songs. Several of what are now considered classic country hits were released in 1974. We found three country songs from that year, which sound even better today.
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“I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton
It’s hard to fathom that Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” is 51 years old. The song, played as a love song for countless couples in the decades since then, was originally written by Parton as a goodbye letter to Porter Wagoner, when she wanted to leave his TV show and venture out on her own.
“I was trying to get away on my own because I had promised to stay with Porter’s show for five years. I had been there for seven,” Parton recalls. “And we fought a lot. We were both very much alike. We were both stubborn, and we both believed that we knew what was best for us. Well, he believed he knew what was best for me, too. And I believed that I knew more what was best for me at that time.”
“So, needless to say, there was a lot of grief and heartache there, and he just wasn’t listening to my reasoning for my going,” she continues. “I thought, ‘He’s never going to listen. He’s just going to b*tch every day that I go in to talk to about this.’ So, I thought, ‘Wait. Why don’t you do what you do best? Why don’t you write this song?’”
The song is famous on its own, thanks to Parton’s superstar career. But it had a major resurgence in 1992, when Whitney Houston sang it for the blockbuster film, The Bodyguard.
“Annie’s Song” by John Denver
“Annie’s Song” was a Top 10 hit for John Denver on the country charts, while also hitting No. 1 on both the all-genre Billboard 100 and the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. Denver wrote “Annie’s Song” by himself, for his then-wife, Annie Martell Denver.
“Annie’s Song” says in part, “You fill up my senses / Like a night in a forest / Like the mountains in springtime / Like a walk in the rain / Like a storm in the desert / Like a sleepy blue ocean / You fill up my senses / Come fill me again.“
At the time, the couple was separated, with Denver writing the song on a ski lift, while thinking about his wife.
“Suddenly, I’m hypersensitive to how beautiful everything is,” Denver says (via Songfacts). “All of these things filled up my senses, and when I said this to myself, unbidden images came one after the other. All of the pictures merged, and I was left with Annie. That song was the embodiment of the love I felt at that time.”
Sadly, the song wasn’t enough to keep the two together, and they divorced in 1982.
“I’m A Ramblin’ Man” by Waylon Jennings
Before Waylon Jennings had a hit in 1974 with “I’m A Ramblin’ Man”, Ray Pennington, who wrote the song, had a Top 30 hit with the song in 1967. But it’s Jennings who took the song to the top of the charts, on his The Ramblin’ Man album, also out in 1974.
According to Classic Country Music Stories, Jennings didn’t originally want to record “I’m A Ramblin’ Man”. Pennington and Jennings were in the studio on the same day, with Pennington planning on recording “Oklahoma Sunshine”, which Jennings really wanted. He made a deal with Pennington that if he let him have “Oklahoma Sunshine”, he would also record “I’m A Ramblin’ Man”, and the rest is history.
“Oklahoma Sunshine” is also on The Ramblin’ Man record, although it never became a single.
Photo by Andrew Putler/Redferns
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