These 4 Country Songs From the 1970s Make Us Glad That Classic Country Is Back

With artists like Charley Crockett and The Red Clay Strays starting to get noticed by even pop-country fans, I think it’s safe to say that old country is coming back. Here are some classic country songs from the 1970s, from “Coal Miner’s Daughter” to “The Devil Went Down To Georgia”.

Videos by American Songwriter

“Coal Miner’s Daughter” by Loretta Lynn

In this country hit, Loretta Lynn sings about life on a hill in Butcher Hollow. There, her daddy “shoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar.” Inspired by her real-life story, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” would not only give Lynn a No. 1 hit on the Billboard country chart, but it would go on to become one of her most enduring hits ever.

In 2000, Lynn told NPR, “I didn’t think anybody’d be interested in my life. I know everybody’s got a life, and they all have something to say. Everybody has a story about their life. It wasn’t just me. I guess I was just the one that told it.”

“Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings

Off the 1978 Waylon & Willie album, this track definitely stands out. The song went to No. 1 and even earned Waylon and Willie a Grammy for Best Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal.

In the chorus, Waylon and Willie sing,

“Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys / Don’t let ’em pick guitars or drive them old trucks / Let ’em be doctors and lawyers and such / Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys / ‘Cause they’ll never stay home and they’re always alone /Even with someone they love.”

In his memoir, Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die, Willie spoke a little bit to the dynamic of his and Waylon’s friendship.

“Well, you know, Waylon and I were like two old married people,” Willie shared. “We fought about everything, and if he was for it, I was against it. And you know, that’s kinda the way it was. But we were great friends.”

“Jolene” by Dolly Parton

There are very few country songs that truly span generations as this one does. “Jolene”, Dolly Parton’s classic, came out in 1973 and has been keeping country fans’ attention ever since. Singing of a woman whose “beauty is beyond compare / With flaming locks of auburn hair”, “Jolene” actually tells a true story for Dolly Parton.

On The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Dolly Parton told the tale of the real-life Jolene. She was allegedly a bank teller who was apparently flirting with Parton’s husband at one point.

She told Jimmy, “Oh but just so you know, I did see Jolene not so long ago, she’s not so hot now.” The audience erupted in laughter.

“The Devil Went Down To Georgia” by The Charlie Daniels Band

If you haven’t heard this fast-paced fiddle classic, you aren’t doing country music right. You wouldn’t know it from the song’s success, but at the time, the tune was actually just created to fill a space on the band’s upcoming album.

“We had rehearsed, written, and recorded the music for our Million Mile Reflections album, and all of a sudden we said, ‘We don’t have a fiddle song,’” Daniels shared with SongFacts. “I don’t know why we didn’t discover that, but we went out, and we took a couple of days’ break from the recording studio, went into a rehearsal studio. I just had this idea: The devil went down to Georgia.”

Photo by: David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images