“Baby, Baby (I Know You’re a Lady)”
David Houston
Written by Alex Harvey and Norro Wilson
Billboard
#1 (4 weeks)
January 3 – January 24, 1970
A very memorable decade open with an unforgettable single from a fading sixties star.
David Houston was most notorious for his classic singles “Almost Persuaded” and “My Elusive Dreams,” the latter a duet with a young rising star named Tammy Wynette.
He made some questionable vocal choices even on those seminal records, but he’s completely untethered from the lyric, the band, and maybe even reality on this dizzyingly awful record, which is memorable in all of the wrong ways.
That Billy Shirrell produced this record without his trademark strings was ultimately its downfall. We needed a few loud sections here to drown this poor guy out. What a disaster this is.
Houston wouldn’t return to No. 1 again, but he’d come close a handful of times, reaching No. 2 with “A Woman Always Knows” in 1971 and “Good Things” in 1972. His chart fortunes slowly faded as the decade progressed. Houston earned his final top ten single with “Can’t You Feel It” in 1974 and his final top forty single with “Faded Love and Winter Roses” in 1979.
Remarkably, he remained an active recording artist through the end of the eighties, charting for a final time in 1989. He was just shy of his 58th birthday when an aneurysm claimed his life in 1993.
“Baby, Baby (I Know You’re a Lady)” gets an F.
Every No. 1 Single of the Seventies
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Welcome back Kevin! I can’t believe you’re doing two decades at the same time!
I got a greatest hits of David Houston a while back and while there were a few impressive singles here and there I was largely unimpressed. Also hot take but “Almost Persuaded” is on a list of mine of overated classics that everybody recorded but I never thought was a great song. I can’t believe it went to #1 for as long as it did especially when Tammy Wynette had a better recording. I will say his album “New Voice of Nashville” is pretty good.
Hit’s of David’s I like:
“Where Love Used to Live”
“Wonders of the Wine”
“Mountain of Love”
“A Loser’s Cathedral”
“Passing Through”
Well what a surprise Kevin! David Houston is an artist I truly don’t know much about. I like Almost Persuaded, but I wouldn’t say it’s one of my true favorites. This one is wretched though. Thankfully, the 70s (and the year 1970 in particular) will have some bonafide classics to make this worthwhile to revisit.
My goal is to try and comment on every song, both 70s and 2000s. Let’s see how far I get!
I’m looking forward to this decade being featured, because I have a lot to learn about it. From what I do know, I think I’ll like the 70s better than I liked the 80s.
The 70’s is my favorite decade of the “country song”. Looking forward to seeing your reviews
If the criticism is of the song and not the performance, than David Houston is not your culprit.
Blame Alex Harvey and Norro Wilson, who, like David, are no longer around to defend themselves.
The performance is so much worse than the song. So, so much worse.
Hey Kevin for accuracy purposes and this is just for me. Charley Pride’s single “I’m So Afraid Of Losing You Again” was a multi week chart topper. Did it stay at #1 for 1969 only or was it still a #1 country song in 1970?
It was number one through the end of 1969 but not in the first week of 1970.
Wow – I never realized you had such animus for Houston
https://www.countryuniverse.net/2012/02/29/100-greatest-men-66-david-houston/
While this is by no means my favorite David Houston single, the ‘F’ you’ve given the song is ridiculous. I would give it a ‘C’
Since this is his only Billboard #1 of the 1970s [Record World has three more songs reaching #1], I guess I had better defend him here. David Houston was a fairly unique artist, vaguely resembling Slim Whitman and Lew DeWitt (and no one else), who knocked around for a decade before hooking up with a producer who understood how to best present him. That producer was Billy Sherrill; David Houston was the artist on whom Billy tested and perfected his production ideas/formula. Sherrill used Houston for duets with rising stars Tammy Wynette and Barbara Mandrell – while Tammy had already had one big hit, his duet with Barbara Mandrell, “After Closing Time” was her first top ten single.
Epic issued 16 solo albums on David Houston plus two Greatest Hits albums and a World of David Houston two-album set. I liked the pre-1971 albums better than the later efforts, as they feature more covers and less filler, but Houston’s albums were always an eclectic mix meaning you never knew what kind of gem (cowboy songs, pop songs, western swing, Irish ballads or other folk material) you would find among the non-singles. I saw Houston perform live on three occasions and he was always uneasy before live audiences. Houston is poorly represented on CD but there are two almost identical hit collections available – CCM (24 tracks) or T-Bird (23 tracks) and I would regard 18 of the charted singles as being A- to A quality
https://mykindofcountry.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/country-heritage-david-houston/
Oh wow. I didn’t realize the country singles of the 70s were forthcoming in tandem with the 2000s #1s. If that was announced, I missed the memo. Unfortunately, my familiarity with the country from the early 70s will be insufficient for me to chime in with thoughtful reviews for most of these songs. When I come across a song I’m well enough acquainted with to offer worthwhile critical analysis of, I’ll do so, but particularly in the first half of the decade I suspect they’ll be few and far between. I’ll do what I can to listen to all of them and better acquaint myself with the era’s hits though.
My hot take on this one was that it wasn’t nearly as horrendous for me as the review prepared me for. I didn’t love it but if this qualifies as an “F” in the early 70s, it reinforces my gut feeling that I’m outside my depth in analyzing this era. On to the 2000s reviews!
I find this oddball performance oddly charming. The dynamics and stuttering tempo echo the awkward hope of the lyrics. This guy knows he will likely be rejected but he cannot stop himself from feeling his feels and asking for want he wants.
The greatest sin of this song is that it unabashedly strives to be genuine and fun despite the narrator feeling so anxious in his desire.
On Tom Breihan’s column The Number Ones at Stereogum, Tom ends each column with “Bonus Beats,” where he mentions notable needledrops, covers, or samples of the song being covered. I’d thought I’d start sharing bonus beats on these columns myself.
For this entry, here’s the version that the 50s and 60s veteran Ferlin Husky recorded: https://youtu.be/G53mhIvTHqw