“Hello Darlin'”
Conway Twitty
Written by Conway Twitty
Billboard
#1 (4 weeks)
June 6 – June 27, 1970
The seventies really was the decade of great country stylists delivering countless classic records that have stood the test of time.
Conway Twitty will have plenty of those throughout this decade, beginning with “Hello Darlin’,” which remained his signature hit for the rest of his career, supplanting his rock ballad classic, “It’s Only Make Believe.”
“Hello Darlin'” captures Twitty in transition from rock star to country crooner. The legacy of his early sides can still be heard in the way that he approaches his power notes and layers his vocal with background singers. But there’s also a pulsating hillbilly heartache underneath it all, and that sound is now becoming the dominant one.
This record heralded the arrival of a bona fide country superstar, and he’s only going to get better from here.
“Hello Darlin'” gets an A.
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This is why I love 70’s country. It just doesn’t get much better. Perfect song, performance. This day in time it’s hard to define what someone considers REAL country music. I like both traditional and pop country but real country to me is when you FEEL every note. This song does just that.
Hello Darlin’ is the perfect embodiment of everything Conway did so well. The spoken word at the beginning is what makes the song (according to Conway himself) and harkens to his seductive side that defines so much of his work. But it’s the ability to have a pure country arrangement, which Conway did so well (Linda On My Mind, Fifteen Years Ago, This Time I’ve Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me, etc.), and the powerful vocals that showed his range and strength as a singer. I think there’s Conway songs I like better, but this one shows off his talent package so well. One of the genre’s most iconic songs, and with good reason. With 2000 giving us a classic as well, it’s been a great couplet of number ones for the rundowns.
Late 60’s to mid 70’s Conway is just pure country perfection!
Leeann WardI’ve been a Conway Twitty fan since the beginning of my country music discovery, even though most of my preferences were the artists of the day rather than older singers at the time. This isn’t even close to my favorite Twitty song, but I agree that it’s a deserving classic.
Bonus Beats:
For the first time, I was able to find a needledrop rather than just a cover. Unfortunately, the only YouTube video is a poor quality guy-filming-TV-with-phone video. Anyway, here’s Taylor Kitsch and Adrianne Palicki slow dancing to “Hello Darlin'” in the series finale of Friday Night Lights:
https://youtu.be/69x3oKwPf_E
For something more interesting, I give you Privet Radost. It’s a version of “Hello Darlin'” that Conway himself recorded in Russian as part of the Apollo-Soyuz project, the first space mission carried out jointly by the US and USSR, played by the astronauts
as a gesture of goodwill for the cosmonauts. Conway worked with a linguistics professor to record it phonetically. Here it is:
https://youtu.be/ez76iMlM9PA
Just want to say how much I appreciate your Bonus Beats!
I look forward to your comment on each post.
Will country music ever again be as good as this? An all-time classic!
From about 1966 forward (or even before the #1 hits started coming) Twitty released a chain really good solid country songs as singles. It may have taken country DJs a while to warm up to Conway, but the legion of fans was steadily growing. This is not my favorite Conway Twitty single but it is within the rather large cluster of my favorites. This is an ‘A’ but there will be even better songs to come.
I still haven’t explored Conway’s 70s music as deeply as I have his 80s stuff, but I do know of the more signature, well known hits he had throughout that decade, including this one. This is truly a classic in every sense of the word. When I think of the term “classic country” this is one of the songs that always comes to mind. Everything from the spoken word intro, the waltz tempo, the crying steel, and Conway’s signature delivery full of pain and regret is perfect.
This was always one of my parents’ favorite songs, especially my step dad, who was a big Conway fan. I actually remember him looking at a lower budget hits collection CD of Conway one time at Walmart and him ridiculing it by saying (and eventually singing) “How can this be the best of Conway Twitty when it doesn’t have “Hello Darlin’….It’s been a long tiiiime!” lol (He also gave a lower budget Marty Robbins collection criticism for not having “El Paso”). It’s always been a favorite song of my mom’s as well, and it’s one of the songs she always loves hearing on the Classic Country Music Choice channel on TV. And for as long as I remember, she’s always loved saying the song’s title in a fun, playful way, as well, lol.
Despite my step dad not approving of that hits CD not having “Hello Darlin’,” the first Conway CD he brought home in 1993 (sometime shortly before Conway passed) was actually his Greatest Hits Volume 3, because he also loved “That’s My Job” and some of his other late 80s hits as well. We recorded it onto a cassette tape, and I remember pulling out that tape again during the Summer of 1999 and loving every song on it. Because 80s Conway was what I was mostly exposed to and loved first, along with hits he still had in the early 90s, I explored that part of his career first while also occasionally discovering his early rockabilly singles from the 50s. It’ll be fun to learn more about his 70s music on this feature, while possibly discovering more gems of his along the way.
And while much of 70s Conway was no longer being played our stations by the time I was recording tapes off the radio in the early 90s, “Hello Darlin'” did actually get played one time in December of 1991 when I was recording. During Christmas on the following year in 1992 (the first Christmas we had in our current house), I played that tape on our little pink radio in the kitchen while we were opening presents in the dining room. On the home video my step dad took of us that day, you can actually hear “Hello Darlin'” playing in the background during part of it, along with other songs like “That’s What I Like About You” by Trisha Yearwood, “Friends In Low Places” by Garth Brooks, “Heroes” by Paul Overstreet, “Feed Jake” by Pirates Of The Mississippi, “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down” by Hank Jr., and “I Only Want You For Christmas” by Alan Jackson.