Conway Twitty: "It's Only Make Believe"

October 20, 1958 (2 weeks)

You name someone 'Conway Twitty' you're setting them up for a career as a country music singer. Well, not quite. First, he started out in rock 'n' roll and rockabilly and only went the C&W route when he was in his thirties. Second, he had been a serious Major League Baseball prospect prior to making his way in music, with the Philadelphia Phillies going as far as offering him a contract. Third, he contemplated life as a Christian preacher before that. And finally, 'Conway Twitty' was a stage name. Oh, and he was going to revert to his real name when he made the crossover into country until he reconsidered it. (Otherwise, I stand by what said above)

Conrad Marcellus Twitterman Harold Lloyd Jenkins lived quite the life before stardom with a stint serving in the American armed forces wedged in between his time as a promising baseball player and a rising rock star. It was while he was posted in Asia that he formed a band called the Cimmarons which pointed the way forward. While it's easy to imagine a young man from Arkansas called Harold Jenkins as the Phillies' starting shortstop — assuming that's the position he played — his birth name wasn't going to cut it in the world of showbusiness. The story goes that he named himself after the towns of Conway, Arkansas and Twitty, Texas and he was away. Doesn't seem especially glamourous but maybe that was the key. A good stage name shouldn't sound made up even though that's exactly what it is.

Upon Twitty's death in 1993, the talk was about losing a country music legend who had more number one hits than anyone in history, more than Elvis, more than The Beatles. And, yes, his total number of chart toppers is impressive. Forty-one on Billboard. Damn. One thing about that though: precisely forty of them were on the country music charts. Only one got to the top of the pop charts and it's the subject of today's entry: "It's Only Make Believe", number one in the US, UK and Canada in the latter part of 1958.

Tom Breihan calls it a banger. Uh, not quite. What we have is a vocal masterclass on the part of Twitty with a competent enough backing that may or may not even need to be on the recording for all it matters. What we're here for is the singing. And bloody hell, there's no way he could have hit a line drive or preached some Christian madness or been a sleazy G.I. in Asia as well as could hit those notes. It is astonishing. He sounds like Elvis at the start but by the end it's hard to remember the names of any of his contemporaries. The one real helping hand is — them again, bloody hell they were everywhere — The Jordanairs, who aid him along to build the tension as the dramatics pile on top of one another.

So, why is it not quite as brilliant as Breihan thinks? Well, the Twitty's vocals are more than enough to make it well above average as well as the type of thing you'd wish to come back to again and again but there ought to have been something else to really put it over the top. It's great that the music doesn't intrude but what if it had been able to be even half as dynamic as the vocalist? I get that it's all done in service to Twitty and that's perfectly fine. In fact, I probably wouldn't change "It's Only Make Believe" even if I could. If the worst thing you can say about a single is that it falls just shy of being an all-time classic then you've done well for yourself.

While not quite fit for Con Can, much less a little maple leaf next to this entry on the 1958 sidebar, Twitty did have serious connections to Canada which are well worth mentioning. For one thing, "It's Only Make Believe" was written with bandmate Jack Nance during a break at the Flamingo Lounge in Hamilton (Fred Bronson in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits states that it was in Toronto but that's like confusing Fort Lauderdale for Miami or Incheon for Seoul: understandable but incorrect all the same). Just as significantly, he would suggest touring up north of the border to friend and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins, recommending Ontario in particular for the audiences who really like them some down home rockabilly. Hawkins would end up relocating permanently to Toronto and he went on to become something of a national treasure in his adopted homeland. As such, Conway Twitty played an important role in Canadian music history. Just think how revered he'd have been had he also been the starting shortstop for the 1969 Montreal Expos.

Score: 8