Every Baby Boomer Alive Remembers These 4 Classic Country Jams From 1960
The article highlights four influential country songs from 1960 that it says remained familiar to Baby Boomer audiences and later generations. It presents them as examples of a pivotal period in country music, when the polished Nashville Sound, the emerging Bakersfield style and cowboy-song traditions were all shaping the genre.
Buck Owens’ “Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)” represented his early Bakersfield-era success, before his later run of number ones. Hank Locklin’s Nashville Sound hit “Please Help Me I’m Falling” was one of just four new country chart-toppers that year and reached the US Hot 100 top ten; Marty Robbins’ “Big Iron” later gained younger listeners through Fallout: New Vegas; and Claude Gray’s “Family Bible”, written by Willie Nelson, helped provide the songwriter with momentum to move to Nashville.
- Four 1960 songs illustrate country music’s changing styles.
- Locklin’s hit crossed into the US pop top ten.
- “Family Bible” helped launch Willie Nelson’s songwriting career.