Conway Twitty’s Country Career Remembered By His Biographer and Fan: ‘He Was Loved and Respected’
variety.comSteven Gaydos Executive VP of Content The late great country crooner Conway Twitty had one of the oddest career trajectories of any major act in the country field.
With 23 top ten hits in the late ’70s to early ’80s, including 13 number one country singles on Billboard, he was significant indeed.
Twitty (born Harold Lloyd Jenkins) first broke through with the pop classic “It’s Only Make Believe,” which hit number one on the charts in 1958 and led to his burgeoning career as a pop rocker, as well as providing inspiration for the name of the main character, Conrad Birdie, in the hit 1960 Broadway musical “Bye Bye Birdie.” But Twitty never rivaled Elvis, the star he was most often compared to, and his real artistic and commercial success arrived more than a decade later when his self-penned country hit “Hello Darlin’” took him to the top of the country charts, a lofty spot he came to inhabit for much of the next 15 years.
The hits are too numerous to mention, but “Play Guitar Play,” “Linda on My Mind,” “You’ve Never Been This Far Before” and “I’d Love to Lay You Down” are prime examples of his sultry, even lurid lyrical excursions into hard-core romantic country balladry.
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