September 2026

Country Music

CONWAY TWITTY ALREADY HAD A ROCK & ROLL NO. 1 THAT SOLD MILLIONS. THEN, IN 1965, HE WALKED OFF A NEW JERSEY STAGE MID-SHOW AND DECIDED HE WAS DONE CHASING TEENAGERS—HE WANTED TO SING COUNTRY. Conway Twitty had already lived the career most singers were trying to reach. Born Harold Lloyd Jenkins, he broke through in 1958 with “It’s Only Make Believe,” a million-selling No. 1 that made him a rock & roll teen idol. More pop hits followed, along with movies and years of touring. But country music had always been underneath it. Twitty later said he initially avoided country because he respected singers like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell so much that he was unsure he could compete with them. Rock & roll felt like the safer door. By the early 1960s, that door was closing anyway. His pop hits slowed, MGM dropped him, and Twitty began slipping more country songs into his shows. Then came a night in 1965 at a club in Somers Point, New Jersey. Twitty looked across a room of young dancers and thought about the wife and three children waiting at home. According to his official biography, he put down his guitar, walked offstage in the middle of the engagement and decided the rock & roll chapter was over. The decision did not produce an instant second career. Owen Bradley signed him to Decca, but country radio was suspicious of the former teen idol. Several singles struggled before “The Image of Me” finally reached the Top 10 in 1968. Then “Next in Line” went to No. 1. After that came “Hello Darlin’,” “Fifteen Years Ago,” “I’d Love to Lay You Down,” decades of hits, and one of country music’s most successful duet partnerships with Loretta Lynn. The remarkable part was not that Conway Twitty successfully changed genres. It was that he chose to become a beginner again after already knowing what it felt like to be famous—and spent several years proving that the second career was not an act.

Introduction CONWAY TWITTY HAD ALREADY CONQUERED ROCK & ROLL — THEN HE WALKED AWAY TO...

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