This Top 5 was submitted by Tony English of Lexington, Kentucky. While studying physical therapy at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas Tony began attending country and western dances near his hometown of Victoria, Texas. After graduation Tony moved to Dallas and he and a friend started a C&W dance group there and dancing together is how his relationship began with Lynn, his Buckeye State bride of 44 years who is also a physical therapist. In 1987 Tony and Lynn moved to Lexington, Kentucky where Tony was an associate professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Kentucky for 30 years. Tony even used country and western dance steps as a means of teaching therapeutic movement patterns to his PT students. Today Tony and Lynn spend their retirement with their two grandsons and traveling to visit our national parks; so far they’ve managed to visit 40 of the 63. And every once in a while they get the opportunity to dance together.
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Jerry Jeff Walker: Redneck Mother
The first of Tony's Top 5 Country & Western Dance Songs is one of the Jerry Jeff Walker’s most popular and enduring songs. The song was written by Dallas native Ray Wylie Hubbard who was inspired to write it after experiencing a somewhat touch and go encounter in a rural Oklahoma bar with a young patron and his mother. About the song Tony said, “It’s a great song for dancing and singing along and everyone on the dance floor chants ‘so well, so well, so well’”.
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Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson: Lukenback Texas
Number two of Tony’s Top 5 Country & Western Dance Songs is the first single ever to debut in the top half of the Billboard country chart. “Lukenbach, Texas”, alongside “Good Hearted Woman” are the two best known and best-selling duets by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. This song made Tony’s Top 5 because it is a “Great song and it is necessary to have a Waylon and Willie song on any list like this.”
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Patsy Cline: Crazy
In 1989, the Amusement and Music Operators Association ranked Tony’s third pick, Willie Nelson’s song “Crazy” as performed by Patsy Cline, number two of the all-time Top 40 Jukebox Singles in the United States. And the song almost never happened. Cline didn’t want to hear Nelson's songs saying that she did not want to record songs that embraced vulnerability or loss of love. Late one night, at her husband’s insistence, Cline listened to the song while Nelson waited outside in the car. After hearing the song Cline invited Nelson in and the rest is history. About the song Tony said, “Willie wrote it and Patsy sings it with all her heart. It’s a nice slow dance song.”
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Ronnie Milsap: Pure Love
Number four of Tony’s Top 5 Country & Western Dance Songs was also the first in string of number one hits for Robbinsville, North Carolina native Ronnie Milsap. The song was written by Eddie Rabbitt, perhaps the most successful country western singer to ever come out of Brooklyn, New York. About this song Tony said, “Ronnie Milsap had a stretch in the late 70's and early 80's with a series of great 2-steppin' songs. The list would be incomplete without a representative Milsap song. The homage to ivory soap, 99 and 44/100 percent pure love, is especially good.”
