Pat Boone's country years: 1973-80

A surprising number of veteran pop stars tried their hand at country music late in their careers after the pop hits dried up, and Pat Boone was one of them. 

Why would pop artists—many of whom used to strive for big-band and cool-jazz sophistication and had professional images that were about as country as a soy-milk latte—suddenly pull on cowboy boots and start droppin' their Gs? Probably for the same reason that fading old-timers made embarrassing attempts at singing rock 'n' roll in the 1950s. For showfolk, the show must go on, whatever it takes.

The country field, at least in the 1960s-80s, was fairly welcoming toward these expatriates from the Las Vegas Strip. The country audience tended to respect tradition more than the Top 40 pop crowd did, so it was willing to welcome pop veterans into the country fold, and some of these temporary county singers had moderate success: Patti Page, Bobby Vinton, Tom Jones, etc. 

Pat had been casting about for a new artistic direction even before he turned to country music. As his pop hits began to wane in the mid-to-late '60s, he first experimented with other kinds of pop/rock music, like Beach Boys-style hot-rod and beach music. He even recorded a Biff Rose song and an all-whistling record, "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman." In fact, his final pop hit on the Hot 100 wasn't even a pop song. It was "July, You're a Woman," a single from an oddball folk-rock album he recorded for Bill Cosby's Tetragrammaton label in 1969. It peaked at #100.

Sensing—or facing the reality—that his days as a mainstream pop star were finished, Pat concentrated on religious music for a few years. In 1972-73, he recorded some albums with The First Nashville Jesus Band for the Christian imprint Lamb & Lion Records. These albums contained gospel and country-gospel material as well as a few songs, like Frankie Miller's "Blackland Farmer," that are mainstream or traditional country songs that have religious themes.

The Lamb & Lion albums continued Boone's evolution away from pop music and toward his new image as a mainstream country singer, which culminated in a brief record deal with MGM Records in 1973 to record secular country material. For MGM, he recorded the album I Love You More and More Every Day, which included songs such as "Golden Rocket" and "Jambalaya." MGM released three singles, none of which charted. The Billboard review of his MGM album remarked that "Pat has been making the transition to country, and here is very close to the mark."

After a year at MGM, Boone was picked up in 1974 by Motown's country imprint Melodyland. After that, he moved to another Motown subsidiary, Hitsville, before ending his country music career on the Warner/Curb label in 1980.

In these six years from 1974-1980, he scored five hits on the Billboard country chart, only one of which, "Texas Woman," managed to reach the lower rungs of the country Top 40. On the Cash Box country chart it fared a bit better, going all the way to #26.

This late-career transition to country music didn't come entirely out of the blue. Pat began his career in Nashville (although his earliest records didn't sound like anything you'd associate with Nashville), and throughout the '50s and '60s he occasionally recorded pop renditions of country songs like Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart" and Cowboy Copas's "Alabam," including a complete album of pop-ified country hits in 1965. He also married the daughter of Country Music Hall of Famer Red Foley and recorded a tribute album to Foley in the 1980s. But, as mentioned previously, defecting to country music wasn't his first choice of career move.

While playing country music, Pat sometimes recorded songs that weren't quite in keeping with his squeaky clean image. For a guy who famously wanted to change the lyrics of "Ain't That a Shame" to "Isn't That a Shame" so they would be grammatically correct, songs like his 1977 single "Whatever Happened to the Good Old Honky Tonk" seemed out of character.

Pat's minor 1980 hit "Colorado Country Morning" was his last hurrah as a mainstream chart artist until he recorded his 1997 novelty album of heavy metal songs, In a Metal Mood, which registered on the Billboard pop album chart and again showed Pat's willingness to record music that is wildly inconsistent with his image as long as it might rack up some sales. Other than that odd digression, Pat spent most of his post-country years cutting religious music and remakes of his old hits for independent labels and for his own label, Pat's Gold.

Pat's country hits 

"Indiana Girl" (#72, 1975)





"I'd Do It With You" (#84, 1975) – Duet with Shirley Boone





"Texas Woman" (#34, 1976)





"Oklahoma Sunshine" (#86, 1976)




"Colorado Country Morning" (#60, 1980)