Ten Previously Unavailable Conway Twitty Albums Reissued
Amid the continuing effort to revitalize the legacy of Country Music Hall of Famer Conway Twitty and reconstitute his music in modern form for fans to enjoy, ten albums from the heart of Conway’s career have finally been released for both streaming and download for the very first time by the Universal Music Group.
Many Conway fans have been frustrated over the holes in availability of much of his catalog in the digital space. Though some specific songs from the albums have been available for streaming or download via other releases, the albums themselves have not. The ten albums include:
The High Priest of Country Music (1975)
Now and Then (1976)
Play, Guitar Play (1977)
I’ve Already Loved You in My Mind (1977)
Georgia Keeps Pulling on My Ring (1978)
Conway (1978)
Cross Winds (1979)
Heart & Soul (1980)
Mr. T (1981)
Borderline (1987)
Beyond streaming or download, almost all of these titles were also never available on CD, only vinyl and cassette. 1987’s Borderline was the only title ever originally released on CD. That means aside from used copies, the albums have been completely out of circulation, sometimes for 40 years.
The reissued albums include 100 total songs, 16 of which were some of Conway’s 55 total #1 hits, and 3 are Certified Gold singles by the RIAA. The album The High Priest of Country Music is a fan favorite, and includes the duet “Don’t Cry Joni” with Conway’s daughter Joni Lee. The Cross Winds album was a big turning point in Conway’s career when he began moving on from working with producer Owen Bradley, and started co-producing his own records.
The latest release of albums is part of an agreement UMG has with the Conway Twitty estate to reissue 10 albums per year until his entire discography is restored and modernized. Why UMG is only releasing 10 per year instead of reissuing the entire discography isn’t entirely clear, though it likely has something to do with time and financial resources.
2021 is the 4th year of the UMG agreement, with last year seeing many of Conway’s duet albums with Loretta Lynn being re-released. With the latest batch of albums, it leaves 16 of Conway’s 65 total studio albums still to be issued.
In August, three famous Conway Twitty songs were finally Certified Gold in “That’s My Job,” “I’d Love to Lay You Down,” and “Tight Fittin’ Jeans.” Just like the singer’s discography, accounting on his sales had fallen behind, but the effort is underway to bring it all back up to speed, with further certifications likely coming in the future.
There are still more Conway Twitty titles to be restored and modernized to the streaming and download era, but this latest batch takes Twitty’s tunes a step closer to being fully available for old and new fans.
December 7, 2021 @ 10:01 am
This is cool. Due to convenience, I’ve always preferred Bear Family box sets when trying to complete a collection on CD, but something is better than nothing when it comes to reissues. I can recall ordering bootleg copies of stuff, years ago, before reissues were a big thing.
December 7, 2021 @ 10:01 am
The 1979 “Cross Winds” album and its three #1 singles, “Don’t Take it Away”, “I May Never Get to Heaven”, and “Happy Birthday Darlin”, was a huge snub by the CMA. Not one award nomination for such a Monumental album and year for Conway.
December 7, 2021 @ 10:17 am
I never was say a fan of Conway but he had a lot of great songs so more of a failing of mine than anything else. Don’t cry Joni is a great song but my favorite is play guitar play. It’s one of those songs that just kind of produces goose bumps. For me that always comes with songs that have great backing vocals to go along with the main artist.
December 7, 2021 @ 10:19 am
This is great news, but as a collector of physical releases I do hope these albums will be released on CD as well. (Please!)
December 7, 2021 @ 10:19 am
I noticed that on Amazon looking through new album releases digitally but I’ll be honest I want his albums after “Hello Darlin” up to “Linda on Mind” to be released at-least digitally. Hopefully that’s next. Everything Conway touched from 67 to the mid to late 70’s was gold for hardcore country. Look at all the classic singles releases from that period.
April 9, 2022 @ 8:47 am
I have all his albums digitalized from my Vinyl Collection. Even his bootleg albums.
December 7, 2021 @ 11:00 am
More Conway can only be a good thing.
December 7, 2021 @ 12:51 pm
I figure that the reason why UMG is only releasing 10 per year instead of reissuing the entire discography at once is that the label believes that the albums can make more of an impact and generate more sales if they’re reissued in manageable batches than if
If they drop them all at once, where most of them would probably just get lost in the shuffle.
December 7, 2021 @ 1:15 pm
Eat your heart out Family Guy
December 7, 2021 @ 2:22 pm
I can’t believe “Tight Fittin’ Jeans” wasn’t platinum.
December 7, 2021 @ 3:30 pm
It probably is. It’s might be Double Platinum. The accounting is backed up decades on his singles.
December 7, 2021 @ 2:52 pm
Always GREAT to enjoy newly discovered Conway Twitty music !!!!
December 7, 2021 @ 3:09 pm
I have most of Conway’s albums if you want to use them for reproductions , etc . But I want to keep my original albums , to help keep Conway’s music alive !
June 8, 2023 @ 8:18 pm
So you are like me. I have every album he released, including bootlegs. I also have them all digitalized and put on CD. If anyone wants a copy, I am willing to share the digital collection with them. If you need any of his albums, I can send you a copy of them on CD or digitally.
December 7, 2021 @ 3:15 pm
I love Conway,his songs ,and music just were fantastic to the way he sang them ,He was and is the BEST IN COUNTRY FOR ME, ❤
December 7, 2021 @ 5:21 pm
This is awesome! There’s so much great music that’s simply unavailable on streaming these days. My personal annoyance is the glaring hopes in Eddy Arnold’s discography. In the past year or 2 I began to dive into his career. Large chunks simply aren’t on Spotify. This Conway news gives me hope. Is It standard to slowly digitize and release these older artists work or is it just not worth the money unless there’s an active push for it?
December 7, 2021 @ 6:11 pm
It has to be somewhat costly and time consuming for labels to go through the process of digitizing masters, assigning ISRC’s, compiling original artwork, filling out metadata for songwriters and such, and getting these albums up to streaming and download services, and sometimes for titles that won’t make that investment back for years at the puny payouts of streaming services. I think the reason some artists have always had all their titles available, and some are still fighting just to get their hits up is due to how well the estates are managed. For years, infighting and lawsuits put Conway’s catalog on the back burner.
December 7, 2021 @ 10:15 pm
I love me some Eddy Arnold too.
December 8, 2021 @ 7:00 am
I’ll be honest I find Eddy boring vocally once he went middle of the road but I think the my world album is amazing. Two huge classic singles and the rest of the album is really good as well. I also really love the cattle call album of cowboy songs.
December 7, 2021 @ 6:45 pm
Trigger, is there a way to find out in advance when old albums will be getting reissued digitally? Waiting for MCA to reissue some of Lionel Cartwright’s music.
December 7, 2021 @ 8:48 pm
Not that I know of specifically. Sometimes labels send out press releases about it, sometimes the artist will, or their publicist will. In many cases, it takes someone from the artist’s estate really pile-driving the process to make this happen.
December 7, 2021 @ 10:14 pm
Wow. Lionel Cartwright. I haven’t heard that name in nearly 30 years.
December 8, 2021 @ 10:09 pm
I second the vote for the rest of Lionel Cartwright’s MCA albums. I want the original recording of “Leap Of Faith” on Spotify already, not to mention the underrated “What Kind Of Fool.”
Other albums/artists I hope to see on Spotify in the future:
* The rest of Holly Dunn’s Warner Bros. albums (the MTM ones might be more of a challenge, but they’d be worth it, too).
* The rest of Shenandoah’s 80’s and 90’s albums
* Original recordings of Ed Bruce’s hits from the 80’s.
* More Of Gene Watson’s albums, especially from the 80’s.
* Solid Ground (1991) – Rob Crosby
* Freeborn Man (1992) – Clinton Gregory
* Anything by Davis Daniel, especially Fighting Fire With Fire (1991) and his self titled follow up (1994).
* Familiar Ground (1992) – Michael White
* They’ve Been Talkin’ Bout Me (1992) – Jeff Knight
* Trouble At The Door (1991) – Donna Ulisse
* Wild Kentucky Skies (1993) – Marty Brown
* Kentucky Thunder (1989), My Father’s Son (1991) – Ricky Skaggs
* Tim Ryan’s first three albums from the early 90’s: Tim Ryan (1990), Seasons Of The Heart (1991), and Idle Hands (1993).
* Any of Prairie Oyster’s 90’s albums. An underrated 90’s Canadian Country band.
* Molly & The Heymakers’ self titled debut.
* Picture On The Wall (1990), Walk Softly On The Bridges (1992) – Jeff Chance
* Love And Luck (1994) – Marty Stuart
* Ty England’s 1995 self-titled debut
* One Lifetime (1997) – Noel Haggard
And many more! I realize some of these are long shots and may take quite a while, but I can still wish and hope.
December 7, 2021 @ 6:48 pm
I know when Conway made an albumn he recorded many songs with only a few released. Somewhere there has to be a store house of songs we haven’t heard would love to get to them
December 7, 2021 @ 6:49 pm
Love Conway since 9 years old!
December 8, 2021 @ 6:45 am
Grand! About time.
Now if only we could get Johnny Paychecks catalog re-released, including the Epic and Little Darlin label albums. Fortunately, ive got original vinyl but would love to see some effort put into this.
December 8, 2021 @ 6:58 am
Kevin I 100 % agree. The little darlin period for paycheck has the best albums and song he ever did. You can get cds but the only ones with good sound quality are the ones asking for over 70 bucks. Would love to see Mel Tillis Catalog released as well.
December 10, 2021 @ 7:17 am
Sadly Mel’s Kapp, Decca & MCA master tapes were destroyed in the 2008 Universal vault fire. Would love to have more CD releases of his excellent MGM albums.
December 8, 2021 @ 8:02 am
Happy for everyone else, but sucks for me, I prefer physical copies and I do not down load, so bummer, but glad some fans will get to check them out.
December 8, 2021 @ 3:47 pm
This is awesome! Been waiting on this for a long time!
December 8, 2021 @ 9:29 pm
As someone who’s really gotten into streaming (Spotify, specifically) for the past few years, it’s always such a big thrill for me to see a lot of older, long out of print albums reissued digitally. It really helps expand my playlists, too. I’ve always loved Conway’s music, as well, so this is definitely great! I especially always thought a lot of his late 70’s and 80’s stuff was underrated, and I’m glad to see most all of the albums from that period in his career now available. Crystal Gayle and Don Williams also had some albums reissued recently, which I was also very happy about!
Now if we can get the rest of the albums from Shenandoah and Holly Dunn for starters on there, we’ll really be in business! Keep those older country albums coming!
December 9, 2021 @ 6:18 am
Like most other Decca/MCA artists ALL of Conway Twitty’s master recordings were destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire. Most of his “hit” oriented collections were released prior to that so thankfully his hits were mastered from tape sources. But when the U.K. Poker label reissued 8 of Conway’s earliest Decca LP’s as 2-fer’s in 2010 they were all sourced from vinyl records ranging from fair to poor quality.
Facing litigation from many artists whose entire recorded legacy was destroyed, a few years ago Universal did a world-wide vault search to attempt to locate as many tape COPIES of their releases as possible. Supposedly they did turn up some masters in other countries but just like the fire Universal has offered few details. Perhaps tapes some of Conway’s LP’s were located in that quest but if they haven’t be prepared for less than stellar audio on this new batch of releases dubbed from vinyl records.
Other than his “hit” compilations the only complete early vintage Conway Twitty album that I’m aware of that was released on CD was the 1970 “Hello Darlin” LP issued in 1991 by MCA Special Products. His later MCA albums from the 1980’s/early 90’s (after his stint at Warner Brothers) were mostly available on CD but have long been out of print.
December 9, 2021 @ 8:48 am
“Like most other Decca/MCA artists ALL of Conway Twitty’s master recordings were destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.”
There is a very good chance this is just not true. The reporting by the “New York Times” on this issue has been circumspect at best, and it appears that Universal claimed all of the masters got destroyed in the fire to get a big insurance check, while only a small portion of masters were actually affected. This is why all of the lawsuits brought from artists have all been dismissed, because their masters were never touched. This is issue is still being addressed and litigated, and that is one of the reasons we’re light on concrete information. But I think that would only have minimal affects on bringing his music into the digital realm. The reason this never happened previously is because nobody was the squeaky wheel requesting it be done.
December 9, 2021 @ 7:38 pm
The fire did not burn just a portion of the vault – it was a pile of ashes. There are pictures available online that show the total devastation. Those lawsuits were brought by artists that contended that because they had lost their recordings they were entitled to a portion of the insurance settlement. The court did not decide in their favor because they ruled that UMG in fact owned the masters – they were not just warehousing them for the artists. So UMG they had no liability in that regard. I’ve never seen any info indicating that any masters warehoused on that site survived. In fact Universal initially covered up the extent of the devastation and only ‘fessed up when the lawsuits began. Right after the fire they said that most of the incinerated recordings had already been digitized. With only a few exceptions that was totally false. Thousands and thousands of original multi-track studio recordings and finished LP masters were lost forever.
My information is that although copies of SOME master tapes were located in other countries the original masters were incinerated in the Universal fire. If you look at the actual post-fire photographs of the vault there is nothing left but ashes. That’s why most Decca/MCA artists have had no reissues since 2008. The company could not do it if they wanted to as the tapes were toast. When Bear Family did their Bill Anderson box set in 2011 the audio that had not been digitized prior to 2008 had to be sourced from vinyl dubs. Notes in that box set reference the Universal vault fire.
Yes I do agree with you that UMG has shown very little interest in releasing vintage country titles so even if they had the tapes precious few would likely have been reissued. I know folks at several reissue labels that post 2008 tried to license previously unreleased Decca/MCA albums and they were all turned down because the master tapes no longer exist.
I will be very interested to hear the audio quality of these newly released Conway albums.
July 9, 2023 @ 11:59 am
Yeah, supposedly a spokesman from Universal said that and I quote, “we had no loss, thankfully.” Well, if true where are the rest of Conway’s Decca albums still yet to be digitized? It’s 2023 now and there are still several albums we are waiting for by Conway and not just country albums either. There are many artists like Brook Benton’s Mercury albums, Clyde McPhatter’s MGM albums and many Bobby Goldsboro albums that have never seen a digital release. I say, if nothing was lost or very little then prove it Universal by getting these albums digitized and released.
December 9, 2021 @ 1:00 pm
I noticed they seem to be doing the same with Loretta Lynn’s collection as well, hopefully they will also eventually be doing Kitty Wells, Jack Greene & The Wilburn Brothers, but wishful thinking on my part!
December 9, 2021 @ 6:52 pm
Hopefully a physical cd box set can be released of all of conway’s Mac albums along with a box of his Warner albums. I am still hoping for a box set of David Allan coe’s albums on cd which were made available digitally a few years ago.
December 11, 2021 @ 3:21 pm
Are these Conway recordings available now? and if so where do we purchase them at?
December 14, 2021 @ 5:31 pm
Charlene, they are on iTunes and Amazon.