27 March 1964
I’ve just noticed on the record sleeve above how eerily similar Jim Reeves looks to Jim Jones, the ’70s US cult leader of the Jonestown massacre, and now I can’t unsee it. Anyway, here’s another chart-topper from the ’60s US cult leader of country & Irish.
Not that any Jim Reeves record was ever forged in the white heat of innovation, but ‘I Love You Because’ is particularly cautious: a chaste and passionless ’40s country ballad, mother’s milk to ASMR retro-crooner Reeves, that already had well-known ’50s covers by Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. It mopes along at the pace of an elderly mule, and the accompanying harp adds to the warm-mug-of-cocoa vibe.
If, like me, you initially wonder whether this single really was bought by young people in Ireland 1964 as a sort of nation-state Reevestown, or just by the older folk who didn’t emigrate en masse, then let’s remember this same country & Irish style is bought by a whole heap of young people in Ireland today. That said, much of C&I is in fairness a bit jauntier and more dancefloor-oriented than the soporific ‘I Love You Because’ and the figurehead Reeves. Don’t drink the cocoa!
Irish Number Ones 