It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Once a Day” by Connie Smith
December 23, 1964
“Once a Day” by Connie Smith
#1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, November 28, 1964 – January 22, 1965
One of the most pervasive myths in pop music is that of the overnight success. Bands who seem to come out of nowhere may have logged a decade touring bars and third-rate venues, while singers nominated for the “Best New Artist” Grammy may well have two or three (or six) albums under their belts. What counts, though, is how audiences perceive the artist’s sudden rise to fame. Who doesn’t love a Cinderella story?
Occasionally, however, the public narrative gets it right. Connie Smith was a 22-year-old wife and mother of a newborn when she placed first in a Columbus, Ohio, talent contest in August 1963. She won five silver dollars for her performance of Jean Shepard’s “I Thought of You,” but the real prize was famed songwriter and singer Bill Anderson catching her performance. Anderson, who had written “City Lights” for Ray Price and had several hits in his own right, including “Mama Sang a Song” and “Still,” remembered Smith when he ran across her a few months later. At his invitation, she performed with Anderson on the Ernest Tubb Midnight Jamboree revue and radio show, then cut some demos with him in Nashville.
A few of those recordings made their way to Chet Atkins, legendary guitarist, songwriter, and progenitor of the Nashville Sound, who quickly offered Smith a contract with RCA Records. She signed to the label in June, recorded her first batch of songs in July, and released her first single on August 1, 1964 — less than a year after that fateful talent contest.
That single, the Anderson-penned “Once a Day,” was tailor-made to emphasize the permanent catch in Smith’s voice. She addresses the song to a former love, whom she has struggled to forget. At first, she insists that “time has taken all the pain away / until now, I’m only hurtin’ once a day.” But as so often happens in great melancholic country ballads, there’s a twist: she may only be crying “once a day,” but that “once a day” lasts “all day long” (not to mention, “once a night, from dusk till dawn”).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_kkA0Zb6BY
The production of “Once a Day” ticks all the Nashville Sound boxes — rich orchestral arrangements, sweet-but-somber backing choir — yet sounds less mainstream-oriented than Jim Reeves’ ’60s recordings. Much of this country flavor comes courtesy of Smith’s twangy vocals, as weepy yet steely as the lap guitar beneath her. Smith, for her part, seemed largely uninterested in crossing over beyond the country market. “Once a Day” would be her highest-charting pop record; even then, it would only peak at #101, one spot short of the Hot 100.
The country charts, however, were another story. Three months after its release, “Once a Day” became the first debut single by a female artist to ever top Billboard‘s country singles chart. (No other woman would even manage the same feat until Trisha Yearwood nearly 30 years later.) Likewise, the eight weeks that “Once a Day” ranked at #1 would hold the record for the longest chart-topping stint by a female country singer for 48 years, broken only by Taylor Swift’s “We are Never Ever Getting Back Together” in 2012.
Smith herself would never equal her first hit; “Once a Day” remains her only country #1, although she would stay a fixture of the Top 10 until the early ’70s and continues recording to this day. Because of her lack of interest in courting pop audiences, as well as the time she took off from her singing career to raise her family and pursue religious concerns, Smith’s name remains largely unknown to the mainstream public. Nevertheless, she remains highly respected among those in the know. As fan Dolly Parton once said, “There are only three female singers in the world: Barbara Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, and Connie Smith. The rest of us are only pretending.”
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
