I Heard it This Morning

I heard it this morning for the first time in a long time. You may think I spend all my time listening to XM Radio. The best thing about XM is depth in chart selections on the decades channels. Naturally, I listen most to the 60s channel and I am always rewarded with songs that never made it in the top ten and are ignored today by music research done for the oldies stations. KAAY never heard of music research. Our research was totally listner feedback. We even paid a kid to answer the phones at night. He kept a log of every song requested and gave it to the music director.
It seems like today's oldies stations have such a tight playlist and repeat it over and over. I never seem to tire from the XM Decades channels. The song in point today is "Let's Think About Livin by Bob Luman. The song is interesting from a couple of aspects. First the lyrics comment on the tragedy songs of the day and second, Bob's life was tragicly short.

Bob Luman (Robert Glynn Luman, 15 April 1937 - December 27, 1978) was an American country and rockabilly singer born in Blackjack, Texas, a church community south of Tyler in Smith County, Texas.

The smooth baritone was best-known in non-country circles for his crossover hit, "Let's Think About Living," a novelty song that hit #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #9 on the Billboard country chart in 1960.

Luman was, however, well-known in the country music world. His 1972 hit, "Lonely Women Make Good Lovers," became his biggest country hit, hitting #4 on the country chart.(Steve Wariner, who had earlier been a member of Luman's band, later covered the song in the 1984, and he, too, took it to #4 on the country charts.)

Luman's other country hits included "Ain't Got Time To Be Unhappy" (1968), "When You Say Love" (1972), "Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye)" (1973), "Still Loving You" (1974), "Proud Of You Baby" (1975), and "The Pay Phone" (1977).

Luman died of pneumonia in 1978, at the age of 41.