A true Billboard hit

Here's a video of country singer Del Reeves performing his only No. 1 song, "Girl on the Billboard," which topped the Billboard country chart on this day in 1965.  We probably just weren't paying much attention back then, but it was never easy telling Del Reeves from Jim Reeves.  (This was not so much a problem with Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.)

It shouldn't have been that difficult. Jim Reeves, who died in a plane crash shortly before his 40th birthday in 1964, had more hits during his career. Among them are a couple of true weepers: "Four Walls," "He'll Have to Go," "Blue Side of Lonesome," and "Distant Drums,"  the last two of which were posthumous No. 1s.  They even spliced together the voices of Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline for "Have You Ever Been Lonely (Have You Ever Been Blue)", which received plenty of airplay after its release in 1981.

Franklin Delano Reeves -- now who do you suppose his mama and daddy liked? -- had a fine career himself, notching his share of Top 10 songs, joining the Grand Ole Opry in 1966 and performing into the Eighties.  But nothing outside of "Girl on the Billboard" really caught fire.  He died three years ago, at 84, of natural causes.

A lot of folks complain about billboards, but nobody had a problem with the one Del sang about back in the day.

Who is the girl wearing nothing but a smile
and a towel in the picture on the billboard
in the field near the big old highway?
Rolling down the highway in my Jimmy hauling freight
from Chicago to St. Louis Lord I see her every day
A double clutching weasel like me can hardly ever
get a girl to look at him that way
Smiling like the girl wearing nothing but a smile
and a towel in the picture on the billboard
in the field near the big old highway