In 1961, Patsy Cline released “Crazy“. Written by Willie Nelson, the song remains one of country music’s most beloved classics, more than six decades later. Country music fans, along with Nelson, both have Cline’s husband, Charlie Dick, to thank for the song being recorded, let alone becoming one of Cline’s biggest hits.
In Nelson’s Energy Follows Thought: The Stories Behind My Songs book, he recalls being at Nashville’s Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge when he saw Dick, and playing him his demo of “Crazy”.
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“I sure as hell didn’t sound like an angel,” Nelson recalls (via AARP). “I sounded more like a man desperate to have someone else sing the song. Anyway, I played it for Charlie, who liked it so well he drove me over to his house at 1:00 a.m., woke up poor Patsy, and made her listen to it.”
Cline went into the studio the next day to record “Crazy”, although she at first was not a fan of the song.
“It almost didn’t happen because Patsy, who recorded it in a Nashville studio, tried singing like me,” Nelson recounts. “Big mistake. No one should ever try to follow my style of phrasing. Not that I don’t like my style. I do. I believe it’s natural, at least for me. But it’s offbeat. I tend to kick way back behind the beat or hurry up ahead of the beat. As my good buddy Waylon Jennings once said, ‘Willie wouldn’t know where the beat is if it bit him in the butt.’”
Why “Crazy” Became So Important For Patsy Cline
Cline’s producer, Owen Bradley, knew there was something special in “Crazy”. Fortunately, he urged her to forget my phrasing and stick to her own.
“Crazy is as crazy does,” Nelson reflects. “And this particular ‘Crazy’ convinced me, at a time when I wasn’t a hundred percent sure of my writing talent, that I’d be crazy to stop writing.”
When “Crazy” came out, it was the beginning of Nelson’s now-historic career as a songwriter. But it also became pivotal for Cline, although she could never have predicted its success at the time. “Crazy” follows “I Fall To Pieces”, Cline’s first No. 1 single. Both songs appear on Cline’s Showcase album.
Cline went on to have several more hits at country radio. She likely would have had many more, if she had not tragically been killed in a plane crash in 1963. “Faded Love”, released in 1963, became Cline’s final Top 10 hit at country radio.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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