Many artists have covered Wayne Carson, Johnny Christopher, and Mark James’ early 1970s ballad, “Always On My Mind”, starting with the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll himself, Elvis Presley. Presley’s, Brenda Lee’s, and John Wesley Ryles’ renditions did alright on the charts. But Willie Nelson’s version from the 1982 album of the same name blew these other cuts out of the water. Nelson’s “Always On My Mind” became a crossover, Grammy Award-winning hit, cementing its place in the most ubiquitous corners of Nelson’s catalogue.
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These days, it’s hard not to feel like “Always On My Mind” is Nelson’s, the same sweet-voiced singer behind hits like “Crazy” and “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain”. But in the early 1970s, most people assumed that the songwriting team wrote the track specifically for Presley. Mark James already wrote “Suspicious Minds”, a different Elvis hit, so it made sense. Moreover, Presley was going through an incredibly public split from his wife, Priscilla, which added fuel to the speculative flame.
But it wasn’t Presley who was in the doghouse. It was Carson.
How Wayne Carson’s Wife Helped Inspire “Always on My Mind”
In a 1988 interview with the Los Angeles Times, songwriter Wayne Carson revealed how an argument with his wife helped inspire “Always On My Mind”. (Though, based on some details of the story, we imagine that was much to her chagrin.) Carson was on a long business trip in Memphis, writing songs, while his wife was back home in Springfield, Missouri. One fateful night, Carson called his wife to tell her he would be staying in Memphis even longer. In his words, “She was pretty damned irate about it.”
As most husbands standing in the doorway of the doghouse are wont to do, he quickly tried to explain himself to get on his wife’s good side. “I tried to calm her down,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Well, I know I’ve been gone a lot. But I’ve been thinking about you all the time.’ And it just struck me like someone had hit me with a hammer. I told her real fast I had to hang up because I had to put that into a song.”
Did hanging up on his wife help his case? Probably not. Was it worth it? Probably so. Just around one decade after that tense phone call with his wife, Carson won two Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Best Country Song alongside his co-writers, Johnny Christopher and Mark James. (Nothing like bringing home a Grammy to get you out of the doghouse, right?)
Why This Willie Nelson Hit Feels so Universal
Maybe not everyone can say they know what it’s like to bring a Grammy Award home (and its efficacy in cooling their spouse’s hotter moods). But most people can relate to the feeling of not saying the right thing to their partner and having to backtrack to make up for it. That’s why the songwriting team knew “Always On My Mind” had the potential to be huge. “A good song tells a story that everyone would like to say…a song that leads people to say, ‘God, that song’s me,’” Wayne Carson told the LA Times.
“All that ‘Always’ was about was one long apology,” he continued. “It’s sort of like all guys who screw up and would love nothing better than to pick up the phone and call their wives and say, ‘Listen, honey, I could have done better. But I want you to know that you were always on my mind. I guess there are a lot of people in the world who were looking for a way to say that in a song.’”
Photo by Clayton Call/Redferns
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