It started with a phone call and ended with a song the world can’t forget. A decade after Wayne Carson’s death, “Always On My Mind”—made legendary by Willie Nelson—remains a touchstone of timeless songwriting.
July 20th will mark the 10th anniversary of Carson’s death. He’s known for writing songs including “Always On My Mind” and The Box Tops’ “The Letter.” While Carson has been gone for a decade, his songs continue to live on.
Nelson’s “Always On My Mind” continues to be a lynchpin of The Great American Songbook, even though it rose to popularity outside of the timeframe that’s usually associated with the canon of influential American popular songs from the early to mid-20th century.
Carson co-wrote the ballad with Johnny Christopher and Mark James in the early 1970s following an emotional phone conversation with his wife.
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She Was “Always on His Mind”
“I said, ‘Well, I know I’ve been gone a lot, but I’ve been thinking about you all the time,’” Carson said in a 1988 interview with The Times. “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.”
The trio of men wrote the song, and Brenda Lee recorded it, releasing it in June 1972. The list of artists who recorded “Always On My Mind” is long, and includes Elvis Presley, John Wesley Ryles, and Bob Dylan, in addition to Nelson, who cemented the title into pop culture.
Carson, Christopher, and James even won Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards in 1983. Carson was 72 when he died of congestive heart failure at a convalescent hospital in Franklin, Tennessee.
Christopher and James shared their thoughts and memories of “Always On My Mind” with Nashville Songwriters Association International’s Bart Herbison.
After some prodding, he got the men to concede that it is one of the greatest songs ever written.
However, they maintained that they didn’t recognize its potential when they wrote it.
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“I thought it was good,” Christopher said. “But as the different artists did it, Elvis first, and so on afterwards, it started to take on a personality and an aura that was very special.”
James said he knew the night after they wrote it that “Always On My Mind” was the best song he could ever be involved with.
“I will say, we all added something special to the song,” he said. “The song could have never happened without all three of us.”
James said he was responsible for getting “Always On My Mind” to Presley. Christopher delivered it to Willie Nelson. He was cutting the Pancho and Lefty album in Austin, Texas, with Nelson. As they were finishing the project, he got the idea of Nelson and Merle Haggard recording “Always On My Mind” together. He asked Nelson if he could play the song for him, and he agreed.
“I stood there right in Willie’s studio and played it on my guitar and sang it,” Christopher said. “He heard it, and his wife at the time, Connie, heard it and the other people — the other guys, the producer Chips Moman knew it.”
A while later, they asked Christopher to record it. Nelson and his wife wanted to take it home and listen to it that night. He did, and then the songwriter got a call the next morning.
Willie Nelson Made it a Memorable
“They said, ‘Merle’s left town, and we finished that album, the ‘Poncho and Lefty’ album,’” he recalled. “‘Now Willie wants to start an album on himself, and he wants to do your song first. Can you come over and write it out and teach it to him? And we want to do it.’”
So Christopher did. He played it on Nelson’s guitar, which had a hole in it. He was too lazy to get his personal guitar.
“I just did a very simple little finger-picking type of thing through it, and later Willie took his own guitar and came back and put his solo on it and overdubbed that,” Christopher said. “But that’s the way it came about. It was real quick. And then later I heard it was going to be the name of the album and the first single off the album, and it was a shock.”
According to Herbison, “Always On My Mind” has been recorded more than 300 times.
(Photo by Ilpo Musto/Shutterstock)
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