It seems like so many of country music’s greats start out as songwriters, and Willie Nelson is no exception to that rule.
His most notable effort as a songwriter came when he wrote “Crazy,” the 1961 Patsy Cline release, which propelled his career not only as a songwriter but helped him enter the arena as a performer as well.
The song was not regarded as a definite hit by most who heard the demo, but that might have been due to the chaotic mixture of chords he included in the music.
Willie once referred to the song as too far-fetched for a ‘hillbilly song:’
“I had problems immediately with my song ‘Crazy’ because it had four or five chords in it. Not that ‘Crazy’ is real complicated; it just wasn’t your basic three-chord country hillbilly song.”
In addition to the “complex” chord progression, Patsy Cline wasn’t a huge hit of the song either. According to those who knew her best, she didn’t favor songs that showed heartbreak and vulnerability.
But her producer, Owen Bradley, thought the song was an instant hit, and so did her husband, Charlie.
Charlie was a Willie Nelson fan back when “Willie” was still Hugh Nelson and only featured on an old Paul Buskirk record. He claimed that he wore the record out, but Patsy “didn’t even want to hear Willie Nelson’s name mentioned.”
Between Patsy’s lack of belief and interest in the song and a coinciding car accident that left Patsy beat up and on crutches for the first recordings, she just couldn’t seem to get in the groove of the tune’s wandering melody.
Owen Bradley worked for several hours to try and straighten out the harmony, eventually landing on the structure we hear in the song, and then Patsy spent several additional hours trying to nail down the odd vocal. The bass player on the track recalled Patsy’s reaction to the original Willie demo:
“Look, Hoss, there ain’t no way I could sing it like that guy’s a-singing it,”
By today’s standards, 3-4 hours in a studio working on production may sound average, but this was a time when 4-5 songs would typically be recorded in that window of time; a tremendous amount of attention was paid to the details behind the song’s structure.
The team was working tirelessly to make the song the hit they believed it could be.
Patsy returned a few weeks later and recorded one take of the song, which Owen deemed “perfect!”
And as it turned out, Owen was right about the song’s potential. After its release, “Crazy” climbed to number two on the Billboard Charts – and is probably even more noteworthy in hindsight.
Not bad for a song that didn’t follow the “country-hillbilly” chord progression.
