Although Bradley persuaded her to try the song at his Quonset Hut studio on August 21, 1961, she could not get a handle on it during the four-hour session. Yet somehow Owen Bradley heard a potential hit in that. Sometimes he was closer to reciting the lyrics than singing them. Willie’s phrasing was all over the place-sometimes ahead of the beat, sometimes behind it, stretching syllables out or biting them short. The demo (which can be heard on Willie Nelson’s Demo Sessions) was slow and syrupy. However, when Hank Cochran pitched “Crazy” to Owen Bradley, Cline’s producer, he was quickly sold-which just goes to show what great ears Owen Bradley had. “Crazy” must have seemed like the consolation prize. 1 hit (“ I Fall to Pieces“) after six years of ups and downs in the music industry, Cline did not quickly warm to “Crazy.” She much preferred “Funny How Time Slips Away,” but Walker kept that one for himself. Then 28 years old and coming off her first No. One of them happened to be fellow Grand Ole Opry cast member Patsy Cline.
Cochran got Willie a $50 a week draw as a staff writer at Pamper Music shortly after he arrived in Nashville, while Walker quickly recorded Willie’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” and talked Willie up with other artists. Two people who believed in Willie from the beginning were songwriter Hank Cochran and Grand Ole Opry star Billy Walker.
“Not that ‘Crazy’ is real complicated it just wasn’t your basic three-chord country hillbilly song.” “I had problems immediately with my song ‘Crazy’ because it had four or five chords in it,” he recalled. “I enjoyed fooling around with the phrasing,” Willie has said, “but it made my sound noncommercial for all those Nashville ears who were listening for the same old stuff and misunderstood anything original.” Nelson also tended to write melodies that were more complex than the standard country fare. Although his talent was obvious, many in the country music business thought his style was simply too offbeat and artsy for the charts.
But when he arrived in Nashville from Texas in 1960, the 27-year-old ex-DJ and bar musician was a household name only at his own kitchen table.
Today Willie Nelson is universally acclaimed as both a singer and a songwriter. Cline’s hit recording swings with such velvety finesse, and her voice throbs and aches so exquisitely, that the entire production sounds absolutely effortless. How could that song not have been a hit?Ĭertainly, that would seem to be the case with “ Crazy.” The country standard was written by Willie Nelson and recorded definitively by Patsy Cline for Decca Records in 1961. Once a song becomes a widely recognized hit, its popularity can seem virtually inevitable.
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