Patsy Cline Was “Crazy” for Initially Not Wanting to Record Her Most Iconic Hit

It’s almost impossible to imagine Patsy Cline’s career without her iconic hit “Crazy,” but if the country singer had gotten her way in the summer of 1961, we would have had to do just that. Cline might be famous for her sentimental music these days, but back then, she had a no-nonsense attitude to maintain that required ample cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking, and an aversion to “woe is me” songs about a wistful, heartbroken woman.

Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely? Well, that was just a little too vulnerable for Ms. Cline’s taste. Fortunately for the rest of us, her husband, Charlie Dick, made a compelling—if not annoying—argument for the song that would change the sound of country music forever.

Patsy Cline Didn’t Want to Record Her Iconic Hit

Charlie Dick was waiting for his wife, Patsy Cline, in a bar when he first heard the jazzy, lonesome melody “Crazy,” then billed as Paul Buskirk and His Little Men featuring Hugh Nelson. (Hugh would later become Willie, by the way). The song enraptured Dick so much that he hunted down the record, not commercially available due to its small record label publisher, just so he could present it to Cline—albeit against her will at first.

“I took it home and listened to it about half the night and kept Patsy up half the night, and she didn’t think too much of that,” Dick told NPR in 2000. “That’s when we finally got the demo on “Crazy.” She didn’t think too much of the song. She just didn’t even want to hear Willie Nelson’s name mentioned.”

Hank Cochran, the song plugger for Nelson’s publishing company, brought another demo (and Nelson) to Cline and Dick’s house for the country singer to hear. “When he came over to bring this tape of “Crazy” that he thought was so good, Willie actually sat in the car,” Dick recalled. “He didn’t come in the house ‘cause I’d told him what Patsy said about me keeping her up all night. So, he waited outside. He didn’t want to lose a sale.”

The Country Singer Had An Image To Maintain

Patsy Cline might seem relatively tame by today’s musical standards, but back then, Cline was a bit rougher around the edges than her other female contemporaries. Cline had a no-nonsense demeanor, personally and professionally. She would smoke cigarettes and drink beer on stage while she sang. Simply put, Cline wasn’t the type of woman to sigh and swoon over a man who didn’t pay attention to her. As a woman of such a commanding presence, she was unfamiliar with that experience.

Cline wasn’t, well, crazy about the song’s arrangement either. At a time when most country music featured four chords, tops, Nelson’s jazzy, harmonically rich arrangement and rubato delivery seemed jarringly out of the norm. “I remember when Patsy heard the demo, she said, ‘Look, Hoss, there ain’t no way I could sing it like that guy’s a-singing it,’” bassist Gordon Stoker recalled in that same NPR interview. “Phrasing. The phrasing of it. The way he cut his words off and choppy. She didn’t want to do it like that. She wasn’t going to do it that way.”

So, Cline did it her way, and it turned out to be wildly successful. Cline’s version of “Crazy,” which she released in October 1961, was her only Top 10 hit. The track also garnered her the award for Billboard’s Favorite Female Country Artist that same year. Despite her initial trepidations, “Crazy” became Cline’s most iconic hit and a mainstay of her live performances up until her tragic death less than two years later in March of 1963.

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