Patsy Cline - "Crazy" (1962)

"Crazy" is a ballad composed by Willie Nelson. It has been recorded by several artists, most notably by Patsy Cline, whose version was a #2 country hit in 1962.


Partly due to the genre-blending nature of the song, it has been covered by dozens of artists in several genres over the years; Nevertheless, the song remains inextricably linked with Patsy Cline.


Nelson wrote the song in early 1961; at the time he was a journeyman singer-songwriter who had written several hits for other artists but had not yet had a significant recording of his own. Willie Nelson originally wrote the song for country singer Billy Walker, but Walker turned it down. The song's eventual success helped launch Nelson as a performer as well as a songwriter. Musically the song is a jazz-pop ballad with country overtones and a complex melody. The lyrics describe the singer's state of bemusement at the singer's own helpless love for the object of his affection.


Patsy Cline, who was already a country music superstar and working to extend a string of hits, picked it as a follow up to her previous big hit "I Fall to Pieces". "Crazy", its complex melody suiting Cline's vocal talent perfectly, was released in late 1961 and immediately became another huge hit for Cline and widened the crossover audience she had established with her prior hits. It spent 21 weeks on the chart and eventually became one of her signature tunes. Cline's version is #85 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.[3]


According to the Ellis Nassour biography Patsy Cline, Nelson, who at that time was known as a struggling songwriter by the name of Hugh Nelson, was a regular at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge on Nashville's Music Row, where he frequented with friends Kris Kristofferson and Roger Miller, both unknown songwriters at that time. Nelson met Cline's husband, Charlie Dick, at the bar one evening and pitched the song to him. Dick took the track home and played it for Cline, who absolutely hated it at first because Nelson's demo "spoke" the lyrics to a faster tempo than what Cline later recorded as a ballad. Cline's producer, Owen Bradley, loved the song and arranged it as the ballad it was recorded as. Still recovering from a recent automobile accident that nearly took her life, Cline had difficulty reaching the high notes of the song at first due to her broken ribs, so she came back the next day to record the vocal, which she did in one take. Another story has it that Cline tried to record the song for hours one night with no success. After visiting Willie Nelson and listining to how he would have sung it she made it within a few attempts the next recording session.


Loretta Lynn remembers the first time Cline performed it at the Grand Ole Opry on crutches, she received three standing ovations. Barbara Mandrell remembers Cline introducing the song to her audiences live in concert saying "I had a hit out called 'I Fall to Pieces' and I was in a car wreck. Now I'm really worried because I have a new hit single out and its called 'Crazy'."


Willie Nelson stated on the 1993 documentary Remembering Patsy that Cline's version of "Crazy" was his favorite song of his that anybody had ever recorded because it "was a lot of magic."