In 1961, Patsy Cline released “I Fall To Pieces”, a song that became her first No. 1 hit. At the time, Cline had already released more than a dozen singles, with only one of them, “Walkin’ After Midnight”, becoming a hit at radio. So when Harlan Howard wrote “I Fall To Pieces” with Hank Cochran, Cline was understandably not his first choice to record the song.
“In the summer of 1960, here in Nashville, a friend of mine named Hank Cochran stopped by my house on his way to work as a song-plugger for Pamper Music, and asked me to help him write a new song he was working on,” Howard recalls. “He then sang me the first two lines of the songs, and I liked it. So in the next hour, we wrote it.”
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“After Hank left for work, I sang what he had and timed it with my watch, and it seemed like it wasn’t long enough,” he continues. “So I wrote another section the same length as the first half and took it to Hank at his office, and he liked it, and that was about it. Hank took the finished song to Owen Bradley at Decca Records. Owen liked it and started playing it for different singers who were looking for songs. After several rejections, Patsy recorded it, and I still love the record as much as I did way back then.”
Cline herself wasn’t initially sure of “I Fall To Pieces”, since The Jordaires, a male quartet, were singing background vocals on the song. Cline initially thought they would drown out her own vocals.
What “I Fall To Pieces” Did For Patsy Cline’s Career
Not only did “I Fall To Pieces” become Cline’s first No. 1 at country radio, but it also became a Top 15 pop hit as well. “I Fall To Pieces” began a string of success for Cline, who followed “I Fall To Pieces” with “Crazy” and “She’s Got You”.
It’s a fortunate addition to Cline’s catalog, one that almost didn’t happen. Among the artists who passed on “I Fall To Pieces” are Brenda Lee and Roy Drusky. Lee claimed the song was “too country” for her at the time.
Of course, “I Fall To Pieces” became the song that launched a career cut way too short. In 1963, two years after “I Fall To Pieces” was released, Cline was killed in a plane crash. Cline had two Top 10 singles, “Sweet Dreams (Of You)” and “Faded Love”, which were both released after her death.
Photo by Johnny Franklin/andmorebears/Getty Images
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