In 1973, Waylon Jennings released “We Had It All”. Written by Troy Seals and Donnie Fritts, “We Had It All” became a Top 30 single for Jennings. It appears on his Honky Tonk Heroes album.
“We Had It All” is a heartbreaking look back at a relationship that has ended. The sad song says, “I can hear the wind a-blowing in my mind / Just the way it used to sound through the Georgia pines / And you were there to answer when I called / You and me we had it all / Remember how I used to touch your hair / While reaching for the feeling that was always there / You were the best thing in my life I can recall / You and me we had it all.”
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Jennings is the first artist to record “We Had It All”. Although it didn’t become as big a hit as some of his other songs, it remains one of his more notable tracks. But Jennings is far from the only artist to record “We Had It All”. After Jennings, more than a dozen artists recorded “We Had It All” through the years. Among the artists who put their own spin on “We Had It All” are Rita Coolidge, Dobie Gray, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Conway Twitty, Ray Charles, and Dottie West, among others.
A Look at Some of the Other Artists Who Recorded “We Had It All” Besides Waylon Jennings
Parton’s version of “We Had It All” became a Top 40 hit for her when it was released in 1986. Not all of the artists who recorded “We Had It All” released it as a single. The Rolling Stones include it on the deluxe version of their 2011 Some Girls album.
“Keith [Richards] sings this one,” Mick Jagger says. “It’s an old-time country song written by Donnie Fritts and Troy Seals. I know this because I was mixing it, and I said to Don Was, ‘Did Keith write this song?’ I didn’t know ’cause I’m not on it. Don said, ‘No, it’s an old cover tune. Waylon Jennings did a version, which is where I think Keith got it from.’”
One artist who almost covered “We Had It All” is Elvis Presley. Presley tried to record “We Had It All”, but struggled with the lyrics due to his recent split from Priscilla Presley.
“Now Elvis was a very quick study. He could hear vocals and arrangements once or twice, grab the lyric sheet, and just kill it,” Curly Putnam, who played bass for numerous Presley songs, recounts. “But on this particular night, we [did] four, five, six takes, and he wasn’t getting it. I’d never seen him have problems like that before. Finally, the frustrated singer threw down his microphone and shouted, ‘You can put that one out after I’ve been dead 20 years!’”
“We thought at first it was a joke,” he adds. “Then [producer] Felton Jarvis said he just couldn’t get through the words because he was thinking about himself. Another futile stab at the song the next day yielded nothing usable.”
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