Ask anyone to name a George Strait classic, and “Unwound” is likely on the list. Strait’s first single, “Unwound” is written by Dean Dillon and Frank Dycus. Although it seems like it was written with Strait in mind, the two writers actually wrote it for someone else first: Johnny Paycheck.
Blake Mavis, who was producing Strait, told the two men he needed songs for Strait, although no one had heard of him at the time. At the time, Paycheck, known for his legal troubles as much as his music, was incarcerated, which is how Strait got “Unwound.
Videos by American Songwriter
” I said, ‘Who does he sound like?’” Dillon recalls to Texas Monthly. “He said, ‘Well, he doesn’t really sound like anybody. He’s kinda got his own Texas thing going on. Y’all got any songs?’ I said. ‘We’ve always got songs. As a matter of fact, we’ve got a song we were gonna pitch to Johnny Paycheck, but he’s in jail, so we’ll give it to you. It’s called ‘Unwound’.’”
Dillon goes on to say that they played several songs for Mavis. But it’s “Unwound” that Strait’s manager, Erv Woolsey, liked best.
What Dean Dillon Says About George Strait Recording ‘Unwound’
Although he didn’t know it at the time, “Unwound” became part of a lengthy relationship Dillon had with Strait. After “Unwound”, Dillon wrote plenty of other hits for Strait, including “The Chair“, “Ocean Front Property”, “Easy Come, Easy Go”, and others.
“Back in those days, you didn’t give your top drawer stuff to an unknown artist,” Dillon says (via Songfacts). “You just didn’t do that. You pitched them to [George] Jones or [Merle] Haggard or [Johnny] Cash, Dolly [Parton] or Loretta [Lynn]. I pitched him everything I had but the kitchen sink. I was always of a mind to not necessarily go with the normal way of thinking. And for somebody to tell me not to do something, well, hell, I’d be damned. I’d do just the opposite.
“So, I pitched him everything I had and ended up with six songs on his first album,” he adds. “I think a lot of that had to do with nobody else would give him anything. He never forgot that.”
Dillon says he and Dycus wrote “Unwound” in about 45 minutes while drinking beer. The song says, “That woman that I had wrapped around my finger just come unwound / She kicked me out of the house, and tonight I’m whiskey bound / Yeah, I’m gonna be the drunkest fool in town / ‘Cause that woman that I had wrapped around my finger / Just come unwound.”
Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images