Listen to Crazy (Stop Video First)

Patsy Cline
September 8, 1932 March 5, 1963

Written by Willie Nelson

Patsy Cline, who was already a country music superstar and working to extend a string of hits, picked "Crazy" as a follow up to her previous big hit "I Fall to Pieces". "Crazy", its complex melody suiting Cline's vocal talent perfectly, immediately became another huge hit for Patsy 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.

Owen Bradley, loved the song and arranged it in the ballad form in which it was later recorded. On Loretta Lynn's album I Remember Patsy, Bradley reported that as Patsy was still recovering from a recent automobile accident that nearly took her life, she'd had difficulty reaching the high notes of the song on the original production night due to her broken ribs. So after about four hours of trying, in the days of four songs being recorded in three hours - they called it a night. A week later she came back and recorded the lead vocal we all know in one take.

On the same interview, Loretta remembers the first time Cline performed it at the Grand Ole Opry on crutches, and received three standing ovations. Barbara Mandrell remembers Cline introducing the song to her audiences live in concert saying "All my recent hits have come true in my life. I had a hit out called Tra-La-La Triangle and people thought about me and Gerald and Charlie. I had another 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."

Patsy Cline's recording of "Crazy" was named the number one jukebox hit of all time.
~Source Wikipedia