When Elvis Presley recorded Wayne Carson’s Always On My Mind in 1972, he had just separated from his wife Priscilla. Carson had not specifically written the song for Presley and was unaware of the singer’s personal situation; but his poignant lyrics of tender regret perfectly expressed Presley’s mood and he invested them with one of the most emotionally charged vocal performances of his career. The song gave Presley a million seller and became one of the signature tunes of his final years.
Always On My Mind — which fortuitously found its way to Presley via Red West, who knew Carson and was working as a bodyguard to the singer — was one of dozens of hit songs to flow from Carson’s pen and epitomised his ability to combine a universal lyric with a memorable melody.
One of the most potent break-up songs in popular music’s rich canon of such compositions, Always On My Mind won a Grammy award as song of the year when Willie Nelson rerecorded Carson’s composition in 1982.
It was subsequently covered by more than 300 performers, including Michael Buble, Julio Iglesias and the Pet Shop Boys, as several generations of the broken-hearted found comfort in the song’s bittersweet caress.
Carson claimed to have written Always On My Mind in ten minutes, sitting at the kitchen table in his home in Springfield, Missouri. “I usually write from the melody and if the melody is singable, the words are not far away,” he explained. “Always On My Mind happens to be one of those things that, universally, everybody on the planet has been there. Everybody touched base with that one. It was just magic that it was so simple and so right on the button.”
Advertisement
He required a little help when producer Chips Moman demanded that the song required a bridge, which Carson had deliberately omitted on the grounds that it didn’t need one. However, under instruction he repaired to an upstairs office with two friends, Johnny Christopher and Mark James, and in minutes re-emerged with the lines “tell me that your sweet love hasn’t died/ give me one more chance to keep you satisfied” added to create the bridge.
“That’s when we were convinced we had a No 1 record,” Carson recalled.
It was not the first time an ability to work fast and think on his feet had come to Carson’s rescue. After years of pitching songs unsuccessfully, his first break came in 1966 when the Nashville producer Chet Atkins accepted a song titled Somebody Like Me and lined up the country star Eddy Arnold to record it. Prior to the recording session, Carson received a phone call from the singer: “Eddie said, ‘Wayne, I love the song, but it needs another verse’. So I said, ‘Well, the third verse goes like this’ and I just wrote it right there over the phone.” The song gave Carson his first hit when Arnold’s recording — complete with extemporised third verse — topped the country charts.
Carson liked to insist that a song “ain’t nothing but a story waiting for somebody to tell it” and Somebody Like Me was the first of many hits as he went on to write a raft of songs that became pop standards. The Box Tops had hits with several of his compositions including The Letter (a No 1 in 1967), Neon Rainbow and Soul Deep, and others who recorded his songs included Joe Cocker, the Beach Boys, Al Green, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell and Tina Turner.
In addition to his expertise in penning bittersweet break-up songs, Carson was a skilled exponent of that other great shibboleth of the country music songbook, the barstool ballad in which the world is seen mawkishly through the bottom of a glass. Examples of his work in the genre included Whiskey Trip, Barstool Mountain, Drinkin’ Thing and — best of all — She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles), a 1975 hit for Gary Stewart.
Advertisement
Wayne Carson Head was born in 1943 in Denver, Colorado. His parents were professional country singers who performed as Shorty and Sue, although he showed no early inclination to follow in their footsteps; he was 14 before he picked up a guitar, initially inspired by rock’n’roll rather than country music.
He moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1962 hoping to make it as a singer, with the support of his older brother, who was a concert promoter and booked him as the support act on tours by country stars. Yet although he recorded for several labels, it was as a songwriter that he made his greatest mark.
He lived quietly in Franklin, Tennessee, close to Nashville, with the singer Wyndi Harp Head, his wife of 17 years, and a son, Christian. In retirement, he spent much of his time playing golf and fishing. An avid dog lover, he fostered large numbers of abandoned animals. He had suffered various health issues, including diabetes and heart problems.
He maintained a computer database of his songs that numbered 8,500 recordings by more than 1,000 different performers.
Wayne Carson, songwriter, was born on May 31, 1943. He died on July 20, 2015, aged 72