Ten More Songs You May Not Know Are Covers: Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain (#7)

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When I did the first series of discussions on hit songs that many people might not know were actually cover songs I more or less steered clear of country music. I have rectified that mistake in this set of songs. Of course, most of these "country" songs were pretty big pop hits as well (such as yesterday's song, "The Battle of New Orleans"), and that's the case of today's cover. #7: Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain Hey, Willie! You don't even have to say Nelson because when you say Willie everyone -- even people who don't like country music -- knows who you mean. That's the mark of a true icon. And most people know that, in addition to be a singer of questionable caliber, he's a fantastic songwriter (having composed, among others, Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and Faron Young's "Hello, Walls"). So naturally he wrote all of those great songs that he had hits with, right? Um.....no. Willie didn't write his major breakthrough pop song, "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." In fact, his 1975 hit version came 28 years after the original. And now, for your boring but significant country music history lesson! Back in the 1940s country music was called "hillbilly music" and was shunned by the rest of the music world. Country songwriters found themselves having to copyright their songs by mailing the lyrics to themselves, with the post mark serving as proof of when they wrote the song. That's how the legendary "King of Country Music," Roy Acuff, copyrighted his songs. Of course, he saw that it was wrong for country songwriters to be shunned like that (especially given that Bing Crosby had a massive pop hit with a hillbilly song, Al Dexter's "Pistol Packin' Mama"). So he teamed up with a songwriter by the name of Fred Rose and formed the first publishing company that welcomed country songwriters with open arms. It was called Acuff-Rose Publishing. (I guess all the originality was spent on the idea instead of the name. ) Acuff was a superstar almost from the get-go. A pitching prospect for the New York Yankees, Acuff suffered sun poisoning in 1930 and was forced to stay inside for a year. While convalescing he taught himself fiddle and traded his baseball aspirations for a career in music. Starting on WNOX's Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round in late 1935, Acuff quickly became so popular that people were forking over dimes that were very hard to come by in the middle of the Great Depression as often as they could to see Acuff live in Knoxville. By the time World War II rolled around Acuff was so well-known that even the Japanese kamakaze pilots yelled his name over the radio ("To hell with Roosevelt! To hell with Babe Ruth! To hell with Roy Acuff!") as they attacked. (Roy Acuff was also the first country singer, and first celebrity, I ever met. I met him when I was eight years old. Minnie Pearl was there, too!) Fred Rose was a gifted songwriter who counted among the people who recorded his songs Hank Williams, Bob Wills, Eddy Arnold, Marty Robbins, Gene Autry, and Sophie Tucker. He discovered Hank Williams and sought to nurture any and all comers in country music songwriting. One of his songs was the lost-love song "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." In 1947 Rose's business partner Roy Acuff had a hit with the song. Then along comes Willie and nobody remembers the King of Country Music's recording (complete with an extra verse that Nelson didn't put in his version). Acuff died in 1992 at the age of 89. He'd been suffering from congestive heart failure and spent most of the week days in the hospital, checking out on Friday and Saturday to perform on the Grand Ole Opry. He was honored on a US postage stamp in 2003. Willie is 83 and well preserved thanks to, ahem, "natural herbs." Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain Written by Fred Rose Originally by Roy Acuff, 1947 Famously covered by Willie Nelson, 1975 Mr. Acuff's original version: