charlene
07-20-2010, 08:23 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/arts/music/17cochran.html
Hank Cochran, Writer for Country Music Stars, Dies at 74
By BILL FRISKICS-WARREN
Published: July 16, 2010
NASHVILLE — Hank Cochran, a singer and songwriter who wrote major hits for Patsy Cline, Burl Ives and Eddy Arnold and whose songs appeared on the country charts for more than four decades, died Thursday at his home in Hendersonville, Tenn., near Nashville. He was 74.
.His death was announced by his publicist, Martha Moore, who said he had been suffering from pancreatic cancer.
Heartache was Mr. Cochran’s great theme as a songwriter. For Ms. Cline he wrote the lovelorn “I Fall to Pieces” (with Harlan Howard), for Mr. Arnold the angst-ridden ballad “Make the World Go Away.” Distinguished by their shuffling rhythms, sweeping melodies and emotional candor, both songs became No. 1 country singles and crossed over to the pop chart.
“I always tried to make it short, make it sweet and make it rhyme,” Mr. Cochran explained, discussing his approach to songwriting in an interview with Nashville’s City Paper in 2007.
Scores of pop singers, from Bing Crosby to Etta James to Elvis Costello, have recorded songs written by Mr. Cochran. His greatest impact, though, came as a composer of country hits, including No. 1 singles like Vern Gosdin’s “Set ’Em Up Joe” and George Strait’s “Chair.” Jeannie Seely’s version of Mr. Cochran’s torch ballad “Don’t Touch Me” won a Grammy Award for best female country and western vocal performance in 1967. Ms. Seely went on to release an entire album of his songs, “Thanks Hank,” in 1967. She and Mr. Cochran were married from 1969 to 1979.
As a performer Mr. Cochran placed three hits in the country Top 40 in the early 1960s. Songwriting, however, increasingly became his focus after he moved to Nashville to take a job as a writer and song plugger with Pamper Music, a publishing company partly owned by the singer Ray Price, in 1960. While at Pamper, Mr. Cochran helped his friend Willie Nelson, then a struggling tunesmith, secure a staff job as well. The two went on to write and record together. They also appeared together in the 1980 movie “Honeysuckle Rose.”
Mr. Cochran was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Association International’s Hall of Fame in 1974.
Garland Perry Cochran was born Aug. 2, 1935, in Isola, Miss. His parents divorced when he was 9, and he was placed at an orphanage in Memphis shortly afterward. After running away several times he was sent to live with his grandparents in Mississippi, where he started singing and playing guitar in his grandfather’s church.
At age 12 Mr. Cochran dropped out of school and hitchhiked to New Mexico with his uncle to work on oil rigs there.
When he was 16 he moved to California, where he met Eddie Cochran, a fellow teenager with whom he formed a rock ’n’ roll duo called the Cochran Brothers (although the two men were not related). They appeared on “Town Hall Party,” a country music variety hour on KTTV in Los Angeles, and toured as an opening act for Lefty Frizzell. They also made several recordings, though they had little commercial success, before Eddie Cochran went on to greater acclaim as a rockabilly singer.
Though known primarily as a songwriter, Mr. Cochran made records well into his 60s. He released his final recording, “Livin’ for a Song: A Songwriter’s Autobiography,” on the Gifted Few label in 2002.
He is survived by his wife, Suzi; a daughter, Booth Calder; and three sons, all from his first marriage: Garland Perry Cochran Jr., James Lee Cochran and Daniel Cochran.
After discovering his gift for music as a teenager, Mr. Cochran embraced songwriting as a much more rewarding career than the physically demanding work he knew in the New Mexico oilfields. “They said I’d be back,” he said in 2002 , “because if you ever got that oil in your hair, you’d return to it.
“Wrong!”
Hank Cochran, Writer for Country Music Stars, Dies at 74
By BILL FRISKICS-WARREN
Published: July 16, 2010
NASHVILLE — Hank Cochran, a singer and songwriter who wrote major hits for Patsy Cline, Burl Ives and Eddy Arnold and whose songs appeared on the country charts for more than four decades, died Thursday at his home in Hendersonville, Tenn., near Nashville. He was 74.
.His death was announced by his publicist, Martha Moore, who said he had been suffering from pancreatic cancer.
Heartache was Mr. Cochran’s great theme as a songwriter. For Ms. Cline he wrote the lovelorn “I Fall to Pieces” (with Harlan Howard), for Mr. Arnold the angst-ridden ballad “Make the World Go Away.” Distinguished by their shuffling rhythms, sweeping melodies and emotional candor, both songs became No. 1 country singles and crossed over to the pop chart.
“I always tried to make it short, make it sweet and make it rhyme,” Mr. Cochran explained, discussing his approach to songwriting in an interview with Nashville’s City Paper in 2007.
Scores of pop singers, from Bing Crosby to Etta James to Elvis Costello, have recorded songs written by Mr. Cochran. His greatest impact, though, came as a composer of country hits, including No. 1 singles like Vern Gosdin’s “Set ’Em Up Joe” and George Strait’s “Chair.” Jeannie Seely’s version of Mr. Cochran’s torch ballad “Don’t Touch Me” won a Grammy Award for best female country and western vocal performance in 1967. Ms. Seely went on to release an entire album of his songs, “Thanks Hank,” in 1967. She and Mr. Cochran were married from 1969 to 1979.
As a performer Mr. Cochran placed three hits in the country Top 40 in the early 1960s. Songwriting, however, increasingly became his focus after he moved to Nashville to take a job as a writer and song plugger with Pamper Music, a publishing company partly owned by the singer Ray Price, in 1960. While at Pamper, Mr. Cochran helped his friend Willie Nelson, then a struggling tunesmith, secure a staff job as well. The two went on to write and record together. They also appeared together in the 1980 movie “Honeysuckle Rose.”
Mr. Cochran was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Association International’s Hall of Fame in 1974.
Garland Perry Cochran was born Aug. 2, 1935, in Isola, Miss. His parents divorced when he was 9, and he was placed at an orphanage in Memphis shortly afterward. After running away several times he was sent to live with his grandparents in Mississippi, where he started singing and playing guitar in his grandfather’s church.
At age 12 Mr. Cochran dropped out of school and hitchhiked to New Mexico with his uncle to work on oil rigs there.
When he was 16 he moved to California, where he met Eddie Cochran, a fellow teenager with whom he formed a rock ’n’ roll duo called the Cochran Brothers (although the two men were not related). They appeared on “Town Hall Party,” a country music variety hour on KTTV in Los Angeles, and toured as an opening act for Lefty Frizzell. They also made several recordings, though they had little commercial success, before Eddie Cochran went on to greater acclaim as a rockabilly singer.
Though known primarily as a songwriter, Mr. Cochran made records well into his 60s. He released his final recording, “Livin’ for a Song: A Songwriter’s Autobiography,” on the Gifted Few label in 2002.
He is survived by his wife, Suzi; a daughter, Booth Calder; and three sons, all from his first marriage: Garland Perry Cochran Jr., James Lee Cochran and Daniel Cochran.
After discovering his gift for music as a teenager, Mr. Cochran embraced songwriting as a much more rewarding career than the physically demanding work he knew in the New Mexico oilfields. “They said I’d be back,” he said in 2002 , “because if you ever got that oil in your hair, you’d return to it.
“Wrong!”