Hank Cochran, 1935–2010

Hank Cochran arrived in Nashville in 1960, landing a $50-a-week songwriting job at a music publishing company. One year later, his song “I Fall to Pieces,” co-written with Harlan Howard and sung by Patsy Cline, was a No. 1 hit and Cochran was launched on a legendary career in which he would write or co-write hundreds of songs, including Eddy Arnold’s “Make the World Go Away” and Cline’s “She’s Got You.”

Born Garland Perry Cochran in Isola, Miss., Cochran’s parents divorced when he was 9. His father placed him in an orphanage, said the Chicago Tribune, but Cochran left three years later, hitchhiking to New Mexico with an uncle. He worked in the oil fields and learned to play guitar before making his way to Los Angeles while still a teenager. In 1954, he met “soon-to-be–rock star Eddie Cochran, and although they were not related, they billed themselves as the Cochran Brothers.” But the pair never produced a hit, and after they split up, Hank Cochran moved to Nashville.

Soon after Cochran received his first royalty check—an impressive $11,000—for “I Fall to Pieces,” he became a much-sought-after songwriter, said CMT.com. The country stars who recorded his songs included George Jones, Loretta Lynn, and Merle Haggard. He and friend Willie Nelson, whom Cochran recruited to work at the same music publisher, co-wrote “Undo the Right,” a top 10 hit for Johnny Bush in 1968. “Cochran notched three top 30 hits as a solo artist in the early 1960s,” reaching the top 20 in 1962 with “Sally Was a Good Old Girl.” He was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1974.

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The night before he died of pancreatic cancer, last week, Cochran was joined at his bedside by country stars Jamey Johnson and Billy Ray Cyrus, and fellow songwriter Buddy Cannon, who sang to him.