# Patsy Cline vs. Rodney Crowell **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 8, 2019, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467 "2019-10-08T04:38:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![oliversarmy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/eb8c5e/32.png) [@oliversarmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oliversarmy)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/1 "2019-10-08T04:38:54Z")
I just realized that Patsy Cline’s song " I Fall to Pieces" is the same song as Rodney Crowell’s “I Couldn’t Leave You if I Tried.” Does that ever happen to you? ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/2 "2019-10-08T04:55:52Z")
I’m not hearing it. Do you mean they are about the same thing? ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/3 "2019-10-08T05:41:15Z")
I notice similar lyrics and themes. The music I hear is usually what I think the lyrics are saying. This is why I’m not a musician like practically every member of my family. I have a dumb ear. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/4 "2019-10-08T08:45:24Z")
The IV-V chord change is similar. That happens over the words “I couldn’t leave you if I tried” and “You walk by and I fall to pieces”. Country music is pretty simple with respect to chords, so this is fairly common. Hank Thompson’s [“The Wild Side of Life\*”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFXB5cJDmp8) uses the same actual \*melody \*as the Carter Family’s [“I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4tBmpRdZ94). This was a vestige of early country music’s transition from folk music to copyrighted songs. An intriguing example of this is Chuck Berry’s [“The Promised Land”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-46hyvEV5k) which is a rock and roll version of [“The Wabash Cannonball”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i435ovKX9aE). \*Kitty Wells’ “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” was a reply to Thompson’s song, so deliberately uses the same melody. ---
**Author:** ![wguy123](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wguy123/32/3161_2.png) [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/5 "2019-10-08T14:46:10Z")
> [@oliversarmy](#): > > I just realized that Patsy Cline’s song " I Fall to Pieces" is the same song as Rodney Crowell’s “I Couldn’t Leave You if I Tried.” > > Does that ever happen to you? I don’t get it between those two songs. Rodney’s is more of a Mavericks (or Mavericks is more of a Rodney) song although I couldn’t give you an exact song…maybe “There goes my Heart”. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/6 "2019-10-08T16:53:44Z")
I play a lot of bluegrass/folk/oldtime music. It is a regular recurrence that you’ll be playing one song, and all of a sudden realize that just a certain chord change - or even pretty much the entire song - is exactly another song. It can be funny, sometimes a picker will go into a passage playing one song, and come out playing another. Many tunes are almost exactly the same. One common duo is the folk tune Ora Lee and Elvis’ Love Me Tender. And on the flip side, there can be completely different songs with the exact same title. And of course, there is the old saw: Q: Why do fiddle tunes have titles? A: So you can tell them apart! (Likely more amusing to a picker.) ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/7 "2019-10-08T16:55:11Z")
I was hoping this would be a who-would-win-in-a-fight type of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/8 "2019-10-08T19:01:45Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > I was hoping this would be a who-would-win-in-a-fight type of thing. Rodney’s showing his age, but Patsy - she dead! 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/9 "2019-10-08T19:43:13Z")
There’s some sort of four chord set (I am NOT well versed in musical terms) that apparently nearly all pop music uses. Is it maybe something like that? [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/oOlDewpCfZQ/maxresdefault.jpg "4 Chords | Music Videos | The Axis Of Awesome") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ) ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patsy-cline-vs-rodney-crowell/841467/10 "2019-10-09T01:39:37Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > The IV-V chord change is similar. That happens over the words “I couldn’t leave you if I tried” and “You walk by and I fall to pieces”. > > Country music is pretty simple with respect to chords, so this is fairly common. > > Hank Thompson’s [“The Wild Side of Life\*”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFXB5cJDmp8) uses the same actual \*melody \*as the Carter Family’s [“I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4tBmpRdZ94). This was a vestige of early country music’s transition from folk music to copyrighted songs. > > \*Kitty Wells’ “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” was a reply to Thompson’s song, so deliberately uses the same melody. And we can add Great Speckled Bird, a gospel song recorded by Roy Acuff. His recording is later than Blue Eyes, but I do not know when the gospel song was written.