Three Chords and the Truth: The Songwriting Legacy of Harlan Howard
- Briley Bell
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
By Briley Bell
Nashville has produced plenty of legends, but few of them changed the actual craft of songwriting the way Harlan Howard did. He never chased the spotlight himself, but he did write the songs that would go on to define other people's careers. This is the story of Harlan Howard's songwriting, and how a farm kid from Michigan quietly became the standard for songwriters on Music Row.
A Farm Kid With a Typewriter
Howard grew up on a farm in Michigan, born in Detroit in 1927, listening to the Grand Ole Opry crackle through the radio at night. He didn't come from money and he didn't come from Nashville. He came here in 1960 already grown, with nothing but a talent for turning everyday speech into
lyrics and a stack of songs he'd been writing on the side. However, his talents turned out to be worth more than any music degree. Howard wrote in plain language, no dressing it up, no reaching for a clever rhyme just to prove he could. He said it himself once, and it's the phrase every songwriter here still repeats: a great country song is three chords and the truth. That's not a slogan somebody made up to sell him. That's just how he wrote.
The Year Harlan Howard Owned the Charts
In 1961, Harlan Howard had fifteen songs sitting on the country charts at the same time, a record that still stands today. That same year he co-wrote "I Fall to Pieces" with Hank Cochran, and Patsy Cline turned it into one of the most defining recordings of her career, released not long before her death made it feel even heavier. He wasn't a one song wonder riding a lucky year either. Johnny Cash had a hit with his song "Busted," and then Ray Charles took the same song and carried it into the pop charts, which tells you something about how versatile these songs actually were. They weren't stuck in one genre. They moved because the truth in them moved.
The Career That Never Slowed Down
Across six decades, Howard is credited with writing more than 4,000 songs. Over a hundred of them cracked the Top 10. A short list of what that career actually looked like:
"Pick Me Up on Your Way Down," cut by Charlie Walker
"Mary Ann Regrets," recorded by Burl Ives
"Tiger by the Tail," recorded by Buck Owens and The Buckaroos
"Everglades," a classic recorded by the Kingston Trio
"It's All Over (But the Crying)," a hit for Hank Williams Jr. in 1968
"Life Turned Her That Way," recorded by Mel Tillis and later covered by Ricky Van Shelton
"The Wall," which became a hit for Johnny Cash
"The Chokin' Kind," a million seller for Joe Simon
"No Charge," a number one hit for Melba Montgomery that Howard often called his favorite of everything he wrote
Few songwriters in country music history have matched that combination of volume and staying power. Harlan Howard's catalog remains one of the most covered and enduring in the genre, a body of work still studied by songwriters decades after it was written.
Where He Rests
Harlan Howard died here in Nashville on March 3, 2002, at seventy four. He's buried in Nashville City Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in the city, sitting on a bluff above the Cumberland River since 1822. Walk through it early in the morning and you'll hear gravel crunch under your boots before you hear much of anything else. It's not eerie. It's just old, in the way a place gets when it's been holding onto a city's history for two centuries. But Howard isn't buried with his own family. He rests in the Zollicoffer family plot, alongside Felix Zollicoffer, a Confederate general killed leading his men at the Battle of Mill Springs in 1862. It's said that Howard held a real admiration for Zollicoffer's leadership, a general who died at the front of his own charge rather than behind it, and chose to rest beside him because that kind of leadership stuck with him. It's a piece of Nashville history that never made it onto any plaque, the kind you only find by walking the ground yourself and asking the right questions.
Plain Truth, Lasting Legacy
Harlan Howard didn't need a wall of production or a clever hook to make a song last. He needed the truth, told plainly, and that's still the standard many songwriters on Music Row are chasing whether they know his name or not. It sounds simple until you try to write that way yourself. Most people find out fast how much discipline it actually takes to strip down your vulnerability and turn it into a three chord song sung across generations. Next time you hear "I Fall to Pieces," you'll know exactly whose truth you're listening to.
Come Hear the Rest of Nashville's Stories
This is the kind of story we spend our days digging up here at Nashville Adventures. Come join us on one of our walking tours to hear the truths and legends this town has been holding onto for generations. We'll take you through the real Nashville, the one behind the postcards, and share the stories most visitors never get to hear. And if it's the paranormal side of this city that pulls at you, join me on a Ghost Tour, where the truths and legends run just as deep as the music does.
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Briley Bell Briley Bell has built a life around Nashville's two great obsessions: its music and its ghosts. By night, she leads Nashville Adventures' ghost tours through the city's haunted corners, spinning stories of Civil War soldiers, restless spirits, and the kind of history that doesn't stay buried. By day, she's an independent artist with a sound that's all her own. Her music has the same quality as her storytelling: it pulls you in, holds you still, and leaves you thinking about it longer than you expected.
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