The song's eventual success helped launch Nelson as a performer as well as a songwriter. Nelson originally wrote the song for country singer Billy Walker, who turned it down for the same reason Roy Drusky turned down ' I Fall to Pieces' the previous year: that it was 'a girl's song'.
With some help from a friend named Oliver English, Nelson wrote the song in early 1961 at the time he was a journeyman singer-songwriter who had written several hits for other artists but had not yet had a significant recording of his own.
