‘Your Cheatin' Heart’ was released in January 1953. Propelled by Williams' death during a trip to a New Year's concert in Canton, Ohio, the song became an instant success. The song topped ‘Billboard’s Country & Western Chart’ for six weeks, while over a million units were sold. It reached Number 13 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’ and became ‘Billboard’s Most Played in Jukeboxes’ the same year. The song ranked at Number 213 on Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’ and was ranked Number 5 on ‘Country Music Television’s 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music’.
Others who have covered the song include Frankie Laine: Patsy Cline: Ray Charles: Louis Armstrong: Fats Domino and Elvis Presley to name but a few.
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While there have been many bad things I have done in my earlier life, particularly in my wild teenage years, I have always been up-front and decent with every woman I have ever had any form of association with. Even my ex-girlfriends always remained good friends with me after our close association had ended and would be hard pressed to say a bad word about me.
Only once in the whole of my life can I recall treating a young woman with less respect and consideration than she deserved. After my first wife dumped and divorced me, I returned to the dance hall of the Mecca in Bradford which had always been a good spot for single men and women ‘finding each other’ on a dance floor of 'lost souls and broken hearts'.
Admittedly, the discovery of a desirable female companion might only be for one night instead of a lifetime, but until true love was to be found again, one-night stands became a more common expectation and acceptable experience of those re-entering the adult dating scene.
On the night in question, I and my friend Geoffrey Griffiths went to the Mecca. We each drove there in our own car, in the event we both managed to get fixed up at the end of the night with a girl to take home. As luck would have it, I ended up taking an attractive woman in her mid-twenties home. She had obviously wanted to get off with me, as it was she who actually approached me and asked me to dance as Geoffrey and I eyed up the remaining talent on the dance floor.
As I drove home with the woman, we each had different things on our mind. She was going through a difficult patch in her life at the time and obviously saw me as a person with a sympathetic ear in whom she could confide. More than anything else, she needed a degree of sensitivity, understanding and sympathy from the man in the car beside her as she expressed the things that were undoubtedly worrying her. While she wanted to get off with me, my mind was set on certain clothing items of hers I wanted to get off her.
While we were both willing and ‘up for it’ that night, after I'd safely dropped her back home in the early morning hours, I couldn’t help thinking that ‘I’d let both of us down’ by my overall response the situation I was a part of; she in her expectations of me being ‘a good listener’ and ‘sympathetic respondent’, and me in the usual high standards I automatically displayed when dealing with a damsel in distress.
I found it hard to forgive myself for my lack of sensitivity and poorer than normal response, and I went to work the following morning ashamed of my overall behaviour. I had been too preoccupied with what I had wanted and had failed to respond to what she had primarily wanted as well as my company.
From that day on, I can honestly say that my behaviour to any woman I since encountered was more considerate, respectful and truthful in every regard. While there have been times in the past when I moved from one woman to another with the fleetness of foot of a ballroom dancer, I have never two-timed a woman in my life or pretended our relationship to have been any more than clearly stated and understood between us. If ever a heart has cheated, ‘it was never mine’.
Love and peace Bill xxx