Harlan Howard
Musician · d. 2002
Harlan Howard was once dubbed “the Irving Berlin of country music” — the writer behind “I Fall to Pieces,” “Heartaches by the Number,” “Busted,” “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail,” and the line that became Nashville’s working motto: “three chords and the truth.” Across six decades and an estimated 4,000 songs, more than 100 of his compositions reached the country Top 10.
Assisted by AI.
Spot something off? Help us fix it.
- Born Harlan Perry Howard on September 8, 1927, in Detroit, Michigan; orphaned young and raised on farms across Michigan, where Grand Ole Opry broadcasts — especially Ernest Tubb — turned him toward country music.
- Served in the Army, then settled in Los Angeles in 1955, driving a forklift in a printing factory and writing songs at night.
- Broke through in 1959 when “Heartaches by the Number” became a No. 2 country hit for Ray Price and a No. 1 pop hit for Guy Mitchell.
- Moved to Nashville in 1960 to write full-time. In 1961 alone he had fifteen songs on the country charts.
- Co-wrote “I Fall to Pieces” with Hank Cochran in 1961 — the Patsy Cline hit that helped define the Nashville sound.
- Other essentials: “Busted” (Johnny Cash, Ray Charles), “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” (Buck Owens), “The Chokin’ Kind” (Joe Simon), “Streets of Baltimore.” His songs were cut by Patsy Cline, Ray Charles, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Brenda Lee, and hundreds of others.
- Coined “three chords and the truth” to describe country songwriting — the line is now repeated as the genre’s shorthand.
- Died March 3, 2002, in Nashville, of a heart attack at age 74.
- Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1973), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1997), and the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1997).
