Marty Robbins wrote this heartbreaker where he takes a pragmatic view of love and loss, telling his girl to kiss him goodbye because he knows it's over. In his outlook, love is a zero-sum game, with one heart filled every time another breaks. The song crossed over to the pop chart and was also Robbins' seventh #1 on the Country chart, where it stayed at the peak position for ten weeks.
The song features an early example of guitar distortion, which was a happy accident. An electrical fault in the preamplifier of session musician Grady Martin's 6-string bass created the distortion that was recorded on the track. Although Martin was unhappy with the sound, it was so effective that Robbins' producer, Glenn Snoddy, left it as it was. The distortion starts at the 1:25 mark. Martin used the same malfunctioning preamplifier to record an instrumental named "The Fuzz" a year later. That song prompted The Ventures to seek out a way to reproduce the sound for their own music, which led to the invention of the fuzzbox by Orville "Red" Rhodes, which then led to the commercially available Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone. The Maestro appeared on many '60s hits, perhaps most notably on the Rolling Stones "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," and was a landmark tool in the evolution of distortion in music.
Eight-year-old LeAnn Rimes won a round on Star Search when she performed this tune on the talent competition in 1991. Rimes also recorded it for her self-titled album in 1999.
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