Walk Right Back

Sonny Curtis, of Buddy Holly's Crickets, wrote this song while in the army and showed it to The Everly Brothers when he was home on leave. They liked it and said they'd record it. Sonny said, "It's not finished. I'll write the second verse and send it to you." The Everlys didn't receive it in time so they just sang the first verse twice on the recording. Very few people know the second verse. Roger Miller must have liked the song because he wrote his "Engine, Engine Number Nine" right on top of it. You can sing the two at the same time.

The second verse lyrics are: "These eyes of mine that gave you loving glances once before... changed to shades of cloudy gray. I want so very much to see you... just like before. I've got to know you're coming back to stay. Please believe me when I say it's great to hear from you, but there's a lot of things a letter just can't say, oh me. Walk right back..."

Sonny Curtis wrote the song one Sunday afternoon during basic army training on a "beat-up Sears Roebuck kind of guitar." He recalled the penning of the tune during an interview with Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International: "I had the lick before I went into the army. And then that Sunday afternoon, I put a song to it ... People ask me all the time, 'What in the world are you thinking when you write a song?' I think sometimes, when I'm done, that I probably dreamed them. I can't really say."