Long before he was the King of Country, George Strait was a new MCA artist with a few singles to his name. His first trip to the top of the chart did not start in a Nashville writing room aimed at radio. It started with a request from a movie studio that needed a song for a bar scene in a Cold War thriller called The Soldier. That song was “Fool Hearted Memory.”
A Call From the People Behind The Exterminator
In 1981, Byron Hill was a staff songwriter at ATV Music. He worked out of a small upstairs corner room at 1217 16th Avenue South in Nashville, the building that housed his publisher.
Hill had already written and produced a track for The Exterminator, a gritty 1980 action film from director James Glickenhaus. The same production company came back to him with a new job. Glickenhaus had a bigger picture on the way, The Soldier, starring Ken Wahl, and it needed a song for a scene set in a honky-tonk.
The Studio’s Two Conditions
According to Hill, the film company had firm terms. A major-label artist had to record the song and perform it in the movie. And there was a second condition that would change Strait’s career:
“They would only commit to the song if it was released as a single.” — Byron Hill
Three men pulled the pieces together: Gerry Teifer at ATV Music, Jim Foglesong at MCA Records, and Blake Mevis, the producer already working with Strait. The plan put a young MCA singer on screen with a song that had a real shot at radio. By Hill’s account, Strait was just starting to catch on and was glad to have a song in a film.
A Demo at the Kitchen Table
Hill wrote “Fool Hearted Memory” with Blake Mevis. The same night they finished it, Mevis went home and recorded a rough demo on a four-track machine at his kitchen table. Hill has called it a “killer little 4-Track demo.” He also credits Mevis with creating the song’s signature riff on that demo, a sound Hill says fans still hear as classic George Strait.
Strait recorded the song with Mevis producing. From there, Hill says, the record was in Strait’s hands.
George Strait on the Bandstand, a Brawl on the Floor
In the finished film, George Strait appears as himself. He and his band play “Fool Hearted Memory” on the bandstand of a rough bar while a fight breaks out around them. It is classic early-’80s action-movie mayhem: people thrown through tables, pool cues swung, beer bottles smashed, and even a mud-wrestling pit in the room. The American Film Institute’s catalog lists Strait’s band in the credits, courtesy of MCA Records.
One Day Apart
MCA released “Fool Hearted Memory” on May 27, 1982, as the lead single from Strait’s second album, Strait from the Heart. It was his fourth single for MCA. The first, “Unwound,” had peaked at No. 6.
The Soldier opened in American theaters on August 27, 1982. On the Billboard Hot Country chart dated the very next day, August 28, “Fool Hearted Memory” was No. 1. It was George Strait’s first No. 1 as an artist, and Byron Hill’s first No. 1 as a songwriter.
Bigger Than the Movie
The film did not last. Ten years later, the 1992 movie Pure Country was promoted as George Strait’s motion picture debut, even though he had already been on screen in The Soldier.
The song lasted. It won an ASCAP Award as one of the most-performed songs of 1982, and Hill says Strait’s recording has turned up on at least twelve albums over the years. It also opened the door to a record run of 44 Billboard country No. 1 hits for Strait.
Looking back three decades later, Byron Hill admitted nobody expected much. The song, he said, was supposed to be “pretty insignificant in the scheme of things.” Instead, it outlived the movie it was written for.