Heartaches by the Number

"Heartaches by the Number" was written by Harland Howard in 1959 and released that year by Guy Mitchell, for whom it charted for a couple of weeks as number one. It has since been covered by pretty much everyone in or adjacent to country music.

 

Guy Mitchell's original from 1959; has not aged all that well, in my opinion (audio only):

Harlan Howard's version is better, I think, as perhaps befits the original songwriter (audio only):

 

Comments

[Wes Oliver]

So this shows how limited my musical knowledge is. I thought the Ray Price version was the definitive recording. Of course it became a country standard -- and I knew a number of country artists recorded it because pretty much everything Ray recorded was covered. But I would have never thought the song was more readily identified with anyone but Ray.