STORY BEHIND THE SONG (Doug Davis's Country newsletter)
Several hit songs have become hits on the way to the studio and according to Sonny Throckmorton, Jerry Lee Lewis ’ 1977 hit, “Middle Age Crazy” was one of those tunes!
Sonny commented,” A lot of my friends were showing the signs of middle age crazy. And at that timer there wasn’t a name for male menopause. We didn’t know what we were going thru and people weren’t talking about like they do now. There’s a lot of talk about it now but back then there just wasn’t that much said about it. In fact there wasn’t anything being said about it and I could see that different guys were getting’ to that age and then all of a sudden they would take up with some woman and bla..bla..bla. When I wrote the song, I wrote it “he’s a little bit crazy—tryin’ to prove he still can,” and I was going to the studio to record it and I had my mind in deep thought about what arrangement I was gonna do and while I was runnin’ the arrangement around in my heard on that one, I just accidentally sang “He’s middle age crazy.” And I thought “that’s it” so I changed it up on the way to the studio and it became “Middle Age Crazy.”
Jerry Lee’s Mercury Records single, “Middle Age Crazy” entered the country music charts October 29th, 1977 and peaked at # 4.
It was his 47th charted song and was on the charts for 18 weeks.