The Odd Way George Strait Nabbed His Number One Hit ‘The Chair’

George Strait’s song “The Chair” is one of his most believed tunes, an endearing ballad of a little white lie that that turns out perfectly in the end.

The number one hit was released on King George’s fifth studio album, Something Special, and was written by Dean Dillion and Hank Cochran. Like a lot of blockbuster hits it was written quickly and the writers had no idea of the success it would go on to achieve.

The Chair Took Less Than an Hour to Write

Dillion told TexasMonthly, “It was four in the morning and I don’t know what happened, but Hank sat down in a chair across from me, and I looked at him, picked up the guitar, struck a G chord, and started singing, “Well, excuse me, but I think you’ve got my chair.”

“And he said, ‘Have you written that song?’ I said, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘Well, we’re about to.’ And 45 minutes later, we’d written “The Chair.”

George Strait is One of Country Music’s Legends

Dillion went on to tell TexasMonthly how it was that Strait ended up with the hit song. According to the songwriter, Blake Mevis, a songwriter friend of his Dillion, regularly drove by the house on Music Row where Dillion wrote each day.

Dillion reminisced that one day he rolled down his car window and yelled, “Hey, man, I got to cut this new kid from Texas. Y’all got any songs?”

Dillion hollered back, “We’ve always got songs. As a matter of fact, we’ve got a song we were gonna pitch to Johnny Paycheck, but he’s in jail, so we’ll give it to you. It’s called ‘Unwound.'”

George Strait Got Lucky with The Chair

Woolsey would up arranging for Dillion and Strait to meet and pick songs for upcoming records that were being planned. It was a fortuitous meeting as Strait heard the melody of “The Chair” and added it to his list. Strait and Dillion struck up a momentous partnership that over the years led to Strait recording dozens of Dillion’s songs with at almost 20 of them reaching No. 1 on the charts.

“Unwound,” “Easy Come, Easy Go,” “Ocean Front Property,” “Famous Last Words of a Fool,” and “Marina Del Ray” are a few of the number ones the pair collaborated on.

Dillion has written for the late Keith Whitley, Gary Stewart, and Pam Tillis, but his partnership with the “King of Country Music” is second to none.

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