When Two World's Collide
A lot of songs are written while on the road. According to Bill Anderson, “When Two Worlds Collide” was such a song! Bill commented, “That was back in the early 60’s and Roger Miller had always wanted to write a song about “When Worlds Collide,” which had been a big science fiction movie. Roger thought that would make a great idea for a song and I told him that we couldn’t write a song as the same title as a movie. You know you wouldn’t write song titled “Gone With The Wind.” So we came up with the idea to write “When Two Worlds Collide.” We wrote that song in the back seat of Roger’s old Rambler station wagon one night while driving from Nashville to San Antonio, Texas. And that was in the day before you had little cassette recorders that you could take with you everywhere. And we had no way to put the song down and we were afraid we were gonna forget it by the time we got to San Antonio so we stayed awake all night and about every ten minutes we’d sing the song to each other. I’d sing it one time and he’s sing it the next and we did that back and forth and we got into San Antonio about eight o’clock in the morning –dead tired of course—and we checked into a hotel and we called a guy named Neal Merritt that was a disc jockey over at KENS Radio. Roger told Neal to come over to the hotel and bring a tape recorder. So Neal came over and brought one of those old Wollensack reel to reel tape recorders and we put the song on tape and we probably fell across the bed and went to sleep.” Roger Miller’s RCA single of “When Two Worlds Collide” scored a # 6 hit in 1961. Jim Reeves had a # 6 hit on the song in 1969 and Jerry Lee Lewis took it to number eleven in 1980.
Roger Miller's RCA single of "When Two Worlds Collide" scored a # 6 hit in 1961. Jim Reeves had a # 6 hit on the song in 1969 and Jerry Lee Lewis took it to number eleven in 1980.
