“Amazing Love” became Schweers’ pet project for an entire month. He re-wrote it a number of times, constructing more than twenty-five different verses before settling on the final two. Charley Pride recorded it on April 17, 1973, the same day RCA released “Don’t Fight The Feelings Of Love.”
One snag in the project, however, came with a bluesy major-seventh chord that Schweers had incorporated into his song. They were a little afraid of that because Pride was noted as being a hard country singer, doing straight chords, and that’s what his associates wanted. They were having phenomenal success at the time with the straight country formula and didn’t want to upset the apple cart with a different-sounding chord which this song featured. Because of this, RCA decided not to release “Amazing Love” as a single, so Schweers’ publisher sent the song over to Ray Price’s office for his consideration.
In the interim though, Charley’s producer Jack Clement came up with a way to fix the chord problem. While Pride was out of town, Clement stripped down the instrumental tracks, leaving just Pride’s vocal and the drums from the original recording. He commissioned Charles Cochran to develop a new arrangement to replace the old one, which changed the chord structure. This final version of “Amazing Love” was issued on September 18, 1973 and reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart by December 15th, marking Charley’s thirteenth of an eventual twenty-nine chart-toppers.
