The song was written in 1967 and had been recorded more than two dozen times. It had achieved modest success in versions by various performers; the original by
Duane Dee reached number 44 on the
Billboard country chart in early 1968, and
Linda Martell sent her version to number 33 in early 1970.
Jerry Lee Lewis included it on his 1969 album,
Another Place Another Time. In 1974, record producer
Huey P. Meaux approached Fender about overdubbing vocals for an instrumental track. Fender agreed, performing the song bilingual style—singing the first half of the song in English, then repeating it in Spanish. "The recording only took a few minutes", Fender told an interviewer, "I was glad to get it over with and I thought that would be the last of it". The single was first released on Meaux's Crazy Cajun label in 1974, but was soon picked up for wider distribution by
ABC-Dot. "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" immediately took off in popularity when released to country radio in January 1975. The song ascended to number 1 on the
Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in March, spending two weeks atop the chart. Thereafter, the song caught on just as strongly at
top 40 radio stations and it was not long before Fender had a number 1
Billboard Hot 100 hit as well.
Billboard ranked it as the
number four song of 1975. As originally composed, it is in
32-bar form (Fender's bilingual recording stretches the piece to 48 bars). A showcase of Fender's
tenor and Meaux's Tex-Mex musical styling, "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" jump-started his career. (Fender's career had stalled in 1960 after his arrest on drug charges.) In the months and years that followed, Fender recorded several bilingual standards which became major hits, most notably "
Secret Love". Fender also recorded a version fully in Spanish, entitled "Estaré contigo cuando triste estés" (literally "I will be with you when you are sad"). The Spanish-language second verse in the English version is the first verse of the fully Spanish version. ==Successes==