Heart to Heart was released just weeks after Haggard and Williams had divorced after five years of marriage. Williams, who had replaced
Bonnie Owens in Haggard's life both professionally and personally in 1974, grew to become increasingly frustrated with her supporting role in
the Strangers, having harbored musical aspirations of her own. The
Missouri native had been a well respected musician and singer in her own right (she had played bass in
Loretta Lynn's first touring band) and wrote two #1 hits for Haggard: the telling "
You Take Me For Granted" in 1982 and "
Someday When Things Are Good" in 1983. According to the liner notes for the 1994 retrospective
Down Every Road, written by music journalist Daniel Cooper, she wrote the former while sitting on the bus in
Ohio, then played it for Merle in front of several of his friends after Merle had reduced her to tears during a duet session they were recording. "He got big old tears in his eyes," Cooper quotes Leona, "and he said, 'Is that how you feel? And I said, 'Yes, it is.'" As Haggard wrote in his 1981 autobiography
Sing Me Back Home, "I'd reached the point in my career where I felt in charge of my music...When Leona tried to make a suggestion, I resented it. She resented my resentment. So it went. She kept saying she felt like an outsider...I couldn't understand why she got so upset by the press leaning toward good ol' Bonnie and the snide remarks about Leona coming in and breaking up my 'happy home.'" In the documentary
Learning to Live With Myself, fellow country star
Tanya Tucker speculates that a professional competition came between the couple, remembering that Merle promised "after Leona he would never, ever marry another woman who wanted to be in show business." In his 2013 Haggard book
The Running Kind, David Cantwell observes that Haggard "seems alternately to have supported and undermined her efforts" at establishing a solo career, citing their finally recording together on Mercury causing the label to lose interest in her forthcoming solo
LP altogether. Their divorce served as a license to party for Haggard, who spent much of the next decade becoming mired in alcohol and drug problems. Haggard had to obtain permission from
Epic Records to record with Williams, who was signed to Mercury.
Heart to Heart was Haggard's third duet album in two years, having recorded ''
A Taste of Yesterday's Wine with George Jones and Pancho and Lefty with Willie Nelson. Heart to Heart
was not the success those LPs had been, however, peaking at number 44 on the Billboard country albums chart. Williams did later participate in the American Masters'' documentary dedicated to Haggard. ==Track listing==