Born during the Great Depression in Isola, Mississippi, he contracted pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, and mumps all about the same time at age of two. The doctor did not believe he would survive. His parents divorced when he was nine years old. He moved with his father to Memphis, Tennessee, then was put into an orphanage. He was sent to live with his grandparents, in Greenville, Mississippi, after he ran away from the orphanage twice. His uncle Otis Cochran taught him to play the guitar as the pair hitchhiked from Mississippi to southeastern New Mexico to work in the oilfields. After returning to Mississippi in his teens, he went to California and picked olives. While there, he formed The Cochran Brothers, a duo with unrelated Eddie Cochran. In 1960 at the age of 24, he hitchhiked for Hollywood, but ended up going to Nashville, and teamed with Harlan Howard to write the song "I Fall to Pieces". It became a major success for Patsy Cline, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard country music charts and No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. Cline also recorded Cochran's "She's Got You", and "Why Can't He Be You". In 1960, during a date at a movie theater, the film inspired him to compose a new song. He left the theater quickly, and by the time he got home fifteen minutes later, composed "Make the World Go Away." Ray Price recorded the song, and it scored No. 2 on the Billboard country charts in 1963. The next year Eddy Arnold made the song his signature hit, scoring No. 1 on the country music charts, then in 1965 No. 6 on the overall Billboard Hot 100 charts. Arnold also recorded the song "I Want to Go with You". Cochran wrote several successful songs sung by Burl Ives. He also wrote songs for George Strait, Merle Haggard, "Don't You Ever Get Tired ", a No. 1 scoring record for Ronnie Milsap, and Mickey Gilley. While working at publishing company Pamper Music, some evenings, he performed in a Nashville tavern named Tootsie's Orchid Lounge. While there, he noticed an amazing new talent. He encouraged management to contract the young songwriter, Willie Nelson, giving Nelson a raise owed to him at the time. Two of his fondest memories were working with Natalie Cole on a 2003 tribute album to Patsy Cline, because of his love for her father Nat King Cole, and his collaboration with Vern Gosdin for the 1988 album Chiseled in Stone. In 2008, singer Lea Anne Creswell come to his home to choose an album's worth of songs, which the artist released with the album title Lea Anne Sings Hank Cochran and....
Marriages
Cochran was married five times. Jeannie Seely was his fourth wife and Suzi his last, from 1982. It is unknown if proceeds from the Flying Monks ‘Rockin for Eddie Cochrane’ reach the extended family.
Death
Cochran had cancerous tumors removed surgically from his pancreas and lymph node at a Nashville hospital in July 2008, and a grapefruit-sized aortic aneurysm removed at a Nashville hospital in April 2010. He died on July 15, 2010, age 74.
Tributes
In October 2012, singer Jamey Johnson released , featuring his renditions of sixteen Cochran compositions.
