I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

Johnny Cash recorded “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” on 17 February 1960 at Bradley Film and Recording Studio in Nashville for Now, There Was a Song!. Cash sang and played acoustic guitar with Johnny Western, Luther Perkins, Don Helms, Marshall Grant, Murry Harman Jr., Gordon Terry and Floyd Cramer, with Don Law and Frank Jones producing. Released by Columbia in 1960, the track placed Hank Williams’ 1949 standard inside Cash’s early Columbia catalogue of country repertory recordings. It showed Cash consolidating his post-Sun identity by interpreting songs associated with major country writers rather than relying only on his own material. Cash’s version remains a notable early cover of one of Hank Williams’ most enduring songs. It became part of the long recorded lineage of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and foreshadowed Cash’s later reputation as an interpreter of American songbook material.