You can’t do better in country or music period… than with The Hillbilly Shakespeare. I always thought his songs express many feelings we feel in life but we just don’t say them.
One of the most beautiful gut-wrenching songs ever written. The lyrics can be read without music and still work. The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky, and as I wonder where you are I’m so lonesome I could cry. Songwriters work all of their lives trying to come up with a line like that… Williams had a career of them.
The song was released on November 8, 1949…as a 78-RPM single with “My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It.” The song quickly became a favorite on Country radio and a staple of Williams’ live shows. The song peaked at #2 on the Country Charts. The song was rereleased in 1966 and peaked at #43 on the Hot Country Charts and #109 on the Billboard Charts.
When he wrote this song he was going to do it as a spoken word bit but his friends and musicians urged him to put music to it. He wrote it about his first wife Audrey Sheppard who seemed to love one another but had a tumultuous relationship.
Everyone knows how I feel about Bob Dylan’s songwriting. It’s incredible and to me…Hank Williams is right up there beside Bob. The artists that covered this one include Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Dean Martin, Al Green, Freddy Fender, Bob Dylan, Little Richard, Cowboy Junkies, and Elvis Presley.
If you are interested in Hank Williams and great music I suggest you check out this song by The Blasters…Long White Cadillac. The song is about the night Hank Williams died in the back of a car. He died somewhere between Bristol, Tenn., and Oak Hill on the way to a New Year’s Day 1953 show in Canton, Ohio.
Rolling Stone ranked it #111 in the list of 500 greatest songs of all time.
Bob Dylan: “Even at a young age, I identified with him. I didn’t have to experience anything that Hank did to know what he was singing about. I’d never heard a robin weep, but could imagine it, and it made me sad.”
K.D. Lang: “‘I think ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’” is one of the most classic American songs ever written, truly. Beautiful song.”
Kasey Chambers: “It’s totally heartbreaking but you don’t want to stop listening to it. Oh God, it just makes you want to crawl into a hole. It has that combination of making you feel good and bad at the same time, which is what all great country music does.”
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
Hear that lonesome whippoorwill,
He sounds too blue to fly.
That midnight train is whining low,
I’m so lonesome I could cry.
I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry.
Did you ever see a robin weep,
When leaves begin to die?
That mean he’s lost the will to live,
I’m so lonesome I could cry.
The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry.
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Hank Williams released this song in 1949, and he died in 1953, but it took till 1966 for this song to chart and I think that must be some type of record.
I got it
A real classic, as I thought about it I don’t know if I had really heard Hank’s version, but I’ve sure heard a number of covers since I was a kid.
Yea it’s been covered by a lot of people…I do like Hanks version though a lot. He was a genius songwriter… He carried himself like Dylan or modern rock stars…he was different than his peers back then….ahead of his time.
Truly a masterpiece. His voice cries out. In a way, I think people use pedal steel guitar to emulate his voice. For another side of Hank Williams, try “Move it on Over”, a song to his dog, as he’s in the doghouse.
I like that song as well. i first heard Move I On Over by George Thorogood…. but I had a Hank Williams greatest hits…just great music.
Every time I hear this song it takes me back to being a little kid and thinking my father was playing the worst music in the world when he listened to Hank or Johnny. That opinion changed over time and I think this is one of the best songs ever written.
I thought some of the same stuff…but I changed my mind as well. This one is one of the best to me…he wrote so many classics. I look at him more as a rock star…even the old film of him…he carries himself different from his peers.
I agree there’s so many performers with stage presence but you have to build a new one for people like Hank Williams.
I think this song is a great illustration that you don’t need a big production to have a great song. It’s a truly heartfelt song that doesn’t need anything else. It would even work without the fiddles!
Yea it’s a great song…so it works…because well it works.
Plain damn good songwriting shines through.
There’s Hank and then a few who come close. I was listening to a box set of his music last week. He just has it. Sneaky good, like the soundtrack for ‘Last Pic Show’. Great tune. Might have mentioned this to you before Max but a cool covers album by The The ‘Hanky Panky’ doing Hank’s work. Different approach but works for CB.
That first sentence I will have to remember because it’s true.
No you haven’t I don’t think… I’ll check them out.
Beautiful!
I can imagine sitting out on the prairie at night, around the campfire, with Ol Hank strumming his guitar and singing this. That’s where these kinds of songs are best.
That is why I like them so much…so simple but yet that is deceiving when you listen to the great lyrics. It’s the kind that sounds like he is singing them to you on a back porch somewhere.
Love that Kasey Chambers quote.
I really like her.
The song was released on November 8, 1949: Clearly it was released on this day on purpose – just 28 days before I was born.
There you go…and I bet you were crying also…just like the song says! My dad was born a few days over 10 years before.
The absolute best. Hank really hasn’t been matched, ever.
Thank you…that is what I think as well. He was the master and there was a reason Dylan looked up to him.
Recorded at Herzog Studios right here in Cincinnati where I live, as a B-side, no less. There were a spate of cover versions in the 60’s, and I fell in love with the song long before I knew Hank Williams wrote it.
You know what Mitch…I read that and didn’t list it…sorry about that! I’m watching that Ken Burns Documentary about country music…that is great…along with his Baseball doc.
Yep, loved both of those docs.
A Hank classic.
‘The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky, and as I wonder where you are I’m so lonesome I could cry. Songwriters work all of their lives trying to come up with a line like that… Williams had a career of them’.
Wonderful Max!
I loved reading the quotes from Kasey and Bob.
The Kasey one was for you lol.
I figured Dylan and Kasey quotes appearing in the one article was extra special and perhaps not just a coincidence lol
No coincidence lol…
Beck did a really bizarre cover of this song, but it just worked. Shows that you can really do anything with a classic like this song.
I’ll have to look that up…I like some of his stuff.
It’s a heartbreaking song for sure. I also liked the 1966 version by B.J. Thomas.
I just listened to that one Jeff…that is a good version.