Hank Williams – I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry

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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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

35 thoughts on “Hank Williams – I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”

    1. 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.

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  4. 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.

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    1. 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.

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  7. 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.

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    1. 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.

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  13. 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.

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    1. 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.

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  15. ‘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.

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