The song is “A Boy Named Sue.” Johnny Cash sang it for the first time in his life on February 24, 1969, inside San Quentin State Prison, with the words written on a sheet in front of him. That rough, half-improvised performance became the only Top 10 pop hit of his career.
A Song From a Children’s Author
The writer was Shel Silverstein, a cartoonist, songwriter and author best known today for children’s books like The Giving Tree. His song told a wild, funny story about a father who leaves his son a girl’s name and the fight that follows when the boy finally finds him.
Where the idea came from is still debated. Some accounts point to Silverstein’s friend, the humorist Jean Shepherd, who was teased as a boy over his own name, though that link has never been confirmed. Another candidate is Sue K. Hicks, a Tennessee attorney named after his mother. Hicks once told the New York Times he believed the song started after he and Silverstein crossed paths at a judicial conference in Gatlinburg. Cash later sent Hicks signed albums and photos.
The Guitar Pull
Silverstein introduced the song at a guitar pull, an informal Nashville gathering where songwriters pass a guitar around and play what they have been working on. Accounts differ on whether Johnny was in the room that night, but they agree on one thing: June Carter Cash heard it, loved it and encouraged her husband to perform it.
February 24, 1969: San Quentin
Cash brought the song to San Quentin, where a British television crew from Granada was filming the concert. He had only read it a couple of times and did not know the words, so he kept a lyric sheet on stage.
According to music writer Robert Hilburn, neither the TV crew nor the band knew Cash planned to sing it. Carl Perkins and the rest of the band had no chart and no rehearsal. They followed Cash and built the backing on the spot.
In his autobiography, Cash said he was surprised by how well the song went over with the inmates. A curse word near the song’s climax was later bleeped on the single and the album.
Kept From No. 1 by the Rolling Stones
Columbia released the live recording as a single in July 1969. It went to No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart and No. 1 on the adult contemporary chart. On the Hot 100 it climbed to No. 2 and stayed there for three weeks, stuck behind the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women.” It also reached the Top 5 in the UK and went gold within weeks.
At the Grammy Awards in 1970, Cash won Best Country Vocal Performance, Male, for the song, and Silverstein won Best Country Song. The album it came from, At San Quentin, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s albums chart.
The Song Kept Changing
Cash never stopped playing with the song he first sang off a sheet of paper. After his son John Carter Cash was born, he changed the final line to name the boy. Later he sang it as a promise for any son he might have next. With the Highwaymen in the 1980s and 1990s, he worked the names of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson into the ending.
And when he reached the word the radio had bleeped, Cash would sometimes make the bleep sound himself.
Do you remember the first time you heard it?