Your Cheatin' Heart by Hank Williams

Hank Williams wrote and recorded Your Cheatin' Heart in 1952. MGM released it in January 1953, a few weeks after he died at 29. It was the B-side of Kaw-Liga. It spent six weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's country chart. It sold more than a million copies.

Williams wrote the words during a car ride that summer. He was driving from Nashville to Shreveport, Louisiana, with Billie Jean Jones, the young woman he planned to marry. They were on their way to tell her parents. Along the way he talked about his first wife, Audrey Sheppard, and called her a cheatin' heart. Their divorce had become final on May 29, 1952. He told Jones the phrase would make a song. He sang lines to her. She copied them into his notebook as quickly as she could. One line about walking the floor borrowed its image from Walkin' the Floor Over You, a hit for his friend Ernest Tubb.

Williams was in poor shape that year. He drank heavily. He had come to depend on morphine and other painkillers, prescribed for back pain after surgery for spina bifida. The Grand Ole Opry had fired him in August for missing shows. He kept writing anyway. He played the new song for his old friend Braxton Schuffert and called it the best heart song he had ever written.

He cut it on September 23, 1952, at Castle Studio in Nashville. His publisher Fred Rose produced the date and made a few small changes to the lyric. The band was spare: Tommy Jackson on fiddle, Don Helms on steel guitar, Chet Atkins on lead guitar, Jack Shook on rhythm guitar and Floyd Chance on bass. Helms worked out the steel guitar introduction that opens the record. The same afternoon produced Kaw-Liga, I Could Never Be Ashamed of You and Take These Chains from My Heart. It was the last recording session of his life. Acuff-Rose published the song on October 31.

Williams married Billie Jean Jones in October. He set out by car at the end of the year for a New Year's Day show in Canton, Ohio, with a hired driver. He died in the back seat somewhere along the route. He was found during a stop in Oak Hill, West Virginia, on January 1, 1953. The single reached stores later that month. His death drove its sales. MGM had planned Kaw-Liga as the main side. Both songs climbed the charts. Over time, Your Cheatin' Heart became the one most closely tied to his name.

Pop singers picked it up right away. Joni James had a version out within weeks. It reached No. 2 on Billboard's jukebox chart in 1953. Frankie Laine's recording reached No. 18 on the same chart that year. George Hamilton IV took it to No. 72 on the Hot 100 in 1958, the same year Elvis Presley recorded it. Patsy Cline included it on Sentimentally Yours in 1962, her last studio album. Her vocal was later laid over a new backing track for Sweet Dreams, the film about her life.

The biggest crossover came from Ray Charles. His 1962 recording appeared on Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Volume Two, the follow-up to his million-selling album of country covers. The single reached No. 29 on the Hot 100, No. 23 on the R&B chart and No. 13 in the UK. Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Glen Campbell and Hank Williams Jr. have also recorded it. More than a hundred versions exist.

The title also went to film, television and advertising. The 1964 film about Williams' life was called Your Cheatin' Heart, with George Hamilton in the lead and Susan Oliver as Audrey. Hank Williams Jr. sang his father's songs for the soundtrack. In 1990 the playwright John Byrne used the same title for a television drama. Pepsi built two Super Bowl commercials around the song, one with Williams' original record and a later one featuring Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland.

The lyric warns an unfaithful lover that sleepless nights and tears are coming. Williams sings it plainly over steel guitar and fiddle. The full key and tempo details are on the song's Song IQ key and BPM page.

The original MGM recording entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1983. CMT placed it fifth on its 2003 list of the 100 greatest songs in country music. Rolling Stone included it on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.