On This Month in 1969, Johnny Cash Released One of His Biggest Comedic Hits—Recorded From Prison

On July 2, 1969, country icon Johnny Cash released one of his funniest tracks of all time, “A Boy Named Sue”. And it wasn’t originally written by Cash, either. The song, surprisingly, was actually written by children’s author Shel Silverstein. 

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In fact, Silverstein released his own version of the song the same year that Cash did. However, Cash’s version of “A Boy Named Sue” became a huge charting hit. It made it to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1969. Today, it’s still considered one of his most successful songs.

Johnny Cash first performed and recorded his version of the song during his famous San Quentin State Prison set. That set was recorded for the live album At San Quentin.

How Johnny Cash Made a Hit Out of Shel Silverstein’s “A Boy Named Sue”

“A Boy Named Sue” is a memorable tune with a comedic flair. The story of the song follows a young man who was named “Sue” by his father and was later abandoned. Desperate for revenge after years of ridicule and bullying for his feminine name, Sue tracks his father down to seek revenge. He eventually finds him and the two brawl. Sue’s father admits that he gave him his name to help him toughen up without his father around. The two make amends, but Sue is still pretty raw about his name.

The humor of the song is definitely what made it a hit, but there are other elements worth noting. To start, “A Boy Named Sue” uses a unique rhyming scheme throughout the song that is only broken in the very middle and very end. It has a talking blues sort of a style to it that wasn’t entirely common in country music at the time. Realistically, this song features no singing at all.

Many believe that the song was inspired by Shel Silverstein’s close friend, the humorist Jean Shepherd, who was often bullied for his own feminine-sounding name. Either way, Johnny Cash was determined to make the track a hit. When he received the song, he decided to include it in his famous San Quentin set immediately. At the time, he did not know any of the words. If you watch video footage of that performance, Cash constantly looks down at a piece of paper as he performs.

I guess you really don’t need to know the words of a song to do something incredible with it. Johnny Cash’s version of “A Boy Named Sue” is proof of that.

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