Every song that has ever existed and will ever exist does so within the context of the music that came before it. There are original-sounding ideas, certainly. But virtually everyone is stealing from somebody, even if they aren’t consciously aware that they’re doing it. Folk music is unique in that stealing and imitation are cornerstones of the entire genre. The oral tradition practically dictates that we retell, revamp, and rework these stories and melodies.
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A string of songs over a four-year period in the early 1960s demonstrated this sort of musical transformation beautifully, starting with Paul Clayton’s “Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I’m Gone)” and ending with Johnny Cash’s “Understand Your Man”. From there, the song has expanded and evolved countless times over, well beyond the scope of precise documentation.
Yet, throughout each rewrite, the scornful sentiment remains the same.
Johnny Cash Borrowed the Melody of “Understand Your Man”
If there were ever any doubts about the woman Johnny Cash was referring to in his biting 1964 song, “Understand Your Man”, the release date should be all the clues one needs to realize Cash was singing to his first wife, Vivian Liberto. Indeed, the now-classic “Johnny and June” love story wasn’t the Man in Black’s first romance. Moreover, it overlapped with his crumbling marriage to Liberto.
From the narrator’s perspective, “Understand Your Man” might be a freeing, empowering song about getting out of a relationship that makes you unhappy. But from the perspective of the song’s subject, who, presumably, is still in love with the narrator, it’s pretty devastating.
“You’d say the same old thing that you be saying all along / Lay there in your bed and keep your mouth shut till I’m gone / Don’t give me that old familiar cry and fuss and moan / Understand your man.”
Cash’s melody is clearly an interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”. And, appropriately, Dylan’s is also an intensely cutting song for an ex-lover. “I ain’t a-saying you treated me unkind / You could’ve done better, but I don’t mind / You just kinda wasted my precious time / But don’t think twice, it’s alright.”
Before Bob Dylan, There Was Paul Clayton
Cash released “Understand Your Man” as a single off I Walk the Line in January 1964, five months after Bob Dylan released “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” as a single off The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in August 1963. But Dylan wasn’t the epicenter of this folk ballad melody. Years before he was putting out his B-side to “Blowin’ In The Wind”, he was absorbing the words and melodies of Paul Clayton.
Clayton released “Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I’m Gone)” in 1960. This version seems to be the origin of this particular melody and storyline. Though much slower than Dylan and Cash’s versions, Clayton’s melody is recognizable as he begins the song with the same sentiment as the other two: “It ain’t no use to sit and sigh now, darlin’, and it ain’t no use to sit and cry now.”
This four-year musical evolution is a testament to the idea that, when a song is emotionally resonant, those feelings can endure several iterations and remain just as tangible and intense as in the original. To steal from a folk song that would come out ten years after Cash’s “Understand Your Man”, there are far, far more than “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover”.
Photo by Gai Terrell/Redferns
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