On This Day in 1969, Johnny Cash Went to No. 1 With a Song Written by a Children’s Author and Recorded in a Notorious Prison

On this day (August 23) in 1969, Johnny Cash reached the top of the Hot Country Songs chart with “A Boy Named Sue.” It spent five weeks at No. 1 and peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100, giving Cash his only top 10 hit on the pop chart. Cash performed the Shel Silverstein-penned classic for the first time while recording the album At San Quentin.

Silverstein is best remembered for the books Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, and The Giving Tree. However, he was also a songwriter and musician. Along with this Cash classic, he wrote Tompall Glaser’s “Put Another Log on the Fire” and co-penned the Waylon Jennings classic “The Taker” with Kris Kristofferson. He was truly a man of many talents.

Behind the Song

According to Songfacts, Shel Silverstein got the idea for “A Boy Named Sue” from his friend Jean Shepherd, a man with a feminine name. Along with being the inspiration for this Johnny Cash classic, Shepherd wrote and narrated the holiday classic A Christmas Story.

One evening in 1969, Silverstein attended a guitar pull at Cash’s house. They passed a guitar around and played songs they’d written. When Silverstein took the guitar, he played “A Boy Named Sue.”

[RELATED: On This Day in 1999, the Talented Songwriter Behind Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” Passed Away]

June Carter Cash thought it would be a great song for Johnny to cut. Not long after that, they were scheduled to perform at San Quentin prison and record a live album. She suggested they add the new song to their setlist.

Johnny Cash Debuts “A Boy Named Sue”

Shel Silverstein’s nephew, Mitch Myers, told Songfacts the story behind “A Boy Named Sue.” When Johnny Cash took the stage behind San Quentin’s walls, he’d never performed the song. “He had to read the lyrics off the sheet of paper that was at the foot of the stage,” he relayed. Myers added that the version that made it onto the album was exactly what the inmates heard that day. “It wasn’t touched up. It wasn’t produced or simulated. They just did it, and it stuck,” he said.

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