Cold, Cold Heart
| "Cold, Cold Heart" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Hank Williams | ||||
| A-side | "Dear John" | |||
| Released | 1951 | |||
| Recorded | 1951 | |||
| Genre | Country, honky-tonk, blues | |||
| Length | 2:46 | |||
| Label | MGM | |||
| Writer(s) | Hank Williams | |||
| Hank Williams singles chronology | ||||
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"Cold, Cold Heart" is a country music and popular music song, written by Hank Williams. This blues ballad is both a classic of honky-tonk and an entry in the Great American Songbook.
Williams adapted the melody for the song from T. Texas Tyler's 1945 recording of "You'll Still Be in My Heart," written by Ted West in 1943. The song achingly and artfully describes frustration that the singer's love and trust is unreciprocated due to a prior bad experience in the other's past. Stories of the song's origins vary. In the Williams episode of American Masters, country music historian Colin Escott states that Williams was moved to write the song after visiting his wife Audrey in the hospital, who was suffering from an infection brought on by an abortion she had carried out at their home unbeknownst to Hank. Escott also speculates that Audrey, who carried on extramarital affairs as Hank did on the road, may have suspected the baby was not her husband's. Florida bandleader Pappy Neil McCormick claims to have witnessed the encounter:
The first draft of the song is dated November 23, 1950 and was recorded with an unknown band on May 5, 1951. Like his earlier masterpiece "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," it was released as the B-side (MGM-10904B) to "Dear John" (MGM-10904A), since it was an unwritten rule in the country music industry that the faster numbers sold best. "Dear John" peaked at #8 after only a brief four-week run on Billboard magazine's country music charts, but "Cold, Cold Heart" proved to be a favorite of disc jockeys and jukebox listeners, whose enthusiasm for the song catapulted it to #1 on the country music charts. Williams featured the song on his Mother's Best radio shows at the time of its release and performed the song on the Kate Smith Evening Hour on April 23, 1952, which ran from September 1951 to June 1952; the appearance remains one of the few existing film clips of the singer performing live. He is introduced by his idol Roy Acuff. Although a notorious binge drinker, Williams appears remarkably at ease on front of the cameras, with one critic noting, "He stared at the camera during his performance of 'Cold, Cold Heart' with a cockiness and self-confidence that bordered on arrogance."
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