A saga song, "Long Black Veil" is told from the point of view of an executed man falsely accused of murder. He refuses to provide an alibi, since on the night of the murder he was having an affair with his best friend's wife, and would rather die and take their secret to his grave than admit the truth. The chorus describes the woman's mourning visits to his grave site, wearing a long black veil and enduring a wailing wind. Another possibility, if the lyrics are considered more precisely, is that of a more sinister and haunting tale. For example, "She walks these hills in a long, black veil." is the behavior of an apparition, not that of a flesh and blood woman. As a second point, if the woman were alive, she too would know the situation on that night ten years prior, but the lyrics repeat the clue, "Nobody sees (the apparition is invisible to others), nobody knows but me." Those clues and others ("...shed not a tear...") in the song suggest that the executed person (a very young man) in fact murdered the woman (he knows details about the lighting at the crime scene), in what was supposed to have been a murder-suicide perhaps (we run out of clues here so the mystery endures), and her spirit haunts even his dead bones.

The writers later stated that they drew on three sources for their inspiration: Red Foley's recording of "God Walks These Hills With Me", a contemporary newspaper report about the unsolved murder of a priest, and the legend of a mysterious veiled woman who regularly visited Rudolph Valentino's grave. Dill himself called it an "instant folksong."

Wilkin played piano on the original recording by Frizzell. The song was a departure from Frizzell's previous honky tonk style and was a deliberate move toward the then current popularity of folk-styled material and the burgeoning Nashville sound.

Recorded in Nashville in 1959 by Lefty Frizzell and produced by Don Law, the single reached No. 6 on Billboard Hot C&W Sides chart. In the process, the song became Frizzell's best-performing single in five years.

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