Songfacts®:

• This 12-bar Blues number reached #1 on the Billboard Country singles chart and stayed there for 21 weeks, tying the record for most weeks at the peak position with Eddy Arnold's "I'll Hold You in My Heart (1947-48) and Webb Pierce's "In the Jailhouse Now" (1955). They were finally surpassed by Florida Georgia Line's "Cruise," which logged 24 weeks atop the chart in August 2013.
• Other artists who have covered the song include:
  
  Ray Charles, whose version hit #40 on the Pop singles chart in 1959. His interpretation featured congas and maracas, giving the Spanish tinge to a country and western blues.
  
  Matt Lucas' crazy rocked-up 1963 version reached #56 on the Billboard Pop charts in 1963. It was also a big hit in other countries including Canada and Belgium.
  
  The Rolling Stones recorded it for their 1965 UK EP Got Live If You Want It! Although The EP was never released in the US, their cover cam be heard on the American album December's Children (And Everybody's).
  
  The song was covered by Elvis Presley for his 1969 From Elvis in Memphis album.
  
  Steppenwolf vocalist John Kay covered this in 1972 for his first solo single, peaking at #52 in the US
  and #45 in Canada.
  
  Emmylou Harris took an uptempo live version to #5 on the Billboard singles chart in the spring of 1983.
  
  Johnny Cash recorded a rollicking rendition as a duet with Waylon Jennings in 1983. It was one of a number of lost recordings from 1980s sessions, which were discovered by Cash's son John Carter Cash and included on the 2014 posthumous album Out Among The Stars. Carter Cash recalled to NME: "Waylon Jennings' office was near our house. He'd stop by a lot just to say hello, but a lot of times that led to him and my father's recording a song on the spot, like this one."
• Johnny Cash had another connection with Hank Snow. In 1968 he rediscovered his Christian faith, after taking an "altar call" in Evangel Temple, a small church in the Nashville area, pastored by Hank's son, Reverend Jimmie Rodgers Snow.