I Walk the Line was written and recorded by Johnny Cash in 1956. It was his fourth single. After three moderately successful attempts, there was an element of ‘make or break’ for the young artist from Kingsland, Arkansas.
The song was exactly the right one at the right time. It became Cash’s first #1 hit on the Billboard Country charts, and remained in the charts for over 43 weeks. The song even reached #17 on the Hot 100, becoming the first of many crossover hits for Cash.
It is a testament to Johnny Cash’s refusal to conform musically that he kept breaking out of the genres he was put in by press and the public. He was always predominantly a country music artist, but would also embrace genres like rock’n’roll, rockabilly, blues, folk, and gospel.
The music to I Walk the Line came first. Cash had enlisted in the Air Force where he stayed from 1950 to 1954, mostly on assignment in West Germany. While there, he started his first band The Landsberg Barbarians. After lending his reel-to-reel tape recorder to them, he got it back with the tape on backwards. When he played it, the haunting sound that appeared intrigued him. In his autobiography, Cash wrote that it “sounded like spooky church music.”
It was the backwards playback of guitar runs on the tape recorder that directly inspired the unique chord progressions of I Walk the Line, which otherwise is simple in structure.
As far as composing the rest of the song, including writing the lyrics, Cash gave differing accounts. In his first autobiography from 1975, he said he wrote it in 1955 before a show in Shreveport, Louisiana. In his next autobiography from 1997, he said it was in 1956 in Gladewater, Texas. He also offered more details, saying that as he hashed out the lyrics, he hit on the phrase “I walk the line.” His tourmate (and labelmate at Sun Records) Carl Perkins encouraged him to adopt it as the song title.
Cash would later repeat the second version in a telephone interview, where he stated, “I wrote the song backstage one night in 1956 in Gladewater, Texas. I was newly married at the time, and I suppose I was laying out my pledge of devotion.”
In this version of the story, the song took him just 20 minutes to write. Cash later said, “I wanted the lyrics to say, I’m going to be true to those who believe in me and depend on me to myself and God. Something like I’m still being true, or I’m ‘Walking the Line.’ The lyrics came as fast as I could write. In 20 minutes, I had it finished.”
Like most Cash songs, the lyrics form a narrative that tells a story. This particular song details Cash’s values and lifestyle, with the song speaking about marital fidelity, personal responsibility, and avoiding temptation and criminal behaviour. The title I Walk the Line is meant as a promise to remain faithful to his first wife, Vivian Liberto, while he was on the road.
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you’re mine, I walk the line
Cash was 22 when he married Vivian on August 7, 1954; their daughter Rosanne was born 10 months later.
Cash’s backing band at the time went by the name of The Tennessee Two, consisting of Marshall Grant (upright and electric bass) and Luther Perkins (guitars). Initially working as mechanics, Cash’s brother introduced them to him to following his discharge from the Air Force.
Cash became the front man for the group and precipitated the introduction of the group to Sam Phillips of Sun Records. In 1955, they began recording under the Sun label.
Cash’s bass player, Marshall Grant, told Robert Hilburn (author of Johnny Cash: The Life) that the song came to life in late March 1956. According to Grant, he played some slow bass runs when warming up for a show in Longview, Texas, when Cash started humming along and brought up the music he had written, which started taking shape. Then Cash came up with the line, “I keep a close watch on this heart of mine,” and completed the song soon after.
Recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis on 2 April 1956, Cash initially played the song at a slow tempo, intending it to be a ballad. His label boss and producer, Sam Phillips, was not happy with how that sounded. He asked Cash to do another version at a faster pace, which worked a lot better. That ended up being the version that got pressed. The song was released on 1 May 1956. Cash grew to like the uptempo recording, especially as it met with success.
The song features the well-known “boom-chicka-boom” or “freight train” rhythm common in many of Cash’s songs. This was a style that Cash and The Tennessee Two had come up with and felt gave them a unique sound.
In the original recording of the song, there is a key change between each of the five verses, and Cash hums the new root note before singing each verse. The final verse, a reprise of the first, is sung a full octave lower than the first verse, the root note lowered from E5 down to E4.
Once while performing the song on his TV show, Cash told the audience, with a smile, “People ask me why I always hum whenever I sing this song. It’s to get my pitch.” The humming helped Cash through the numerous key changes in the song.
When performing this song in recording, and in later live and television appearances, Cash would place a piece of paper under the strings of his guitar towards the tuning end. As he explained during a 1990s appearance on The Nashville Network, he did this in order to simulate the sound of a snare drum, an instrument to which he did not have access during the original Sun session.
Cash wrote I Walk The Line as a reminder to stay true, which it turned out was not very easy for him to do. When the song took off, he became a star and was suddenly enveloped in distractions and vice.
Cash got a taste of temptation in 1955 when he signed with Sun Records. He released two singles for the label that year and toured with their star, Elvis Presley, who attracted throngs of female fans at every stop.
I find it very, very easy to be true
I find myself alone when each day is through
Yes, I’ll admit that I’m a fool for you
Because you’re mine, I walk the line
With a stable of stars that included Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, Sun Records merged blues, rock, gospel and country sounds. Cash was the most country of these artists, which was a concern when he started. Jack Clements, who worked with Cash, recalled to Uncut magazine in April 2012: “I wasn’t impressed with Cash at first, because I like recordings with class… And Cash seemed rough, but I Walk The Line was a class recording.”
The song has received many accolades over the years. It is part of “The 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll”, a permanent exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song at #30 on its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. They also ranked it #1 on its list of The 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time in June 2014. In his autobiography Chronicles, Bob Dylan said I Walk the Line is a song that’s “one of the most mysterious and revolutionary of all time.”
In November 2005, a biographical film about Cash’s life was launched to considerable commercial success and critical acclaim. Its name was Walk the Line after the song.
Towards the end of his life Cash reinvented himself into a alt-country-rock singer-songwriter with tremendous success. A lot of his most poignant songs and performances come from his last ten years as an artist, when he frequently delved into themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption. He updated his frames of reference, and would even perform incredible covers by bands like Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode.
Still, with over half a century of material to pick from, I Walk the Line survived in his repertoire until the very end. It was the oldest of all his evergreens, and amongst the most resilient.
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