JOHNNY CASH - A BOY NAMED SUE| Viral Music | Fascinating People

JOHNNY CASH - A BOY NAMED SUE
This week in 1969, JOHNNY CASH released the single A BOY NAMED SUE in the UK (July 1969)
NOTE: The video here is Johnny Cash performing 'A Boy Named Sue' on a 1969 episode of 'This Is Tom Jones'. I've upscaled, re-edited and improved the colour saturation of the clip.
Johnny wasn't allowed to sing the 'son-of-a-bitch' line and had to pause for the 'bleep'. I've reinstated it!
The song was written by the multitalented Shel Silverstein, who later wrote several hits for Dr. Hook, including "Sylvia's Mother" and "Cover Of The Rolling Stone."...
He got the idea for the song from his friend Jean Shepherd - a guy who had to deal with a "girly" name.
This is about a boy who grows up angry at his father not only for leaving his family, but for naming him Sue.
When the boy grows up, he sees his father in a bar and gets in a fight with him. After his father explains that he named him Sue to make sure he was tough, the son understands.
"In those days in Nashville, and for all the people that would visit, the most fun that anyone really could have would be to go over to someone's house and play music," explained Mitch Myers (Shel Silverstein's nephew)
"And they would do what one would call a 'Guitar Pull,' where you grabbed a guitar and you played one of your new songs, then someone else next to you would grab it and do the same, and there were people like Johnny Cash or Joni Mitchell, people of that calibre in the room."
"Shel sang his song 'Boy Named Sue,' and Johnny's wife June Carter thought it was a great song for Johnny Cash to perform. And not too long after that they were headed off to San Quentin to record a record - Live At San Quentin - and June said, 'Why don't you bring that Shel song with you.' And so they brought the lyrics. And when he was on stage he performed that song for the first time ever, he performed it live in front of that captive audience, in every sense of the word."
"He had to read the lyrics off of the sheet of paper that was at the foot of the stage, and it was a hit. And it wasn't touched up, it wasn't produced or simulated. They just did it, and it stuck. And it rang. I would say that it would qualify in the realm of novelty, a novelty song. Shel had a knack for the humorous and the kind of subversive lyrics. But they also were so catchy that people could not resist them."