Cold, Cold Heart

Single by Hank Williams With His Drifting Cowboys
A-side: "Dear John"
Written: 1950
Published: February 16, 1951 Acuff-Rose Publications
Released: February 2, 1951
Recorded: December 21, 1950

"Cold, Cold Heart" is a country music and pop song written and first recorded by Hank Williams. This blues ballad is both a classic of honky-tonk and an entry in the Great American Songbook.

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Hank Williams

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Tony Bennett version

Single by Tony Bennett
B-side: "While We're Young"
Released: July 2, 1951
Recorded: May 31, 1951
Studio: Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York City
Genre: Pop
Length: 2:38
Label: Columbia
Songwriter(s): Hank Williams
Producer(s): Percy Faith

That same year, it was recorded in a pop version by Tony Bennett with a light orchestral arrangement from Percy Faith. This recording was released by Columbia Records as catalog number 39449. It first reached the Billboard magazine charts on July 20, 1951, and lasted 27 weeks on the chart, peaking at number 1.

The popularity of Bennett's version has been credited with helping to expose both Williams and country music to a wider national audience. Allmusic writer Bill Janovitz discusses this unlikely combination:

That a young Italian singing waiter from Queens could find common ground with a country singer from Alabama's backwoods is testament both to Williams' skills as a writer and to Bennett's imagination and artist's ear.

Williams subsequently telephoned Bennett to say, "Tony, why did you ruin my song?" But that was a prank – in fact, Williams liked Bennett's version and played it on jukeboxes whenever he could. In his autobiography The Good Life, Bennett described playing "Cold, Cold Heart" at the Grand Ole Opry later in the 1950s. He had brought his usual arrangement charts to give to the house musicians who would be backing him, but their instrumentation was different and they declined the charts. "You sing and we'll follow you," they said, and Bennett says they did so beautifully, once again recreating an unlikely artistic merger.

The story of the Williams–Bennett telephone conversation is often related with mirth by Bennett in interviews and on stage; he still performs the song in concert. In 1997, the first installment of A&E's Live By Request featuring Bennett (who was also the show's creator), special guest Clint Black performed the song, after which Bennett recounted it. Bennett re-recorded the song as a duet with Tim McGraw for the 2006 album Duets: An American Classic. A Google Doodle featured Bennett's recording of the song on its Valentine's Day doodle in February 2012.

In 2012, Bennett recorded once again "Cold, Cold Heart" in a duet with Argentinian singer-songwriter Vicentico for Viva Duets, a studio album of Bennett in collaboration with Latin American music stars, released in October 2012.

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Rare Hank Williams Video 1952 - Cold Cold Heart
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Hank Williams

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1950s


Williams performing in 1951

In 1950, Williams began recording as "Luke the Drifter" for his religious-themed recordings, many of which are recitations rather than singing. Fearful that disc jockeys and jukebox operators would hesitate to accept these unusual recordings, Williams used this alias to avoid hurting the marketability of his name. Although the real identity of Luke the Drifter was supposed to be anonymous, Williams often performed part of the material of the recordings on stage. Most of the material was written by Williams himself, in some cases with the help of Fred Rose and his son Wesley. The songs depicted Luke the Drifter traveling around from place to place, narrating stories of different characters and philosophizing about life. Some of the compositions were accompanied by a pipe organ. Around this time Williams released more hit songs, such as "My Son Calls Another Man Daddy", "They'll Never Take Her Love from Me", "Why Should We Try Anymore", "Nobody's Lonesome for Me", "Long Gone Lonesome Blues", "Why Don't You Love Me", "Moanin' the Blues", and "I Just Don't Like This Kind of Living". In 1951, "Dear John" became a hit, but it was the flip side, "Cold, Cold Heart", that became one of his most recognized songs. A pop cover version by Tony Bennett released the same year stayed on the charts for 27 weeks, peaking at number one.

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December 21st: On this day

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1950
During recording sessions at Castle Studio, Nashville, Hank Williams record "Cold Cold Heart", "Dear John", "Just Waiting" and "Men With Broken Hearts".