Johnny Cash USAF 1954

[Jerry D]

Hey, Porter

Recorded March 22, 1955 by Johnny Cash

I wrote "Hey Porter" when I was coming home from the Air Force, July, 1954. My excitement about coming back to Dixie was just about as alive as it appears in the song, and the first time I ever heard my voice on the radio, it was "Hey Porter".

-JRC/1970

"Actually the first thing we recorded at Sun Records was Folsom Prison Blues. Sam Phillips liked it very much, but he wanted to hear something else so I did a song I wrote called Hey Porter that I had written on the way home from Germany when I was discharged from the Air Force. And it was kind of a day dreamin' kind of thing. I used a train as a vehicle in my mind to take me back home and counting off the miles and the hours and minutes till I would get back home. It wasn't to Tennessee though, it was to Arkansas, Dyess, Arkansas where my parents were still living at the time. Hey Porter was recorded and Sam said, 'What else have you written?' I said, 'Well, like I've told you before a lot of gospel songs you know.' I had called him initially saying I'm John Cash-I'm a gospel singer and I want to record gospel. And he said, 'I can't sell enough gospel to stay in business.' He said, 'We got to have something commercial and call me back when you have something commercial.' Well I kept calling back. He was always out or busy and I finally got the appointment and went in with Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins-The Tennessee Two. We had a steel guitar player working with us, but he was afraid to go in the recording studio and I guess maybe it was lucky for us that he didn't because The Tennessee Two came up with a sound that was kinda unique. I think a steel guitar would've taken us more toward Nashville than what was happening up there, so we recorded Hey Porter."

-JRC1980