July 1956 proved consequential for Johnny Cash. That July 7, he made his Grand Ole Opry debut, performing “I Walk the Line” at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, where he met future wife and duet partner June Carter. Two weeks later, on July 21, the song stepped to the top spot on Billboard’s country juke box chart (Most Played C&W in Juke Boxes), becoming the first of his 14 total No. 1s across three decades.
“Walk” was a bit quirky, built with five verses and no chorus wile wandering through three different keys. Those keys allowed the Man in Black to show off his vocal range, particularly the rumbling bass notes that became a signature.
The genesis of the song came when he was stationed with the Air Force in Germany, where a musical tape got mangled in a recorder and turned a guitar performance into a droning sound that haunted Cash for more than a year. Back in the states, he played the passage for Carl Perkins at a concert in Texas, and Perkins revised one of Cash’s original titles to “I Walk the Line.” Cash wrote it in 20 minutes.
He recorded it with The Tennessee Two — guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant — guided by producer Sam Phillips (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis) in Memphis.
“Walk” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, the first of three Cash singles and two albums to receive that recognition. The Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts also celebrated it in a 365 Songs of the Century retrospective.
This story originally appeared on Billboard
