Lost Highway (Leon Payne song)

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"Lost Highway"
Song by Leon Payne with Jack Rhodes' Lone Star Buddies
A-side "Baby Boy"
Written1948
PublishedAugust 5, 1949 (1949-08-05) Acuff-Rose Publications, Inc. [1]
ReleasedOctober 1948 (1948-10) [2]
Recorded1948
Studio Jim Beck Studio, Dallas, Texas
Genre Hillbilly
Length2:44
Label Bullet 670
Songwriter(s) Leon Payne
"Lost Highway"
Song by Hank Williams with His Drifting Cowboys
A-side "You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)"
ReleasedSeptember 9, 1949 (1949-09-09)
RecordedMarch 1, 1949 [3]
Studio Castle Studio at The Tulane Hotel, Nashville, TN
Length2:40
Label MGM K10506
Songwriter(s) Leon Payne
Producer(s) Fred Rose
Hank Williams with His Drifting Cowboys singles chronology
"Mind Your Own Business"
(1949)
"Lost Highway"
(1949)
"My Bucket's Got a Hole in It"
(1949)

"Lost Highway" is a country music song written and recorded by blind country singer-songwriter Leon Payne in 1948. It was released in October 1948 on Nashville-based Bullet label.

Contents

In the early days of Leon Payne's career, he used to travel from one place to another, trying to find jobs wherever he could. Once he was in California hitchhiking to Alba, Texas, to visit his sick mother, he was unable to get a ride and finally got help from The Salvation Army. He wrote "Lost Highway" on the edge of the road while waiting for a ride. [4] Payne wrote hundreds of country songs in a prolific career that lasted from 1941 until his death in 1969. He is perhaps best known for his hits "I Love You Because", "You've Still Got a Place in My Heart", and for the two songs that Hank Williams recorded: "Lost Highway" and "They'll Never Take Her Love from Me". Payne released his version in October 1948.

Hank Williams version

As Williams' biographer Colin Escott observes, "In recent years, 'Lost Highway' has been the title of several books, a stage show, a record label, and a television series. In 1997, director David Lynch used it as a film title. It's seen as one of Hank's defining records, if not a defining moment in country music, which makes it ironic that it barely dented the charts on release and doubly ironic that it's not even one of Hank's songs." [5] Although he did not write the song, "Lost Highway" was a natural for Williams, the song's combination of perdition and hopelessness sounding "like pages torn from his diary." [5] Williams recorded the song with Fred Rose producing and backing on the session from Dale Potter (fiddle), Don Davis (steel guitar), Zeb Turner (lead guitar), Clyde Baum (mandolin), Jack Shook (rhythm guitar), and probably Ernie Newton (bass).

Hank Williams Jr. refers to the song in his own song All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down), with "I think I know what my father meant, when he sang about a lost highway".

Covers

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References

  1. Library of Congress. Copyright Office. (1949). Catalog of Copyright Entries 1949 Published Music Jan-Dec 3D Ser Vol 3 Pt 5A. United States Copyright Office. U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
  2. Escott, Merritt & MacEwen 2004, p. 98.
  3. "Hank Williams 45rpm Issues". jazzdiscography.com. Retrieved 2021-08-19.
  4. Telephone interview with Mrs. Myrtie Payne (Payne's widow), December 20, 1972; reprinted in Dorothy Horstman, Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy, New York, 1976, p. 368.
  5. 1 2 Escott, Merritt & MacEwen 2004, p. 106.
  6. Bob Dylan Roots.com: "Lost Highway (Leon Payne song)"
  7. WMBR-FM: Lost Highway playlist archive
  8. "The Tallest Man on Earth Announces New Covers Album Too Late for Edelweiss". Pitchfork. 2022-09-19. Retrieved 2022-09-24.

Sources