Johnny Cash recorded this song three times, most famously at Folsom Prison. But there were three previous versions back in the 1940s.

The Man in Black first recorded this song in a slightly cleaned-up version called Transfusion Blues for his 1960 album Now, There’s A Song. 

He made a few changes from the original version, a western swing recording released in 1947, replacing the line “took a shot of cocaine” with “took a transfusion” – probably at the request of his record company, Columbia.

In fact there were three versions that year, a western swing version by WA Nicols’ Western Aces with Red Arnall on vocals; a slightly different one by Billy Hughes, and a third by Roy Hogsed & the Rainbow Riders.

The song, based on a traditional tune called Little Sadie, takes its lyrics from an even older western swing song by Troy Junius Arnall.

It tells the tale of Willy Lee, who murders his unfaithful girlfriend while under the influence of whiskey and cocaine, and flees to Mexico.

The law finally catches up with him in the shape of a sheriff from Jericho Hill, he’s transported back to the USA, tried by “twelve honest men” and sentenced to “ninety-nine years in the San Quentin Pen”
Cash then famously re-recorded the song live in front of an audience of whooping jailbirds at his legendary Folsom Prison concert in 1968.

They went understandably crazy when he changed the original “San Quentin jail” to their own prison; perhaps less so when he altered the original’s final exhortation to “drink all you want” to “lay off that whiskey.”

Cash later recorded “Cocaine Blues” for his 1979 album Silver.