On July 21, 1956, "I Walk the Line" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Most Played C&W in Juke Boxes chart, the predecessor to today's Hot Country Songs chart. The milestone gave Cash his first career No. 1, the first of 14 country chart-toppers he would earn over the next three decades.
According to Billboard, the unusual structure was inspired by an accidental discovery while Cash was serving in the U.S. Air Force in Germany, when he heard a tape playing backward and became fascinated by its haunting sound. After returning home, fellow Sun Records labelmate Carl Perkins encouraged him to change one of his working titles to "I Walk the Line," and Cash completed the song in about 20 minutes.
"It was kind of a prodding to myself to, 'Play it straight, Johnny,'" Cash recalled during a 1997 interview (via NPR).
"I heard it on the radio, and I really didn't like it," Cash admitted. "I called Sam Phillips and I asked him please not to send out any more records of that song. But he said, 'Let's give it a chance.'" Within days, the record had taken off.
Its influence has only grown with time. The recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, earned a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll, and Rolling Stone ranked it No. 76 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and No. 1 on the list of the Greatest Country Songs of All Time. Just last month, CBS News also included it among the 250 essential American songs of the past 250 years.
Seventy years after it gave Johnny Cash his first No. 1 hit, "I Walk the Line" remains one of the defining recordings in country music history and the song that launched one of the genre's most enduring careers.
Related: Johnny Cash Fans ‘Crashing Out’ Over Handwritten Piece of History
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