Song · Johnny Cash
“I Walk The Line” by Johnny Cash
From the album Johnny Cash With His Hot and Blue Guitar (1957)
“I Walk The Line” by Johnny Cash appears on 12 radio countdowns from 7 stations between 2001 and 2026. It was first released in 1957 on the album Johnny Cash With His Hot and Blue Guitar. Its best result is #39 on the WYEP Top 500 Songs Countdown. In the combined RockLists rankings it is #276 indie & aaa song of all time.
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Johnny Cash wrote "I Walk the Line" and cut it in 1956, and it's about as lean as a hit record gets: Cash on acoustic guitar, Luther Perkins picking electric, Marshall Grant thumping the double bass, and Sam Phillips producing. That famous boom-chicka-boom, the chugging rhythm that sounds like a train you can't get off, came from a cheap trick: Cash slipped a dollar bill into the neck of his guitar.
It became his first number one on the Billboard country chart and crossed over to 19 on the pop side, hung around the charts for more than 43 weeks, and moved over two million copies. Sun kept putting it on LPs, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar! among them, and it later gave its title to a 1970 film starring Gregory Peck and to the 2005 biopic with Joaquin Phoenix as Cash.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 103 | WFPK | WFPK 2001 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2000 |
| 2004 | 342 | WXPN | WXPN 885 All-Time Greatest Songs (2004) | 885 |
| 2007 | 79 | WTMD | WTMD Top 897 Songs of All Time | 897 |
| 2009 | 805 | WYEP | WYEP 913 Essential Songs | 913 |
| 2009 | 869 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009) | 885 |
| 2012 | 39 | WYEP | WYEP Top 500 Songs Countdown | 500 |
| 2014 | 374 | WXPN | WXPN 885 All-Time Greatest Songs (2014) | 885 |
| 2018 | 521 | The Current | The Current's 893 Essential Songs | 892 |
| 2020 | 482 | WXPN | WXPN 2020 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2020 |
| 2022 | 906 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Colorado Sound Songs of All Time | 1055 |
| 2023 | 59 | 90.9 The Bridge | 90.9 The Bridge Top 909 Songs of All Time | 909 |
| 2026 | 402 | WYEP | WYEP Greatest Songs of All Time | 1180 |
Also listed as: I Walk the Line.
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