The song has been covered by several other artists, including Waylon Jennings in 1964, Susan Tedeschi, Emilie-Claire Barlow in her 2010 album The Beat Goes On and Peter, Paul and Mary, who released it as a single, which reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.

In the liner notes to the original release, Nat Hentoff calls the song "a statement that maybe you can say to make yourself feel better ... as if you were talking to yourself".

Lines taken word-for-word or slightly altered from the Clayton song are, "T'ain't no use to sit and wonder why, darlin'" and "So I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road."

Another version of the song, recorded as a demo for Dylan's music publisher M. Witmark & Sons in 1963, was included on two releases in Columbia's Bootleg Series: Vol.

[9][10] Cash Box described it as "an infectious medium-paced country-styled folk item with a haunting, extremely pretty melody" that seemed destined to replicate the success the trio had with "Blowin' in the Wind".

[11] AllMusic critic William Ruhlman described the Peter, Paul and Mary version as an "understated rendition" of the song.

Elvis Presley recorded the song as an in-studio jam with his band in Nashville in May 1971, and a shortened version first appeared on his self-titled 1973 album.

[15] The full version remained unreleased until the 1995 release of the box set Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential '70s Masters.

Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covered this song in their sixth and final recorded collaboration Django and Jimmie in 2016.

Before he became famous, Post Malone uploaded a cover version to YouTube in 2013 under his birth name, performed in an earnest folk style unlike his later work.