A version in 2002 brought him his fourth and final Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.
[2] Cash recorded the genesis of the song as a conversation he had with an inmate from San Quentin State Prison.
The song details the experience of a released convict, travelling to Louisiana from San Francisco to see his family.
Terminally ill, he collapses along the rails of the railway and, while dying, asks the song’s narrator to carry a message to his wife and son.
It also appears on the album All Aboard the Blue Train with Johnny Cash, released in 1962.