Although contemporary data show that Victor pressed slightly over 1.3 million copies during the record's peak years of popularity,[4] anecdotal accounts sourced from a 1940s promotional flyer report sales as high as 7 million.
[6] The lyrics are posted on the wall in the sheriff's office in the film Steamboat Bill, Jr., and the first verse is (silently) sung by Buster Keaton.
The song was included in Lyle Kessler's play Orphans and the film adaptation of the same name which the character of Harold drunkenly mumbles.
The verse sung was altered to "if I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly, Straight to the arms of my mutter, and then I'd be willing to die".
Although Dalhart changed his story frequently when he told it in public, he sometimes also claimed to have rewritten the original that he got from Guy.
[2] Another story claims the lyrics were carved into the wall of a cell in the old Early County Jail in Blakely, Georgia, by Robert F. Taylor, who was at one time held there.