Hank Williams – Nobody’s Lonesome for Me

“Nobody’s Lonesome for Me” is a country and honky-tonk song written and recorded by Hank Williams with His Drifting Cowboys. Discography sources show that Williams cut the master on August 31, 1950 at Castle Studio in Nashville, with Fred Rose producing. The track was released later that year by MGM as the B-side of single 10832, paired with “Moanin’ the Blues,” and published through Fred Rose Music and related Acuff-Rose interests. Running just over two and a half minutes, it is generally classified as country & western, honky-tonk and country blues.

The August 31, 1950 session was an important date in Williams’s early-1950s run. It produced several sides, including “Moanin’ the Blues” and “Nobody’s Lonesome for Me,” with a band that biographers identify as Jerry Rivers on fiddle, Don Helms on steel guitar, Sammy Pruett on electric guitar, probably Jack Shook on rhythm guitar and either Ernie Newton or Howard “Cedric Rainwater” Watts on bass, with organ and possibly drums added by Fred Rose or Owen Bradley and drummer Farris Coursey. Rose aimed for concise, radio-ready performances, and the records from this session became part of a sequence of successful MGM singles.

On release, “Nobody’s Lonesome for Me” performed well despite its status as a B-side. Chart tables in Williams overviews list the song as reaching No. 9 on the U.S. country chart in 1950, while the A-side “Moanin’ the Blues” climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard country singles listing. This made the single one of several Hank Williams releases from 1950 on which both sides charted, alongside pairings such as “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” with “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy.”

Lyrically, “Nobody’s Lonesome for Me” is voiced from the perspective of a man pretending that separation has not affected him. The narrator claims that no one misses him and that he can move on without regret, even as the repeated title line suggests the opposite. The text uses short, conversational phrases and everyday images rather than detailed storytelling, a style consistent with Williams’s other domestic and relationship songs from this period. The combination of brisk tempo and emotionally charged subject matter places it alongside titles such as “I Just Don’t Like This Kind of Living” and “Why Don’t You Love Me,” which also deal with troubled personal relationships.

Musically, the recording follows the honky-tonk template Williams and Rose developed at Castle Studio. Acoustic rhythm guitar and bass provide a steady foundation, while electric guitar, steel guitar and fiddle supply short fills between vocal phrases. The tempo is mid-to-upbeat, suitable for jukebox and dance-hall use, and the arrangement remains compact, with no extended solos. Later commentary on live releases such as Live at the Grand Ole Opry notes that the song worked effectively on stage, where Williams could deliver its complaints with a showman’s energy while the audience clapped along.

“Nobody’s Lonesome for Me” has remained part of the core Hank Williams catalogue through reissues and compilations. It appears on major collections including 40 Greatest Hits, The Original Singles Collection… Plus and other overviews of his MGM period, ensuring that it is heard alongside more widely known songs such as “Cold, Cold Heart” and “Jambalaya (On the Bayou).”

The song has also attracted cover versions by later country and roots artists. It was included, for example, on George Jones’s 1960 tribute album George Jones Salutes Hank Williams, and it has been recorded by other performers on Hank Williams tribute sets and collections of his compositions. These interpretations, together with archival live releases and ongoing anthologies, have helped keep “Nobody’s Lonesome for Me” in circulation as a representative example of Williams’s 1950 honky-tonk style and of the B-sides that still managed to become chart entries in their own right.