Hank Williams – Please Don’t Let Me Love You

“Please Don’t Let Me Love You” is a country song written by Ralph Jones and later recorded by Hank Williams. The composition was first cut by singer George Morgan, whose 1949 version became a No. 4 hit on the Billboard country chart. Several years later, after Hank Williams’s death in 1953, MGM Records acquired transcription discs of early radio performances he had made for the Johnnie Fair Syrup show. Among the songs on those acetates was Williams’s rendition of “Please Don’t Let Me Love You,” which the label prepared for commercial release.

Between January and May 1949, Williams pre-recorded a series of short morning radio shows in Shreveport, Louisiana, for Johnnie Fair Syrup. These programs typically featured Hank singing current hits, gospel numbers and newer material accompanied by a small group, with the performances captured on acetate discs rather than standard studio tape. After Williams became a major posthumous star in the mid-1950s, MGM obtained a batch of those acetates from station archives and from the sponsor and began issuing selected tracks as singles to satisfy continuing demand for unreleased Hank Williams material.

In July 1955, MGM released “Please Don’t Let Me Love You” as the B-side of the single “Faded Love and Winter Roses” (MGM 12029). Label credits identified the writer as Ralph Jones and the artist as Hank Williams with His Drifting Cowboys, although the performance actually comes from the Shreveport radio period rather than from later Nashville studio sessions. The disc is usually classified as country and folk, consistent with the pared-down, acoustic-based sound of the Johnnie Fair broadcasts rather than the more polished Castle Studio arrangements heard on Williams’s early-1950s MGM hits.

Lyrically, the song is a plea from a narrator who fears that falling in love will only lead to heartbreak. He asks his sweetheart not to encourage him—“please don’t let me love you… ’cause I know you’ll be untrue”—and warns her not to call him “darlin’” or whisper endearments she does not mean. The verses focus on loneliness, unrequited feeling and the knowledge that the relationship cannot work, even though he still longs for her attention. The language is simple and direct, with repeated phrases built around the title line, a structure that fits neatly into Williams’s broader catalogue of concise heartbreak songs.

Musically, Hank Williams’s version of “Please Don’t Let Me Love You” is a modest, mid-tempo country performance. The Johnnie Fair recording features voice and guitar, with light accompaniment that reflects the constraints of live or lightly produced radio. Later releases, including its appearance on compilation albums such as The Immortal Hank Williams and The Complete Hank Williams, present the track with minimal alteration, preserving the intimate, slightly raw quality of the original acetate source. The running time is around two minutes and fifteen seconds, in line with contemporary country single norms.

On the charts, the 1955 MGM single gave Williams another posthumous hit. Discography tables indicate that “Please Don’t Let Me Love You” reached No. 9 on the U.S. Billboard country chart, several years after the artist’s death, underscoring the continuing commercial value of previously unissued material from his archive. Released alongside other posthumous singles in the 1950s, it contributed to the process by which Hank Williams’s catalogue remained active and visible long after his short lifetime.

Over time, “Please Don’t Let Me Love You” has been treated as part of the body of recordings that document Williams’s late-1940s development as a country singer, even though it reached the public much later. It appears on major box sets and retrospectives, including The Complete Hank Williams, which compiles his studio masters, radio performances and demos. While it is not as prominent as core hits like “Your Cheatin’ Heart” or “Cold, Cold Heart,” the track is valued by historians and fans as an example of how a song first associated with another artist could be reinterpreted in Williams’s voice and preserved through radio transcriptions that only found a wide audience years after they were made.