A boy named Sue-Johnny Cash (1962)

A Boy Named Sue
by Johnny Cash
Album: Johnny Cash At San Quentin Released: 1969
US Chart: 2 UK Chart: 4
This was written by the multitalented Shel Silverstein, who later wrote several hits for Dr. Hook, including "Sylvia's Mother" and "Cover Of The Rolling Stone." Silverstein also wrote several popular children's books.
This is about a boy who grows up angry at his father not only for leaving his family, but for naming him Sue. When the boy grows up, he sees his father in a bar and gets in a fight with him. After his father explains that he named him Sue to make sure he was tough, the son understands.
Cash recorded this live at San Quentin Prison in February, 1969. Silverstein's nephew Mitch Myers tell the story: "In those days in Nashville, and for all the people that would visit, the most fun that anyone really could have would be to go over to someone's house and play music. And they would do what one would call a 'Guitar Pull,' where you grabbed a guitar and you played one of your new songs, then someone else next to you would grab it and do the same, and there were people like Johnny Cash or Joni Mitchell, people of that caliber in the room. Shel sang his song 'Boy Named Sue,' and Johnny's wife June Carter thought it was a great song for Johnny Cash to perform. And not too long after that they were headed off to San Quentin to record a record - Live At San Quentin - and June said, 'Why don't you bring that Shel song with you.' And so they brought the lyrics. And when he was on stage he performed that song for the first time ever, he performed it live in front of that captive audience, in every sense of the word. He had to read the lyrics off of the sheet of paper that was at the foot of the stage, and it was a hit. And it wasn't touched up, it wasn't produced or simulated. They just did it, and it stuck. And it rang. I would say that it would qualify in the realm of novelty, a novelty song. Shel had a knack for the humorous and the kind of subversive lyrics. But they also were so catchy that people could not resist them."
Shel Silverstein went on to write another song titled "The Father of the Boy Named Sue." It's the same story, but from the father's point of view.