“Evil Hearted Woman” is a Del McCoury composition, and he first recorded it on 12 April 1976 at Track Recorders in Silver Spring, Maryland, during the sessions for his Rebel LP Our Kind of Grass (SLP 1569), released in 1978. McCoury played guitar and sang lead on the verses, with Bill Runkle on banjo, Don Eldreth on mandolin, Bill Poffinberger on fiddle and Dewey Renfro on bass; on the choruses Runkle took the lead line and McCoury moved up to tenor. Charles R. Freeland produced the album. Rebel reissued the track in 1983 on The Best of Del McCoury & the Dixie Pals (REB 1610).
The song is sung by a man who hauls freight for a living. Thirty-five years have been cruel to him, he still owes debts from “way back in sixty-three,” and at home there is a woman “as mean as she can be.” The road keeps carrying him farther from home, and the uphill and downhill miles become the same grind, but he cannot stay home and fight her either: he can’t live with her, and without her he would lose his mind.
McCoury kept the song in his shows. A performance at The Bottom Line in Nagoya on 11 May 1993, with Ronnie McCoury on mandolin, Rob McCoury on banjo, Jason Carter on fiddle and Mike Bub on bass, appeared on the video Live in Japan. He recorded it again for the 2009 set Celebrating 50 Years of Del McCoury, where Ronnie, Rob and Carter were joined by Stuart Duncan on a second fiddle and Jerry Douglas on dobro.
