“If You’ve Got the Money Honey” — properly “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time” — is a honky-tonk classic written and recorded by Lefty Frizzell, one of the most influential country singers of the twentieth century. Frizzell said the title came to him from an offhand remark, when a friend asked him to go out and he answered, “If you’ve got the money, I’ve got the time.”
Frizzell recorded the song in 1950, at his first Columbia Records session, and it became an immediate and enormous hit, racing to the top of the country charts and helping launch his career. Its rollicking, good-timing lyric — an invitation to spend money and chase pleasure together — made it an enduring honky-tonk anthem.
The song has been recorded by countless country and bluegrass artists, and Willie Nelson took it back to number one in the 1970s.
