Harlan Howard and Freddie Hart wrote “It Takes One to Know One.” Howard was later inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame (1997); Hart is best known for his own 1971 country number one, “Easy Loving.” The first recording of the song was made by Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys on 13 August 1964 at the Columbia Recording Studio in Nashville. Martin sang lead and played guitar, with Vernon Derrick on mandolin and tenor, Mike Miller on banjo and baritone, Junior Huskey on bass, Grady Martin on a second guitar and Buddy Harmon on drums. Decca issued it in November 1964 on the flip side of “Guitar Picking President” (31680), and it was included on Martin’s 1965 LP Sunny Side of the Mountain.
The title phrase is usually a taunt, but here it is an offer of sympathy. The singer notices a girl in a crowd who laughs and talks too loud and sees the tear showing through her smile. He can tell she has been hurt and is frightened and blue, and he takes her hand, tells her to go ahead and cry, and warns that he may start crying too.
Martin sang it again in 1991 on banjo player Bill Emerson’s Reunion (Webco, 1992). Other recordings include Bill Grant and Delia Bell with the Kiamichi Mountain Boys on Fourteen Memories (1976), Kate Brislin and Katy Moffatt on Sleepless Nights (Rounder, 1996), and Chris Thile and Michael Daves, as a mandolin-and-guitar duet recorded at Third Man Studios in Nashville in January 2011 for Sleep With One Eye Open (Nonesuch).
