“Never Again” — in full, “Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door)” — holds a small but real place in country music history: it was the first song Hank Williams released, the A-side of his debut single, issued on the Sterling label in 1947, before his rise to fame.
The lyric is a hard, finished kind of heartbreak song. Rather than pleading, the singer declares the affair over for good — he will never again come knocking at his former sweetheart’s door. That note of wounded finality was something Williams would return to often in his short, brilliant career.
The song passed into the bluegrass repertoire as Williams’s writing became foundational for the music. The version heard here is by Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, drawn from Monroe’s recordings of the country songbook he had helped shape.
