Don Gibson Guitar Lessons: Classic Songs You Can Play

Learn Don Gibson songs on acoustic guitar with step-by-step lessons. 

Few songwriters have seen as many of their songs become standards as Don Gibson. Nicknamed the “Sad Poet” of Nashville, he wrote “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” which Ray Charles took to No. 1, and “Sweet Dreams,” which became a signature song for Patsy Cline. His own recording of “Oh Lonesome Me” is often called one of the first records of the Nashville Sound.

On this page you’ll find seven Don Gibson lessons I’ve arranged and taught, covering his best-known heartbreak songs and a couple of later favorites. Each lesson shows you the chords, the rhythm pattern and any intro riffs or picking breaks, so you can play these timeless songs with confidence.

I Can't Stop Loving You was written on a day when Don Gibson couldn’t have felt any lower. Living in a trailer park north of Knoxville on June 7, 1957, with little money and fewer prospects, he wrote this song and “Oh Lonesome Me” in a single sitting.

He said he set out to write a lost-love ballad, noticed the phrase “I can’t stop loving you” in his own lines, and rewrote the song around it. Gibson recorded it for RCA with Chet Atkins in December 1957, and it became the flip side of “Oh Lonesome Me,” a No. 7 country hit on its own.

Ray Charles took it to No. 1 on the Hot 100 for five weeks in 1962, and more than 700 artists have recorded it since.

I'd Be A Legend In My Time is a waltz about the kind of fame nobody wants: if heartache earned awards, the singer says, everyone would already know his name.

Don Gibson wrote and recorded it in 1960 as the B-side of “Far, Far Away,” and he cut it again for his 1972 album Country Green. Roy Orbison recorded it twice, in 1961 and again for his 1967 tribute album Roy Orbison Sings Don Gibson, and Sammy Davis Jr. charted with it in 1973.

The version most people know belongs to Ronnie Milsap, who released it in November 1974, switched it from waltz time to 4/4 and took it to No. 1 on the country chart. His album of the same name won CMA Album of the Year.

Oh Lonesome Me gave Don Gibson his first No. 1 hit, and it came out of his rock-bottom moment in Knoxville. He wrote it on June 7, 1957, the same day as “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” and recorded both that December in Nashville with Chet Atkins producing.

Backed by little more than rhythm guitar, bass, drums and Floyd Cramer’s piano, the spare record is often credited as one of the first examples of the Nashville Sound. It spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the country chart in 1958 and reached No. 7 on the Hot 100, Gibson’s only pop top-10 hit.

Neil Young covered it in 1970, and The Kentucky Headhunters took it into the top 10 in 1990.

Sea Of Heartbreak is proof that Don Gibson could make anybody’s song sound like his own. Paul Hampton and Hal David, the lyricist famous for his work with Burt Bacharach, wrote it, and Gibson recorded it at RCA Studio B in Nashville on April 5, 1961, with Chet Atkins producing.

RCA released it that May with “I Think It’s Best (To Forget Me),” a Gibson original, on the flip side. The single reached No. 2 on the country chart and crossed over to No. 21 on the Hot 100, and it also made the top 20 in Britain.

Kenny Price, Ronnie McDowell and Jimmy Buffett with George Strait have all recorded it since.

Sweet Dreams started as Don Gibson’s own song and ended up as the one Patsy Cline made immortal. Gibson wrote it in 1955 while working for the Acuff-Rose publishing company and recorded it that fall for MGM, reaching No. 9 on the country chart in 1956.

But Faron Young’s competing recording, made that summer, rose to No. 2 and gave Gibson his first real notice as a songwriter. Gibson re-recorded it in 1960 for RCA and took it to No. 6.

Patsy Cline recorded it on February 5, 1963, and it came out in April, just weeks after her death in a plane crash, becoming one of her signature songs. Emmylou Harris and Reba McEntire also recorded it.

Touch The Morning was one of the last big hits of Don Gibson’s long career, and he didn’t write it.

That credit goes to Eddy Raven, the Louisiana songwriter who also wrote Gibson’s “Country Green” and later scored a No. 1 of his own with “I Got Mexico.” Hickory Records released Gibson’s recording in May 1973, and it climbed to No. 6 on Billboard’s country chart and No. 5 in Canada.

It also gave its name to the album Touch the Morning / That’s What I’ll Do. Gibson had been charting for 17 years by then, and the song proved the veteran of the Nashville Sound could still land in the top 10 in the 1970s.

Yesterday Just Passed My Way Again came late in Don Gibson’s career, and it wasn’t his song to begin with. Whitey Shafer wrote it with his wife Darlene, and Lefty Frizzell was the first to record it, in 1975.

Gibson cut his own version at a Nashville session on November 24, 1980, with guitarists Mark Casstevens and Paul Worley among the players, and it appears on the 1986 compilation The Don Gibson Collection. The lyrics tell of a reunion with a lost love, where a kiss makes the singer feel that the past has come back around.

Shafer also wrote George Strait’s “Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind,” and David Frizzell and Don Everly have recorded this one too.

Kirby Swinemar is an acoustic guitar instructor, performer and song arranger who has taught online for 21 years and created more than 4,000 original acoustic guitar lessons. He specialises in song-based acoustic guitar instruction, rhythm guitar techniques, and creating full-sounding solo arrangements that help beginner and intermediate players move beyond basic strumming.

Explore more of Kirby's work at Kirby's Guitar Lessons, watch his performances and tutorials on his YouTube Channel or follow him on Facebook. You can also learn more about his teaching background on the About Me page.