Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell (credited)

The copyright entered by Southern Music on 30 January 1940 names Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell, and it was renewed in both names in 1967 — but the authorship is genuinely disputed. Paul Rice said he wrote it in 1937 after a letter from a woman in South Carolina, and his name is the credit printed on the Rice Brothers’ Gang’s Decca 5763. Descendants and associates of the LaGrange, Georgia musician Oliver Hood say he wrote it in the early 1930s and first performed it publicly in 1933. Rice’s own summary of the situation was that at least twenty people claimed to have written it.