Twenty seven days I've been out on the road,
I'm a nervous wreck, I gotta get back home.
There's a young bride waiting for me all alone
Lord, how she misses me.

I can see her sittin' in the kitchen chair
In a cotton dress with her long black hair.
But a woman ain't pretty if a man ain't there,
That I can't afford to be.

It's a shame, it's a shame
She won't be the one to blame
Oh the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl.

Like a red-tail fox to a blue tick hound,
She's the hottest thing for miles around.
All them other boys in our hometown,
Got tricks hid up their sleeves.

Now it ain't her that I don't trust,
She's pretty and pure as diamond dust.
But lonesome is this lonesome girl
She can't help for what she needs.

It's a shame, it's a shame
She won't be the one to blame
Oh the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl.

The heart of a lonely girl,
The heart of a lonely girl.
It's the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
The heart of a lonely girl.

Daddy was a rambler just like me,
I guess the apple don't fall too far from the tree.
When I ask why momma had to go that day,
Well he don't know and she won't say.

It's a shame, it's a shame
She won't be the one to blame
Oh the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl.

Yeah, it's a shame, it's a shame
She won't be the one to blame
Yeah the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl.
Yeah the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl