On the Banks of the Old Ponchartrain On the Banks of the Old Ponchartrain On the Banks of the Old Ponchartrain is a song written by Hank Williams and Ramona Vincent. It was the singer's second single on MGM Records, released in September 1947. According to biographer Colin Escott, Ramona Vincent, a crippled woman, wrote the words of the song as a poem and sent it to Williams, who put a melody to it. The song was paired with Fred Rose's novelty "Fly Trouble," resulting in perhaps the oddest single the singer ever released. The song was recorded at Castle Studio in Nashville on August 4, 1947
On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away public events continued in the following years, and it is often played in the place of "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" at state college football games and other prominent events. In 1997, to commemorate the song's centennial anniversary, the Indiana General Assembly passed a resolution reconfirming "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" as the state's official song and urged state institutions to make more use of it and return it to popularity. in 1898 Andrew B. Sterling wrote a folk adaptation of the song about the Spanish–American War, entitled "On the Shores of Havana, Far