The third single from Ed Bruce's You're Not Leaving Here Tonight album, this peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. Bruce wrote the song with his then wife and manager Patsy. The pair were frequent collaborators and are best known for penning Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson's hit single "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys."
The song finds the elderly narrator serenely reflecting back on a lifelong marriage:
"After all these years after all the joys and tears After all is said and done after most of everything we knew is gone I still love you."
Unlike the narrator and his wife, the Bruces' marriage didn't make the distance. After 22 years together, Ed filed for divorce on July 27, 1987 charging Patsy with "cruel and inhuman treatment."
On January 28, 2004 Bruce sung "After All" and "The Last Cowboy Song" on the CBS variety show Hee Haw.
Johnny Cash recorded the song and his version can be found on his 2014 posthumous album Out Among the Stars, which was produced by his son John Carter Cash.
Carter Cash told Billboard magazine: "This was a very different song for Johnny Cash to sing. The melody is pretty unique for him, I can't think of any other song of this type he ever recorded, the range is so extensive. He always had a way to know if a song could work, he had a way to make it his own."
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