If I Needed You

"If I Needed You" is a song written by Townes Van Zandt and performed on his 1972 album The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. It was covered 9 years later by American country music artists Emmylou Harris and Don Williams as a duet, and was released in September 1981 as the first single from Harris' album Cimarron. The song reached #3 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart^[1] and #1 on the RPM Country Tracks chart in Canada.^[2] According to Townes's business partner and producer Kevin Eggers, the song was written about his wife Anne Mittendorf Eggers. ^{[citation needed]}

The song is very similar musically to David Allan Coe's later song "Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)." Van Zandt's former manager John Lomax III recounts that when Coe heard Van Zandt play the song, he asked Van Zandt if he could "do something with it." However, Van Zandt is not credited on the later song.^[3]