Carlene Carter on gifts, musical and otherwise

Carlene Carter said "It Takes One To Know Me" was one of the most emotional songs to record on her new CD.

She wrote it as a birthday gift to her stepfather, Johnny Cash, when she was 18.

"I thought, 'What do you give Johnny Cash as a birthday gift?'" she said. "I figured the song was a good thing. He liked it. He said he was going to record it."

But it wasn't until after Johnny Cash died in 2003 that Ms. Carter realized that he had recorded it.

"We found a version in the vault," she said.

The song was remastered by her half brother, John Carter Cash. He asked Carlene to add her voice to it. That version is on the four-disc 2006 Johnny Cash compilation, "The Legend."

"It was really neat and very emotional," Ms. Carter said of the 2006 recording. "But I decided I would record it myself and sing it the way I wrote it" on the new album.

Ms. Carter's husband, Joseph Breen, sings with her on the song. She credits him with helping to put her on the right path, just like her stepfather often credited her mother, June Carter Cash, with pulling him out of a life of drugs and alcohol. A sample of the lyrics shows the importance of such guidance:

And I don't feel as tall as I used to

maybe it's just that I've grown

you're the one that held my hand when I fell

if I just couldn't make it alone

"It's a song about the kind of person Johnny was and what he meant to me," Ms. Carter said. "It's important to have a daddy as a friend."