I don't know a whole lot about Jimmie Driftwood ~ it might well be that he was a "nobody," in no position to make a record, when he wrote the song (i.e., in 1959 or earlier). He might not have become a recording artist until a few years later.

Perhaps the transatlantic success of the song he wrote (hit recordings by two different singers in two countries) is what won him enough recognition to cut his own record.