The first and definitive version is by the author, Don Gibson. He wrote it in June of 1957. He tells the story of how he came to write two of his (and country music's) greatest hits in the same afternoon~~he said, "the kind of day I could use a few more of."
"I was sitting in the trailer feeling low; when you're sitting in a trailer and don't have a job, you're low and down. They had come and got my TV and vacuum cleaner one afternoon. They started carrying things off, and I wrote those songs because I felt bad. I sat down to write a lost love ballad and that was 'I Can't Stop Loving You.' I jotted down some of the lyrics before I sang them into my tape recorder, and saw the line, 'I Can't Stop Loving You' and said, 'That would make a good title.' Then I did 'Oh, Lonesome Me,' sang that into my tape recorder, and so when I sent the tape off to Acuff-Rose, whoever transcribed it misunderstood it. I had originally titled it 'Ole Lonesome Me,'but when it came out on sheet music and all, they had it 'Oh, Lonesome Me' and it was too late to change it then."
He recorded them back to back on December 3, 1957.
"I didn't think it was much of a song . . . I brought 'I Can't Stop Loving You' as a ballad I wanted to do on the backside. Chet (Atkins) and Wesley (Rose)looked at it, and said, 'Well, it's not much of a song.' And I said, 'Well, it's gonna be on the B side, so what difference does it make?' They finally let me cut it -- as the B side to 'Oh, Lonesome Me.' Over the next three years, that record sold 600,000 copies."