He di write the song. There were earlier recordings and copyright notices than 1940. The 1940 copyright by Southern Music, is the sort of thing that publishers are famous for, puting their copyright notice on some sheet music, even though they know that they aren't responsible for it's composition./ It's my opinion that almost all early country music songs were at least inspired by hawaiian music. The Hawaiian songs came to the mainland along with the Hawaian Guitar (Also called "Steel Guitar", "Dobro" etc)