Johnny Cash-"A Boy Named Sue"

Was a stereo commercial 45 ever available for this one? I had a stereo promo of it once upon a time but somehow it left my collection during my college years, either stolen from college or accidentally sold off when i unloaded several boxes of what i thought were NOT part of my personal collection, at a flea market a few summers ago. All promo's ive seen on ebay since then have been mono promos!

Tom, my promo 45 is also mono, and it has the exact same, listed (3:40), actual (3:38) timing parameters as I've just reported for my commercial 45. And, as Paul C mentions, both my stock & promo 45 copies do begin with a second or two of "mellow, quiet, expectant background crowd noise", but no actual applause, before the song's first guitar note. Paul's question here is a good one, though, and makes me wonder whether or not this exact intro could be unique to the original mono 45 or not. FYI, the artist name on my commercial 45 is predictably shown as "Johnny Cash", but for both "A Boy Named Sue" and its flip side, "San Quentin", for some reason his name is shown as "J. Cash" on my promo 45. I think I vaguely remember hearing on his TV show, back when I was a kid, that during his own time spent in prison, back in the 50's, I believe, that's how the prison personnel had referred to him, and this was perhaps an "homage" of sorts, to his own time spent locked up, being that "A Boy Named Sue" was recorded at San Quentin prison and all, but I'm not at all positive about this. Or, given the novelty nature of this release, it could simply be that Columbia was trying to make this particular promo 45 relase by him somehow stand out to radio, from his many other previous 45 releases. Since, for the past 5 years or so (1964-1969), the vast majority of his radio airplay had come from Country-formatted stations, not Top 40 stations.

reason I suggested the above, the uncensored version does not have applause dubbed over the intro of the song. I pasted the intro in and the file runs 3:38.

According to wikipedia, Cash's full birth name was "J.R. Cash" (just initials, no first/middle names). When he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1950, he was told that he couldn't sign on with just a first initial, he needed a first name. So he put down "John R. Cash" as his name. That doesn't really shed any light about why Columbia listed him as "J. Cash" on this 45, but it was, in a sense, his real first and last name.    

Incidentally, wikipedia claims that Cash never actually spent time in prison, despite his "outlaw" image. He was arrested a number of times on various misdemeanor charges, but never received a prison sentence per se, and never spent any significant amount of time in jail.

All of the above is with the usual caveats about wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash