Johnny Cash, June Carter and Me...

I took my guitar one mornin', real early, went down and sat on the steps of the studio until he (Sam Phillips) got there. And he was in a good mood that mornin'. He put me in the front of of a mic and I sang about two hours. He kept sayin', 'What else you got? Let me hear more.' Then, after I sang all these other people's songs, he said, ' Sing somethin' you wrote. I want to hear your stuff.' So I sang him everything I'd written... Then he said, 'Do you know any musicians?' I said, yeah. I'd just met Marshall (Grant) and Luther (Perkins)... so he said, 'Come back with them and we'll put somethin' down, see how it sounds.' I came back with them the next day, and first thing we recorded was "Wide Open Road", a song I'd written in Germany. And then I recorded "Folsom Prison Blues" and then "Hey Porter!" He liked all three of them but he liked "Hey Porter!" best. And he said "We gotta have a love song. A weeper, a cryin' song.' So I went home and wrote "Cry! Cry! Cry!" I came back with the two musicians and put that down soon after. That was February 1955.
Johnny Cash on his initial recordings with Sam Phillips at Sun Studios

***The Fabulous Johnny Cash (1958) signed by Johnny***

I knew absolutely nothin' about the record business. I mean, nothin'. I didn't know my record was out, and Sam (Phillips) walked up to me, handed me this big 78 and said, "Why don't you take this down to WMPS and get Bob Neal to play it?' So I went down, got on Bob Neal's noon show, handed him the record. He played "Hey Porter" and he liked it. He said, 'That's good, let's play the other side.' He reached to turn it over, dropped it and broke it. And I thought, Well I did what I set out to do: I sang on the radio. That's it, I thought my career was over. I had no idea there was even another copy. I thought one was all there'd be.
Johnny Cash

***Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams (1960) signed by Johnny and June***

Let me put it to you this way: Whatever you think Johnny Cash was, he was something better. And you would really be pleasantly surprised if you knew him. He’s the real guy.
Merle Haggard

***Ring Of Fire (1963) signed by Johnny***

I wrote it backstage at a show with Carl Perkins in Gladewater, Texas. And when I recorded it, I recorded it real slow the first time. Sam (Phillips) played it back and he said, 'I don't like that arrangement. Let's speed it up.' And I wasn't gettin' any sound on my guitar speedin' it up, so I put paper in the strings to get that shufflin' sound, and we picked up the tempo, and he kept sayin', 'Pick up the tempo, let's do it faster next time.' So we did....But I didn't like the record when I heard it on the radio. I hated it. I called Sam from Ocala, Florida - I was on tour when it came out - and I said, That's the worst thing I have ever done. Please don't send out any more copies of "I Walk The Line" that way. I hate it. And he said, 'Well, let's give it a chance and see.' Course, the higher it climbed on the charts, the more I got to like it, and I started doin' it that way on stage.
Johnny Cash on recording "I Walk The Line"

***Original Sun Sound (1964) signed by Johnny***

There was a package of myself, Jerry Lee [Lewis], Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins. We were all young and wild and crazy. As crazy as you can get. We discovered amphetamines, or I did, anyway. Jerry thought he was going to Hell for not preaching. He went to seminary and wanted to be a preacher, but he turned to rock and roll. He would tell us all we were going to hell. I said, 'Maybe you're right, Killer. Maybe you're right.'
Johnny Cash on his early Sun Records days in 1955

***Orange Blossom Special (1965) signed by Johnny***

I was lucky. I saw Johnny Cash perform more than a dozen times in all sorts of venues. From the eighteen thousand seat Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland as one of The Highwaymen (Willie, Waylon and Kris were the others) to the twelve-hundred person 9:30 Club mosh pit in Washington, DC to President Clinton's Inaugural Ball in 1993 at the Washington Hilton (as an unannounced guest!) to one of his last public appearances with June Carter Cash at the Bottom Line in New York City. Each time, Johnny was a mesmerizing presence, dressed in black, guitar held high, his profundo bass intoning songs that were drawn from the deepest reservoir of the soul. If Johnny Cash was not directly the voice of God, his timbre was certainly the next of kin!

I grew up listening to Johnny Cash. On long car trips, the tinny fidelity and flinty reception of AM/FM radio (circa late 1960s) would yield a variety of Top 40 sounds along highways and interstates. There were no iPods or iPhones to provide personal playlists, we were left to the mercy of radio program directors and DJs. Occasionally, the unmistakable, clarion call of Johnny Cash would cut through the clutter with "Ring Of Fire", "Folsom Prison Blues", or, even, the Shel Silverstein penned novelty "A Boy Named Sue." No one sounded like Johnny Cash on the radio then, or now. It stirred my interest and I had to listen and learn more.

By now, the legend of Johnny Cash is well known and writ large. Born poor in rural Arkansas, Johnny enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1950, served in Germany as a code breaker, returned to the U.S. in 1954 and showed up at Sam Phillips' Sun Studios in Memphis with songs he had written. Out of the gate, Johnny recorded "Hey Porter", "Cry! Cry! Cry!", "Folsom Prison Blues" and "I Walk The Line" and his career was off to the races. He left Sun Records in 1958 and joined Columbia Records and flourished for the next twenty-eight years, winning awards, selling millions of records and becoming Johnny Cash. Then, Columbia Records, in their infinite wisdom, unceremoniously dumped him. Johnny Cash was "too country" and didn't mesh with the "countrypolitan" drivel that Garth Brooks, Vince Gill et al were serving up in the late 1980s (and even today). Johnny's devout and steadfast interpretation of Harlan Howard's "three chords and the truth" had devolved into line dances, gaudy outfits and over-wrought emoting. Johnny Cash's simple rhymes and rhythms were deemed anachronistic and unwelcome.

***American Recordings (1994) signed by Johnny***

Enter Rick Rubin, maverick record label owner, genius and producer of Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Tom Petty and so many others. They seemed an unusual pair. Rubin's pitch to Johnny was simple: eliminate the strings, the outfits and the ornaments, it will be just you, your guitar and songs. Johnny had always wanted to record an album like this and he even had a working title, Late and Alone. They began collaborating together and their first album, American Recordings, was released in 1994 and featured Rubin's minimalist production on songs by Leonard Cohen, Nick Lowe, Glenn Danzig and Tom Waits. It was startling in its simplicity, a radical transformation that worked. American Recordings won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album that year, and hipsters were getting hip to how hip Johnny Cash was.

Johnny's next album, Unchained, was a more fleshed out production with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers providing support and songs culled again from unlikely sources like Beck - "Rowboat", Soundgarden - "Rusty Cage", Josh Haden - "Spiritual" (with Flea on bass!), and Tom Petty - "Southern Accents." Unchained met with critical and commercial success and it won a Grammy for Best Country Album. To celebrate, Rick placed an ad in Billboard with this caption:

American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support.

It was accompanied by an iconic photo of Johnny (wearing a prison jumpsuit) flipping off famed photographer Jim Marshall during rehearsals for a San Quentin concert in 1969. It is my favorite corporate marketing piece ever! And it is available on posters, t-shirts and coffee mugs...

***Billboard Ad, 1998 - Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash give thanks and praises!***

Johnny and Rick would go on to release more than 140 songs over the next decade with the American Recordings imprimatur. Prison songs, pain songs, train songs, sea chanteys, spirituals, show tunes, the entire range of the Great American Songbook. And when Johnny Cash sang a song, he didn't rent it, he owned it. Perhaps his most celebrated cover was Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt", a harrowing song of despair and dissolution by lead singer Trent Reznor. As Trent said when he was initially approached about a Johnny Cash cover, he was "flattered" but 'the idea sounded a bit gimmicky." That changed when he and Zach De La Rocha saw the video. "We were in the studio, getting ready to work and I popped it in. By the end, I was really on the verge of tears...there was just dead silence. There was, like, this moist clearing of our throats and then, "Uh okay, let's get some coffee." Trent added, "I felt like I just lost my girlfriend because that song isn't mine anymore." Trent wasn't alone, U2's "One", Beck's "Rowboat", Neil Diamond's "Solitary Man", The Eagles' "Desperado" and so many others all suffer the same fate once Johnny Cash sings. They are his songs, they are not theirs. As Tom Petty said about "I Won't Back Down", "When I heard his version, it was like I'd never done it. It dropped my jaw, something about the authority his voice carried. When the Army and C.I.A. people called me and asked me to use it in their training programs, they wanted to use the Johnny Cash version. I guess it sounded more American."

***Tennessee Inaugural Ball Program; January 20, 1993 (front cover)***

Though I saw him more than a dozen times, I only met Johnny Cash twice. The first time was at President Clinton's Inaugural Ball, January 20, 1993 at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC. My brother-in-law Matt hooked us up with tickets so Erin and I put on our finest formal evening wear and attended the black tie affair. Several states (but not all) were hosting balls, including Arkansas and Tennessee, the top two destinations. We opted for Tennessee, it had better musicians. I mean, who cares about politics when you can see a dozen fabulous performers?! The Tennessee Ball did not disappoint. The International Ballroom had a big stage where Kathy Mattea, Take Six and Jimmy Buffet performed. An obscure group called the Dixie Chicks opened, wearing horrific, Minnie Pearl inspired, gingham check outfits. This was before Natalie Maines joined the band as lead singer and no one knew who they were. Worse, no one cared.

Erin and I decided to hang out in the Exhibit Hall, a smaller ballroom which was adjacent. A wise choice. As we mingled with assorted black tie politicos and high end donors (of which I am neither), I saw Jerry Jeff Walker performing off to the side. We went over. There was no stage, he could have been busking in the New York City Subway for all the attention he was receiving. Just then a tall man dressed in black (unremarkable for we were all dressed in black!) approached, escorting Emmylou Harris. Emmylou joined Jerry Jeff and sang beautiful harmony on "Little Bird", one of my favorite songs from Jerry Jeff's Viva Terlingua. The man stood nearby and watched about five feet from us. It was Johnny Cash. Yes, Johnny Fucking Cash! The Man In Black! After Emmylou and Jerry Jeff finished, Johnny started to walk away. Sadly, I had no Johnny Cash vinyl, as he wasn't listed as a performer at the show, but I stopped him, shook his hand and had him sign the back of the program. “JohnnyPleaseBigFanSignThankYou", my words ran together in an indistinguishable, staccato burst. Johnny smiled, shook my hand, signed my paper and gave it back to me. "JohnnyPleasePictureBigFanPlease" came my next incoherent blurt. "Sure" came the genial response. Later, the photo was developed and Johnny was the essence of cool detachment. I was not. Sadly, I have not been able to locate this photo. So, if you find a picture of someone in a black tux, wild-eyed and overwrought with emotion standing next to Johnny Cash at the Tennessee Inaugural Ball in 1993, I'd appreciate you sending it back to me...

The rest of the night was one of the great nights of music ever. After Jerry Jeff and Emmylou played, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead performed with Rob Wasserman, then Bruce Cockburn, Dion, Lou Reed, and Rosanne Cash all played sets. Rosanne, in particular, played a rousing show with her husband John Leventhal on guitar and called her dad on stage to sing "Tennessee Flat Top Box", one of his early hits. That's was a highlight for sure. Around 4am, there were less than a couple dozen hearty, bleary souls when Paul Simon appeared and sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water." It was an incredible night and an auspicious start for....well, it was an incredible night of music.

***Tennessee Inaugural Ball Program (back cover) signed by Johnny, Emmylou Harris, Jerry Jeff Walker***

The last time I saw Johnny Cash was at the Bottom Line in New York City on July 1, 1999. A superb venue in the East Village, maybe five-hundred seats and home to some fabled performances through the years by Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Willy DeVille. Johnny had been quite sick and while he was recording extensively with Rick Rubin, his public appearances were limited. June Carter Cash, daughter of Mother Maybelle and A.P. Carter, the family who invented Country music in rural Virginia in the 1920s, stealing most of their melodies from Celtic airs and Scottish Highland reels, released Press On, her first album in twenty-four years. She was touring and her tour consisted of two shows at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles and two shows at the Bottom Line. I met June at a CD signing prior to the show at an HMV record store in Times Square and I brought along some vinyl. She was vivacious and perky, just like her appearances on stage with Johnny all through the years.

That night at the Bottom Line, June appeared with her band, and they played a tight set which focused on her new songs from Press On. One highlight was an Appalachian-infused "Ring Of Fire" which she co-wrote with Merle Kilgore about her early, volatile relationship with Johnny Cash. The mariachi horns of Johnny's iconic arrangement were replaced by fiddles and mandolin, and June even strummed Mother Maybelle's vintage autoharp to create a lustrous hillbilly mood. Half way through the set, June introduced a special guest, Johnny Cash, and he made his unsteady way to center stage from off stage. The crowd gave Johnny and June a thunderous ovation. They performed a duet on "The Far Sides Of Jordan", a heart wrenching gospel with the prescient opening stanza:

I believe my steps are growin' wearier each day

Still, I've got another journey on my mind

Lures of this old world have ceased to make me wanna stay

And my one regret is leavin' you behind

They finished the song and Johnny left the stage. There was barely a dry eye in the house as June continued with her set. After the show, Johnny signed some vinyl. I had learned my lesson, I kept it short and simple: "Please, Johnny" and "Thank You." I have met a lot of musicians through the years, everyone from Frank Sinatra to Jerry Garcia to Dizzy Gillespie to Johnny Rotten, and no one has left me as flustered or flummoxed. After all, he is, was and will always be, Johnny Fucking Cash!

The music and legacy Johnny Cash left is astounding, particularly his late career resurgence with Rick Rubin. Rosanne Cash said it best: "It's like Matisse doing the jazz dancers when he was in his 80s....like a whole new level of art and depth and mastery and confidence. Rick came at just the right time, and Dad was just the right age that that could be unlocked in him." Years later, Rick Rubin reflected on their relationship, "He really played a huge role in my life, and of course, we worked a lot together for a long time. It was always fulfilling and I always looked forward to it. I would have to say it affected me more in terms of quality of life than in terms of the way that I work. My life was definitely made better by having him as a friend. He was just a beautiful man."

Thanks for all the beauty in your songs, Johnny. And thanks to Rick Rubin for curating the American Recordings to add to your already nonpareil discography.

Carousel Ballroom, 4/24/68 Johnny with Dan Hicks signed by Dan

It's been a good 30 years... It's been a great spiritual experience sharing my feelings with my audience. And that's what performing is. It's communicating your feelings through lyrics, recitation, or dialogue between songs. I found it to be a great challenge yet a most rewarding thing and probably the most rewarding vocation a person can have...
Johnny Cash 1984 interview