Showing posts with label Johnny Cash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Johnny Cash. Show all posts
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Robert Hilburn Talks About Johnny Cash
by Chris Schluep on July 28, 2013
Robert Hilburn was kind enough to answer some questions about Cash and I'm thrilled to share that interview here.
Johnny Cash: The Life will be available October 29, 2013.
Chris Schluep: You were at the Folsom Prison concert. What was that like, and did you have a sense at the time that you were partaking in something historical?
Robert Hilburn: I was just getting started as a freelance music writer for the Los Angeles Times and I thought the idea of writing about Johnny Cash—the man who wrote "Folsom Prison Blues" actually singing the song at Folsom State Prison—was a natural. To my surprise, an editor at the paper rejected the idea. His words, "We don't want to give any space to that drug addict." And that was Cash's reputation at the time. He missed so many concerts that his own record label, Columbia, refused to invite press to the date; the last thing they wanted was another "no show" article. But I heard about the concert through a Los Angeles disc jockey and, after getting my editor to change his mind, found myself the only music writer on the scene.
The show was spectacular. Cash was as charismatic as anyone I had ever seen on a stage. More importantly, he conveyed grand artistry and purpose. Rather than simply do his regular show at Folsom, he tailored a set list specifically for his audience. Because of his own troubled lifestyle, he empathized with the prisoners. He knew how it felt to stand before his loved ones in handcuffs and to face the future without hope—and he reflected those shared feelings in his music. I left Folsom with a standard of artistry that I applied to performers for the rest of my years as a pop critic. I didn't know the album would open the door to superstardom for Cash, but I knew it was a classic moment in American pop culture.
RH: Cash was more troubled in his personal life and more influential in his professional life than even his biggest fans realize—and it was that mixture of career accomplishment and frequent personal turmoil that was at the intersection of Cash's story and legacy. The drugs were just the tip of the iceberg in the story of Cash's troubles. Even more daunting was his lifelong guilt over having abandoned his four girls and his failure to fully live up to his spiritual ideals. At the same time in a profession where success is measured almost exclusively in hits, Cash wasn't a singer whose ambition was another hit on the jukebox. He wanted most of all to make music that lifted people's spirits, especially the downtrodden. Cash's music was rooted in folk and country, but his recordings eventually reached all the way into rock and even hip-hop circles. There was something wonderfully universal about him.
RH: One of the first things I learned about Johnny is I had to double-check everything he said: He wasn't one to let facts interfere with a good story. He wasn't so much trying to mislead people as make the stories more colorful. One of my favorites involved the writing of "Folsom Prison Blues." Though Cash said time and again that he wrote the song in 1951 after seeing a movie about Folsom during his Air Force days in Germany, I learned he, in fact, wrote it three years after seeing the movie—and then only after hearing another song, pop composer Gordon Jenkins' ‘Crescent City Blues," that gave him the outline. I had heard pieces of the story, but didn't know the specifics until I sent an email questionnaire to the members of Johnny's old Air Force squadron. One of the questions was whether they had ever heard of "Crescent City Blues." To my delight, one airman, Chuck Riley, replied he had not only bought the Jenkins album on a "whim" but that he was also playing it in the barracks in late 1953 or early 1954 when Johnny happened by. Cash was so intrigued "Crescent City Blues" that he asked Riley to borrow the album so he could make a tape of the song. Over the next few months, Cash changed the song from a tale of lost love to a lonely prison setting. Though he made significant alterations, Jenkins eventually sued for copyright infringement—and Cash agreed to a $75,000 settlement. It was a small price to pay. If Cash had never heard Riley's copy of the obscure album, it's unlikely he would have ever written a song called "Folsom Prison Blues."
RH: Early in life, Cash was moved by music—especially country and gospel—because it lifted his family's spirits as they worked the cotton fields in Arkansas. As he got older, he would see music continue to give people comfort and hope, and that appealed to him. Cash also had a remarkable ability to empathize with his audience, whether it was young soldiers in Vietnam or Native Americans or the aged. In turn, his audience felt an attachment to him. He wasn't just an entertainer, but someone who shared his audience's hopes and concerns and values. He came across as authentic, trustworthy and unique. As Bob Dylan said, "Johnny was and is the North Star; you could guide your ship by him—the greatest of the greats."
Learn more about Johnny Cash: The Life and see more in Amazon's Big Fall Books Preview.
Sunday, August 04, 2013
Saturday, May 04, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
How Hollywood De-Christianized Johnny Cash
It’s an early scene in the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line. The young Cash, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is auditioning for the man who might make him the next Elvis Presley. That man was Sam Phillips, the Sun Records impresario from Memphis.
The fictional Cash walks into the room and begins playing a Gospel song. The fictional Phillips is not impressed, and tells the fictional Cash that no one listens to Gospel anymore, and that he should play something more meaningful. More relevant.Cash did. The rest was history.
Well, not quite. It turns out that Cash, who was born on February 26, 1932, didn’t stop playing Gospel music at all. Nearly a quarter of the songs he wrote were in some way about his faith or the Bible, and many others were influenced by his Christian worldview.
But there wasn’t a single Gospel song on the Walk the Line soundtrack. Somehow, the screenwriters left out that important dimension of his musical catalogue. And there wasn’t a single mention of the greatest love of Cash’s life: Jesus Christ. That’s a love story the screenwriters of Walk the Line just couldn’t wrap their minds around.
Yes, he loved June, the love of his earthly life. But she too loved Jesus Christ, and no doubt Cash’s love for her had much to do with her love for Him. That fact too was omitted from the movie.
Cash recorded the entire King James Version of the New Testament, performed at countless Billy Graham revivals, made a movie about the life of Jesus, and studied the Bible as much as most divinity-school Ph.Ds. Somehow, none of that made it to the screen during the movie’s 136-minute running time.
The screenwriters left all of that out, and for reasons that are inexplicable.
Leaving out Cash’s Christian faith from his life story is like leaving out half-naked 19-year-old girls from Hugh Hefner’s. It’s like telling the story of Jackie Robinson without ever mentioning race or segregation.
The tension between the flesh and spirit, between things of this earth and things of heaven, animated all of Cash’s music. It’s what drew audiences to him generation after generation. Sin and redemption, good and evil, selfishness and love, and the struggles of living by a standard set not by man but by God — all were driving forces in Cash’s work and life.
While the rock-’n’-roll crowd was busy extolling the virtues of sexual freedom and rebellion, Cash was exploring eternal themes. Even his secular songs mined unusual territory for popular music. Here were the opening lyrics to his first No. 1 Billboard hit:
I keep a close watch on this heart of mineNot exactly “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you’re mine, I walk the line
Cash wasn’t walking just any line. He was trying his best to walk a Christian line.
He sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed. Cash spoke openly about his bouts with drug addiction. He talked about his selfishness, and how he lost contact with God during those periods, and the toll those episodes took on his loved ones. On himself. “You don’t think about anyone else,” he said late in his life. “You think about yourself and where your next stash is coming from or your next drink. I wasted a lot of time and energy. I mean, we’re not talking days, but years.”
Believers and non-believers alike know about such struggles. That’s what attracted so many people to Cash’s music: his humility and his empathy. He had no tolerance for the false piety of many Christians, and respected people of all faiths. And those of no faith, such as his friend Kris Kristofferson: The two simply agreed to not talk about religion.
Many great stories about Cash’s faith didn’t make it to the screen, but not because they were hard to find. Fans can find them in the remarkable biography by Steven Turner, The Man Called Cash.
One story that should have made it into the movie took place during a low point in Cash’s life, in the 1990s, 30 miles west of Chattanooga in the Nickajack Cave, an underground warren that’s home to over 100,000 bats. According to Turner, Cash spent time there earlier in his life, hunting for treasures such as Indian arrowheads and items left behind by Confederate soldiers. But on this occasion, Cash had different plans.
This is what Cash told the writer Nick Tosches in 1995:
I just felt like I was at the end of the line. I was down there by myself and I got to feelin’ that I took so many pills that I’d done it, that I was gonna blow up or something. I hadn’t eaten in days, I hadn’t slept in days, and my mind wasn’t workin’ too good anyway. I couldn’t stand myself anymore. I wanted to get away from me. And if that meant dyin’, then okay.He was going there to commit suicide. And that’s when things got really interesting. Cash continued:
I took a flashlight with me, and I said, I’m goin’ to walk and crawl and climb into this cave until the light goes out, and then I’m gonna lie down. So I crawled in there with that flashlight until it burned out and I lay down to die. I was a mile in that cave. At least a mile. But I felt this great comfortin’ presence sayin’, “No, you’re not dyin’. I got things for you to do.” So I got up, found my way out. Cliffs, ledges, drop-offs. I don’t know how I got out, ’cept God got me out.That would have been quite a scene in Walk the Line. But it never made it to the screen.
In August 1969, hundreds of thousands of young Americans gathered at Woodstock to watch Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, The Band, Jimi Hendrix, and others perform. It was a wet and wild affair as the counterculture asserted itself into the mainstream. Just two weeks later, Johnny Cash closed out his music-variety show on ABC with a Gospel song. It was a remarkable version of “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)?” Always, to the end, Cash was a countercultural figure. Always a rebel.
Perhaps his most famous recordings were the ones he made in prisons, especially his two shows at Folsom Prison. Cash seemed at home there. He didn’t see himself as better than those men. He was just one of the guys, and understood the prisoners in ways they realized, without his ever saying anything. It didn’t hurt that he’d written some of his best songs from the point of view of condemned and convicted men. The inmates loved him for that. America loved him for that.
“He doesn’t sing for the damned,” Bono once commented about Cash, “he sings with the damned.” That was the true mark of Cash’s Christian walk: the empathy he had for the men and women often overlooked in our society. Prisoners; the hardworking field workers in rural America; the down-and-out and downtrodden; those of us struggling with personal demons, the kind that rob from us the best parts of ourselves.
When Cash got serious about his faith, and left the women and alcohol behind, some of his old friends were not very happy with him. “They’d rather I be in prison than church,” Cash admitted. Waylon Jennings was especially tough on Cash, according to Turner, accusing him of “selling out to religion.”
“He’d be attacked by agnostics and atheists if he appeared too pious,” explained Turner, “and he would be denounced by the religious community if he appeared too worldly.”
Talk about a tough line Cash had to walk. But he tried to walk it.
Cash was once asked how he was able to reach so many people with his message without ever hiding his faith. He had a simple, superb answer. “I am not a Christian artist,” he explained. “I am an artist who is Christian.”
Cash was revered by artists of every genre, from hip-hop to rock. Springsteen and Bono, Snoop Dogg and Trent Reznor all admired the openly Evangelical southern man. And all because Cash transcended stereotypes, and transcended musical categories.
He even transcended time, something few pop stars manage. His 2002 acoustic take on the Nine Inch Nails song about heroin addiction — “Hurt” — was about as courageous a recording as any ever made by a popular artist. Cash, who was 70, found an entire new generation of fans with that stark MTV video.
Thus was the universal appeal of the man called Cash. And that is the universal appeal of a man called Christ.
Steven Turner’s biography of Cash ends so beautifully that it is worth closing with his words:
The realm that Johnny Cash lived in was clouded by pain and colored by grace. He had the ability to transform the rough and commonplace into objects fit for heaven, just as he had been transformed. Rick Rubin remembers him taking Ewan McColl’s song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and turning it from a love song into a devotional song. “He loved that,” said Rubin. “It came really natural to him. It seemed like his devotion for life came from his devotion for God.”
Monday, January 28, 2013
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Johnny Cash, 'Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth' Spotlights Legend's Love for Gospel Music
by Vernell Hackett
http://www.theboot.com/
April 2, 2012
A new 51-track collection of Johnny Cash songs is coming this week in honor of the continuing celebration of his 80th birthday. 'Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth' brings together the singer's gospel and spiritual recordings from the 1970s and 80s.
The two-CD collection includes a selection of previously unreleased traditional hymns, folk songs and original tunes written by the Man in Black and other songwriters. The various songs were recorded in several different places, including Columbia Studios in Nashville and the House of Cash in Hendersonville. These recordings were done at a time, according to his son John Carter Cash, when his life was on an even keel. "He (had an) excitement for his faith," the younger Cash says in the liner notes.
Some of the songs were released on the iconic entertainer's albums including 1979's 'A Believer Sings the Truth,' 'I Believe' and 'Johnny Cash -- Gospel Singer.' Gospel music was always a part of the singer's life, from his days in his hometown of Dyess, Ark., through his long journey to Nashville and beyond. John Carter writes in the liner notes that "the music set a foundation for J. R. Cash and upon it he established the motivation for his existence. With the songs of the gospel came faith, and along with faith, a fortitude and persistence that would not be denied. If you were convinced of my Dad's honesty, it is because he was confident of his purpose, and that purpose was defined by gospel music. Though he would sing many kinds of music in his life, he was never truer than when he sang songs of faith."
The album's closing track, 'Truth,' is based on a poem that boxing legend Muhammad Ali reportedly gave to John. The singer had recorded it but never released it. The poem was written by Sufi leader Hazrat Inayat Khan, and one of its lines, 'The soul of truth is God,' gave the 1979 album its title.
Johnny was seemingly always singing gospel music with someone and, fittingly, there are several special guests on the album. His wife, June Carter Cash, sings with him on 'He's Alive,' 'This Train Is Bound for Glory' and 'Far Side Banks of Jordan.' Daughters Rosanne Cash and Cindy Cash join him on 'When He Comes' and 'Lay Me Down in Dixie,' respectively. Johnny and sister-in-law Anita Carter sing 'Over the Next Hill (We'll Be Home),' while another sister-in-law, Helen Carter, sings with him on the Carter Family's 'Way Worn Traveler.' Rodney Crowell guests on 'You'll Get Yours and I'll Get Mine' and 'He Touched Me;' Jessi Colter sings on 'The Old Rugged Cross.'
"At the very heart of this faith was gospel music," John Carter concludes. "I invite you to join me, and get to know the man John R. Cash as I remember him. You will hear him in these treasured recordings. Listen carefully: Spirit, Faith, Gospel. The very source of his vision."
The preceding 'Bootleg' collections include 'Personal File,' 'From Memphis to Hollywood' and 'Live Around the World.' 'Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth' will be released tomorrow (Tuesday, April 3) on Sony Legacy.
CD Review
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/
April 3, 2012
Johnny Cash
Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth
Sony Legacy
It's been nearly nine years since Johnny Cash's death, but the wealth of music he created in his 50-year career continues to unfold. Filled with hard-to-find releases and some seldom- or never-heard music, the "Bootleg" series has previously uncovered Cash's solo homemade recordings, early work from Memphis and Los Angeles, and live tapes from across the globe.
"Bootleg Vol. 4: The Soul of Truth" turns the focus to Cash's gospel work. While the musician struggled with the demons of drug abuse across long stretches of his life, he was a man of strong faith. Sacred music was a thread that ran throughout his recording career.
The first disc is centered on the 1979 album "A Believer Sings the Truth." Among its 20 tracks and five additional unreleased songs, Cash offers a bouncy southern rockabilly pace on "Gospel Boogie (A Wonderful Time Up There)" and joins wife June Carter Cash on the upbeat piano melodies of "I'll Have a New Life."
The real treat, though, comes on disc two, where a never-released set of 12 tracks is paired with the out-of-print 1983 album "Johnny Cash - Gospel Singer." The former is led by the beautiful string and guitar melody of "Back in the Fold." On the latter, Cash's baritone vocals blend beautifully with Jessi Colter on the spare acoustic strains of "The Old Rugged Cross."
- Erik Ernst, Special to the Journal Sentinel
Review: Johnny Cash, “Bootleg IV: The Soul of Truth”
The Second Disc
http://theseconddisc.com/
April 3, 2012
“John, let’s do a shot for the warden,” photographer Jim Marshall reportedly implored Johnny Cash during the singer’s 1969 performance at San Quentin Prison. Cash’s snarling response, with his middle finger in air, made for one of the most famous music photographs of all time. Cropping up on T-shirts, posters and the like, Marshall captured the outlaw side of Johnny Cash like no photographer before or since. Though it might have, indeed, been worth a thousand words, the image still only revealed part of the story of John R. Cash. At the foundation of Cash’s life and music-making was his spiritual fervor, ingrained in him from an early age. His devotion to gospel music stayed with him throughout his career, from one of his earliest albums (1959’s Hymns with Johnny Cash) through one of his very last (2003’s posthumous My Mother’s Hymn Book). Late in life, The Man in Black even recorded the entire New Testament as a spoken-word multi-CD set. Columbia/Legacy’s fourth installment of Cash’s Bootleg Series is entirely devoted to this aspect of the Cash canon, and as such, The Soul of Truth (88697 98538 2, 2012) may be the most raw, personal entry in the series yet.
The Bootleg Series launched in 2006 with Personal File’s 49 previously unissued home-recorded songs, belatedly resuming four years later with From Memphis to Hollywood. Its 57 rare tracks included 16 wholly unreleased titles spanning the period of 1954-1969. 2011’s Live Around the World focused solely on live recordings, with 39 of 51 tracks previously unreleased. This fourth volume takes a different approach, reissuing three long out-of-print albums in full and adding appropriate outtakes and rare, related material.
Bootleg IV’s first disc contains the twenty tracks recorded for Cachet Records’ 1979 double album A Believer Sings the Truth. (Half of its songs were reprised under the same name in 1982 on Priority Records, Columbia’s boutique gospel imprint.) Arrival Records’ 1984 LP I Believe… also drew on tracks from A Believer, adding four more recordings. Those four songs are now appended to the original twenty. The final cut on the first disc gives the new compilation its title. “Truth” is believed to have been based on a poem written by The Greatest, Muhammad Ali. He presented the poem to Cash, who set it to music but never released the track. The poem was, in fact, written by Sufi leader Hazrat Inayat Khan and contains the pivotal line, “The soul of truth is God.” It makes its debut here.
The second disc starts off with twelve tracks recorded in 1975 for an untitled LP. Two of these tracks have appeared on compilations over the past five years, but the album was never released until now in its intended form. (It may have been shelved because Cash already had released one gospel album in 1975, Sings Precious Memories.) Disc 2 continues with the ten tracks from Word Records’ 1986 release Believe in Him, but in their original sequence as selected for Priority’s withdrawn 1983 release Gospel Singer. Four previously unissued outtakes from the same sessions complete this disc.
A Believer Sings the Truth (1979) is this set’s rightful centerpiece. A lengthy, sprawling double album that encompasses many musical styles, it features a large group of musicians including, of course, Bob Wootton, Marshall Grant and W.S. “Fluke” Holland as well as Jack Clement, The Carter Family and the 21st Century Singers. The great majority of the songs here are originals, either by Cash or others, rather than adaptations of traditional religious standards. Themes of family, heritage and America run side by side with spirituality in Cash’s world. In “Lay Me Down in Dixie,” a duet with daughter Cindy Cash, Johnny and Cindy wax rhapsodic about the sound of a southern drawl! Like his secular songs, these tracks reflect the artist’s core values. As Cash’s son John Carter Cash admits in the liner notes, “[he] had never stopped professing or singing about his faith, but he had wandered away from it” in the throes of pill addiction in 1967. At that time and for the rest of his life, he found the strength to express those values in music even during the periods when life’s temptations kept him from embracing them in practice.
“Wings in the Morning,” a Cash original, has mariachi brass recalling “Ring of Fire,” and there’s even a train song with the familiar Cash rhythm in the form of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “This Train is Bound for Glory.” Cash introduces it with “We’re gonna ride the Bible train now!” and few would decline his invitation to board. There’s no shortage of jaunty melodies, whether the boogie-woogie of “(I’ve Got Jesus and) That’s Enough” or the accurately-named “Gospel Boogie.” The hoedown stomp of “Jesus in My Soul” is bolstered by flavorful horns. Cash’s well-documented troubles keep him from sounding too pious on these recordings, many of which have a good-time feel . The man exuded honesty whenever he sang, and these very personal expressions of faith are no exception.
Quieter moments are plentiful, too. The young Rosanne Cash harmonizes with her father on 1979’s “When He Comes” and Rosanne’s then-husband Rodney Crowell lends subtle support to W.J. Gaither’s “He Touched Me.” The gentle ballad “O, Come, Angel Band” is enhanced by the presence of the gospel choir, and they’re particularly soulful on “Strange Things Are Happening Every Day” alongside bleating horns and even electric guitar. There’s none of the gloss associated with the genre now known as “contemporary Christian.” These songs are fully-produced yet still possessing raw power. Even the previously unreleased adaptation of the Hazrat Inayat Khan poem “Truth” is far from heavy-handed, with Cash reciting it over the piano-driven track and vocal harmony: “The sign of the truth is Christ, the soul of truth is God.”
The songs of the long-lost 1975 Hendersonville sessions cover similar territory, juxtaposing good-time, twangy country gospel with lush balladry. This time, however, a 13-strong string section makes pivotal appearances on those ballads such as Marijohn Wilkin’s “Back in the Fold.” Stalwart session man Bergen White contributed piano while The Oak Ridge Boys provided backing vocals. The best track might just be “Sanctified,” which was first aired on Legacy’s Ultimate Gospel compilation. Cash can’t help but sound knowingly ironic on this fun musical dialogue in which he musically resists temptation from a variety of voices. It’s hard to believe this rollicking track sat in a vault until 2007! There’s a sweet, down-home feel on “I Was There When It Happened,” and a boom-chicka-boom duet with June Carter Cash on “The Far Banks of Jordan.”
Wootton and Holland joined Cash for the 1982 Nashville sessions intended for the Gospel Singer LP; by this point, Marshall Grant had acrimoniously departed the band. Pete Drake (steel guitar), Jerry Douglas (dobro), David Briggs and Bobby Whitlock (keyboards), Earle Pool Ball and Hargus “Pig” Robbins (piano) and the Cathedral Quartet (backing vocals) all made a distinct impression on the album’s tracks. Cash revisited his own “Belshazzar,” and sounds passionate sharing “The Old Rugged Cross” with Jessi Colter.
Though such a style is perhaps intrinsic to the material, Cash is humble and tender on these songs, turning in a heartfelt vocal on Mark R. Germino’s “God Ain’t No Stained Glass Window” (“There’s so much I don’t know/I don’t understand why the summer’s so hot/I don’t understand why an apple core rots/And I have no idea when I’ll see a rainbow/But there’s one thing I do know/I know that God ain’t no stained glass window…”).
He’s equally joyous on “Over There” (“I believe we’ll be together/When we reach the other side!”), as strong an expression of his resolute faith as on any of these songs. In his own “What is Man,” the singer ponders his place in the grand design to the Creator, asking “What is man? What has he done? What is man that you would care?” Rodney Crowell’s “Wildwood in the Pines” reaffirmed the younger Crowell’s place in the traditional country pantheon that has long seen artists exploring both their secular and spiritual muses. Crowell’s grand thoughts (“I believe that Jesus loves me/I can feel it in my soul”) are expressed simply and directly.
Bootleg IV: The Soul of Truth marks the first release of Columbia/Legacy’s Cash 80 birthday program; the singer would have reached that birthday milestone this past February 26. Vic Anesini has remastered each track for splendid sound, and essays are provided by John Carter Cash and producer Gregg Geller. This release is an auspicious start for sure, illuminating an aspect of the artist that’s often overlooked in favor of his outlaw persona. And the artist likely understood why the image of the aggressive loner “Man in Black” had come to define him to many. Johnny Cash knew all too well what it meant to simply be human, and he was never afraid of expressing that condition in song, with all its manifold contradictions.
http://www.theboot.com/
April 2, 2012
The two-CD collection includes a selection of previously unreleased traditional hymns, folk songs and original tunes written by the Man in Black and other songwriters. The various songs were recorded in several different places, including Columbia Studios in Nashville and the House of Cash in Hendersonville. These recordings were done at a time, according to his son John Carter Cash, when his life was on an even keel. "He (had an) excitement for his faith," the younger Cash says in the liner notes.
Some of the songs were released on the iconic entertainer's albums including 1979's 'A Believer Sings the Truth,' 'I Believe' and 'Johnny Cash -- Gospel Singer.' Gospel music was always a part of the singer's life, from his days in his hometown of Dyess, Ark., through his long journey to Nashville and beyond. John Carter writes in the liner notes that "the music set a foundation for J. R. Cash and upon it he established the motivation for his existence. With the songs of the gospel came faith, and along with faith, a fortitude and persistence that would not be denied. If you were convinced of my Dad's honesty, it is because he was confident of his purpose, and that purpose was defined by gospel music. Though he would sing many kinds of music in his life, he was never truer than when he sang songs of faith."
The album's closing track, 'Truth,' is based on a poem that boxing legend Muhammad Ali reportedly gave to John. The singer had recorded it but never released it. The poem was written by Sufi leader Hazrat Inayat Khan, and one of its lines, 'The soul of truth is God,' gave the 1979 album its title.
Johnny was seemingly always singing gospel music with someone and, fittingly, there are several special guests on the album. His wife, June Carter Cash, sings with him on 'He's Alive,' 'This Train Is Bound for Glory' and 'Far Side Banks of Jordan.' Daughters Rosanne Cash and Cindy Cash join him on 'When He Comes' and 'Lay Me Down in Dixie,' respectively. Johnny and sister-in-law Anita Carter sing 'Over the Next Hill (We'll Be Home),' while another sister-in-law, Helen Carter, sings with him on the Carter Family's 'Way Worn Traveler.' Rodney Crowell guests on 'You'll Get Yours and I'll Get Mine' and 'He Touched Me;' Jessi Colter sings on 'The Old Rugged Cross.'
"At the very heart of this faith was gospel music," John Carter concludes. "I invite you to join me, and get to know the man John R. Cash as I remember him. You will hear him in these treasured recordings. Listen carefully: Spirit, Faith, Gospel. The very source of his vision."
The preceding 'Bootleg' collections include 'Personal File,' 'From Memphis to Hollywood' and 'Live Around the World.' 'Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth' will be released tomorrow (Tuesday, April 3) on Sony Legacy.
CD Review
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/
April 3, 2012
Johnny Cash
Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth
Sony Legacy
It's been nearly nine years since Johnny Cash's death, but the wealth of music he created in his 50-year career continues to unfold. Filled with hard-to-find releases and some seldom- or never-heard music, the "Bootleg" series has previously uncovered Cash's solo homemade recordings, early work from Memphis and Los Angeles, and live tapes from across the globe.
"Bootleg Vol. 4: The Soul of Truth" turns the focus to Cash's gospel work. While the musician struggled with the demons of drug abuse across long stretches of his life, he was a man of strong faith. Sacred music was a thread that ran throughout his recording career.
The first disc is centered on the 1979 album "A Believer Sings the Truth." Among its 20 tracks and five additional unreleased songs, Cash offers a bouncy southern rockabilly pace on "Gospel Boogie (A Wonderful Time Up There)" and joins wife June Carter Cash on the upbeat piano melodies of "I'll Have a New Life."
The real treat, though, comes on disc two, where a never-released set of 12 tracks is paired with the out-of-print 1983 album "Johnny Cash - Gospel Singer." The former is led by the beautiful string and guitar melody of "Back in the Fold." On the latter, Cash's baritone vocals blend beautifully with Jessi Colter on the spare acoustic strains of "The Old Rugged Cross."
- Erik Ernst, Special to the Journal Sentinel
Review: Johnny Cash, “Bootleg IV: The Soul of Truth”
The Second Disc
http://theseconddisc.com/
April 3, 2012
“John, let’s do a shot for the warden,” photographer Jim Marshall reportedly implored Johnny Cash during the singer’s 1969 performance at San Quentin Prison. Cash’s snarling response, with his middle finger in air, made for one of the most famous music photographs of all time. Cropping up on T-shirts, posters and the like, Marshall captured the outlaw side of Johnny Cash like no photographer before or since. Though it might have, indeed, been worth a thousand words, the image still only revealed part of the story of John R. Cash. At the foundation of Cash’s life and music-making was his spiritual fervor, ingrained in him from an early age. His devotion to gospel music stayed with him throughout his career, from one of his earliest albums (1959’s Hymns with Johnny Cash) through one of his very last (2003’s posthumous My Mother’s Hymn Book). Late in life, The Man in Black even recorded the entire New Testament as a spoken-word multi-CD set. Columbia/Legacy’s fourth installment of Cash’s Bootleg Series is entirely devoted to this aspect of the Cash canon, and as such, The Soul of Truth (88697 98538 2, 2012) may be the most raw, personal entry in the series yet.
The Bootleg Series launched in 2006 with Personal File’s 49 previously unissued home-recorded songs, belatedly resuming four years later with From Memphis to Hollywood. Its 57 rare tracks included 16 wholly unreleased titles spanning the period of 1954-1969. 2011’s Live Around the World focused solely on live recordings, with 39 of 51 tracks previously unreleased. This fourth volume takes a different approach, reissuing three long out-of-print albums in full and adding appropriate outtakes and rare, related material.
The second disc starts off with twelve tracks recorded in 1975 for an untitled LP. Two of these tracks have appeared on compilations over the past five years, but the album was never released until now in its intended form. (It may have been shelved because Cash already had released one gospel album in 1975, Sings Precious Memories.) Disc 2 continues with the ten tracks from Word Records’ 1986 release Believe in Him, but in their original sequence as selected for Priority’s withdrawn 1983 release Gospel Singer. Four previously unissued outtakes from the same sessions complete this disc.
A Believer Sings the Truth (1979) is this set’s rightful centerpiece. A lengthy, sprawling double album that encompasses many musical styles, it features a large group of musicians including, of course, Bob Wootton, Marshall Grant and W.S. “Fluke” Holland as well as Jack Clement, The Carter Family and the 21st Century Singers. The great majority of the songs here are originals, either by Cash or others, rather than adaptations of traditional religious standards. Themes of family, heritage and America run side by side with spirituality in Cash’s world. In “Lay Me Down in Dixie,” a duet with daughter Cindy Cash, Johnny and Cindy wax rhapsodic about the sound of a southern drawl! Like his secular songs, these tracks reflect the artist’s core values. As Cash’s son John Carter Cash admits in the liner notes, “[he] had never stopped professing or singing about his faith, but he had wandered away from it” in the throes of pill addiction in 1967. At that time and for the rest of his life, he found the strength to express those values in music even during the periods when life’s temptations kept him from embracing them in practice.
“Wings in the Morning,” a Cash original, has mariachi brass recalling “Ring of Fire,” and there’s even a train song with the familiar Cash rhythm in the form of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “This Train is Bound for Glory.” Cash introduces it with “We’re gonna ride the Bible train now!” and few would decline his invitation to board. There’s no shortage of jaunty melodies, whether the boogie-woogie of “(I’ve Got Jesus and) That’s Enough” or the accurately-named “Gospel Boogie.” The hoedown stomp of “Jesus in My Soul” is bolstered by flavorful horns. Cash’s well-documented troubles keep him from sounding too pious on these recordings, many of which have a good-time feel . The man exuded honesty whenever he sang, and these very personal expressions of faith are no exception.
Quieter moments are plentiful, too. The young Rosanne Cash harmonizes with her father on 1979’s “When He Comes” and Rosanne’s then-husband Rodney Crowell lends subtle support to W.J. Gaither’s “He Touched Me.” The gentle ballad “O, Come, Angel Band” is enhanced by the presence of the gospel choir, and they’re particularly soulful on “Strange Things Are Happening Every Day” alongside bleating horns and even electric guitar. There’s none of the gloss associated with the genre now known as “contemporary Christian.” These songs are fully-produced yet still possessing raw power. Even the previously unreleased adaptation of the Hazrat Inayat Khan poem “Truth” is far from heavy-handed, with Cash reciting it over the piano-driven track and vocal harmony: “The sign of the truth is Christ, the soul of truth is God.”
The songs of the long-lost 1975 Hendersonville sessions cover similar territory, juxtaposing good-time, twangy country gospel with lush balladry. This time, however, a 13-strong string section makes pivotal appearances on those ballads such as Marijohn Wilkin’s “Back in the Fold.” Stalwart session man Bergen White contributed piano while The Oak Ridge Boys provided backing vocals. The best track might just be “Sanctified,” which was first aired on Legacy’s Ultimate Gospel compilation. Cash can’t help but sound knowingly ironic on this fun musical dialogue in which he musically resists temptation from a variety of voices. It’s hard to believe this rollicking track sat in a vault until 2007! There’s a sweet, down-home feel on “I Was There When It Happened,” and a boom-chicka-boom duet with June Carter Cash on “The Far Banks of Jordan.”
Wootton and Holland joined Cash for the 1982 Nashville sessions intended for the Gospel Singer LP; by this point, Marshall Grant had acrimoniously departed the band. Pete Drake (steel guitar), Jerry Douglas (dobro), David Briggs and Bobby Whitlock (keyboards), Earle Pool Ball and Hargus “Pig” Robbins (piano) and the Cathedral Quartet (backing vocals) all made a distinct impression on the album’s tracks. Cash revisited his own “Belshazzar,” and sounds passionate sharing “The Old Rugged Cross” with Jessi Colter.
Though such a style is perhaps intrinsic to the material, Cash is humble and tender on these songs, turning in a heartfelt vocal on Mark R. Germino’s “God Ain’t No Stained Glass Window” (“There’s so much I don’t know/I don’t understand why the summer’s so hot/I don’t understand why an apple core rots/And I have no idea when I’ll see a rainbow/But there’s one thing I do know/I know that God ain’t no stained glass window…”).
He’s equally joyous on “Over There” (“I believe we’ll be together/When we reach the other side!”), as strong an expression of his resolute faith as on any of these songs. In his own “What is Man,” the singer ponders his place in the grand design to the Creator, asking “What is man? What has he done? What is man that you would care?” Rodney Crowell’s “Wildwood in the Pines” reaffirmed the younger Crowell’s place in the traditional country pantheon that has long seen artists exploring both their secular and spiritual muses. Crowell’s grand thoughts (“I believe that Jesus loves me/I can feel it in my soul”) are expressed simply and directly.
Bootleg IV: The Soul of Truth marks the first release of Columbia/Legacy’s Cash 80 birthday program; the singer would have reached that birthday milestone this past February 26. Vic Anesini has remastered each track for splendid sound, and essays are provided by John Carter Cash and producer Gregg Geller. This release is an auspicious start for sure, illuminating an aspect of the artist that’s often overlooked in favor of his outlaw persona. And the artist likely understood why the image of the aggressive loner “Man in Black” had come to define him to many. Johnny Cash knew all too well what it meant to simply be human, and he was never afraid of expressing that condition in song, with all its manifold contradictions.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Johnny Cash 'Bootleg III' In-Depth
by Rich Kienzle
http://communityvoices.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/arts-entertainment-living/get-rhythm/
October 25, 2011
I thought I'd explore the new Bootleg III double CD in greater detail, to supplement the generalized notes that came with the collection. To reiterate, I think this album is an important one, especially given the way Cash is often seen nowadays through distorted lenses. Some of that distortion is aggravated by the popularity of the Rick Rubin-produced American albums. Yes, some of them (like Unchained) are quite good. Yes, they introduced new audiences to Cash who might otherwise not have known of him. But it's a mistake—a major mistake—to define Cash by those craggy, lion-in-winter albums alone. Too often they eclipse the raw, explosive and unconventional artist that he was in his prime.
Sony Legacy's Cash "Bootleg" series is a curative to the distortion of the American albums. Bootleg Volume III consists of two discs of 1956-1979 live recordings, the vast majority never released, displaying the young, vital Cash who turned everyone's head around, projecting passion, energy and wit before and after his pill addiction. You also hear two polar opposites—Pete Seeger and Richard Nixon—introduce him at shows six years apart.
Let's go through each disc, part by part.
DISC 1
The Big 'D' Jamboree, 1956 (Previously issued)
The Big 'D' Jamboree (1956) was Dallas's answer to the Grand Ole Opry and WWVA Wheeling Jamboree. A weekly stage and radio program, it had its own cast of artists and welcomed various guests. Cash and the Tennessee Two (Marshall Grant, bass, Luther Perkins, guitar) were on the rise when they performed three of their Sun recordings, "I Walk the Line," "So Doggone Lonesome" and "Get Rhythm."
New River Ranch, 1962 (Previously unreleased)
This is an entire show from the famous Leon Kagarise collection of live country concert recordings. This show took place in Rising Sun, Maryland, just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. NRR was one of many outdoor country music parks that once existed from the 40's into the 1980's all over the East Coast. Kagarise, a young electronics technician, haunted NRR and Sunset, recording pristine copies of shows by Cash, Ray Price, Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers and many more. This is one of the few reissues of the Kagarise material available, impressive for sure.
With the addition of W. S. Holland's drums, making the band the Tennessee Three, Cash, whose extreme energy may well been by pharmaceutically enhanced, opens with "Country Boy," followed by "I Still Miss Someone" and the traditional folk favorite "Cotton Fields" before moving into "I Walk the Line." Comedy interludes were common in those days, and after Perkins unleashed some hot guitar (dubbed "Perkins Boogie,"), Cash did his usual impersonations before ending with "Rock Island Line," another folk tune he recorded at Sun and closes with his hit of the moment: "The Rebel-Johnny Yuma," tied to the TV series The Rebel starring Nick Adams.
Newport Folk Festival, 1964 (Previously released)
It's no real surprise Cash was invited to the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. Not only did the folk crowd appreciate his songs, Cash was a longtime folk fan. Cash didn't tone it down at Newport. He kicks off with "Big River," followed by "Folsom Prison Blues," slows it down for "I Still Miss Someone" only to kick it up with "Rock Island Line." Cash, a longtime Dylan fan, met him at Newport. Perhaps in recognition, he sings "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (he'd record it for Columbia that December), followed by "I Walk the Line."
Cash's single of that particular moment was Peter LaFarge's "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," the tragic tale of the Pima Indian/ Marine Medal of Honor winner who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima. Haunted by his friends' combat deaths, in those days before post-traumatic stress treatment, Hayes drank heavily and died in 1955. The song was controversial at that time. Cash took out ads in music trade publications to cajole timid country disc jockeys into playing it (it reached # 3). The closer again spoke to the Newport audience: the Carter Family's "Keep on the Sunny Side."
Long Binh, Vietnam, 1969 (Previously unreleased)
Less than a year passed since Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison album made Cash one of the nation's hottest entertainment properties. If the Folsom audience was wildly enthusiastic, the military crowd at this NCO club in Long Binh were just as raucous. The band had changed a bit; guitarist Bob Wootton replaced Luther Perkins, who died in a 1967 house fire. Sun rockabilly Carl Perkins, part of Cash's stage show, also played electric guitar.
Introduced by June, his wife of less than a year, Cash and the Tennessee Three (joined by offer the usual show-opener "Big River" and keep things high energy the rest of the set with "Wreck of the Old 97," "Tennessee Flat Top Box," "Remember The Alamo" and "Cocaine Blues," the 20 year old Roy Hogsed hit that whipped up the Folsom audience. June takes the stage for smoking duets on their signature number "Jackson" and "Long Legged Guitar Pickin' Man." They wrap up with "Ring of Fire" and Cash's hit single of the day: the Perkins gospel number "Daddy Sang Bass."
DISC 2
The Nixon White House, 1970 (Previously unreleased)
This is a true piece of American history, a significant one at that. Late 60's America was nearly as divided as now over Vietnam and the counterculture. Merle Haggard's # 1 single "Okie from Muskogee" mocked hippies and antiwar protesters. 1970 brought the Top Ten "Welfare Cadilac" (sic). Written and recorded by elderly ex-painter Guy Drake, it ridiculed fictional welfare recipients who supposedly resided in tumbledown housing and drove Cadillacs (the "l" was deliberately dropped from "Cadillac" to avoid legal troubles with GM).
Republican strategists began seeing country as a part of the GOP's evolving "Southern Strategy," their ultimately successful attempt to turn Southern Democratic states to the GOP. To White House staffers, tying Nixon to Cash, the day's top country star (with a weekly ABC variety show) seemed smart thinking. Invited to perform for Nixon at the White House, Cash was told the President requested three songs, "A Boy Named Sue," "Okie" and "Welfare Cadilac."
Cash respected the Presidency regardless of who occupied the Oval Office, and initially his sister Reba told Rolling Stone before the concert Cash would fulfill all requests. But something changed. Neither "Okie" nor "Cadilac" remotely fit his world view. It's also doubtful Nixon, never a country fan, knew these songs well and more likely country fans on the White House staff requested them in his name. Cash respectfully but firmly declined to sing either, offering various explanations, most centered on the fact (a) they weren't his songs and (b) the requests were too late for him to have time to learn them, for which he seemed quite relieved.
The concert took place the day Apollo 13 splashed down after its heroic triumph over near-disaster enroute to the moon. On the album Nixon refers to that, then delivers a typically awkward introduction, alluding to the song flap by remarking "I'm not an expert on his music. I found that out when I began to tell him what to sing. I understand, incidentally, he owns a Cadillac but he won't sing about Cadillacs tonight."
Nixon also notes that country music is "American music." Well, duh!
With a meticulously planned repertoire, Cash walks on eggs from note one, opening with his 1969 hit "A Boy Named Sue," careful to avoid the "son of a bitch" line bleeped from the hit single. He delivers four songs about working people and farm life: his own "Pickin' Time," "Five Feet High and Rising," the ancient "Wreck of the Old 97" and Leon Payne's "Lumberjack" then moves to "Jesus Was A Carpenter," written by Christopher S. Wren, a New York Times reporter present in the audience, since he was writing the first-ever full-length Cash biography: Winners Got Scars Too.
Following that comes Cash's Daniel in the lion's den moment. Unaware Nixon was readying an incursion into Cambodia and a political assault meant to further demonize the youth movement, Cash sang his current hit, "What Is Truth," praising the very youth culture and protests Nixon, Agnew and company despised. Yes, Cash tempers the message in his introduction and at the end, diplomatically declares support for Nixon's Vietnam policy. Doesn't matter. He made the point, even if it went totally past the audience.
Perhaps to relieve any tension (if there was any, which is doubtful), the five final five numbers were hymns, "Peace in the Valley," "He Turned the Water into Wine," Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)," "Daddy Sang Bass," and "The Old Account," a traditional Southern hymn he often used to end shows in those days. Nixon couldn't co-opt Cash, but in 1974, desperate for cover as Watergate hemmed him in, he attended the opening of the new Grand Ole Opry House at Opryland. No one bought it then, either.
Osteraker Prison, 1972 (Previously released)
The remainder of the set assembles bits and pieces: three songs from his 1972 concert at Sweden's Osteraker Prison: Kris Kristofferson's Sunday Morning Comin' Down" (a 1970 # 1 for Cash), the classic 1920's Vernon Dalhart ballad "The Prisoner's Song," one of the early "country" songs to sell big, and Gene Autry's "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine."
CBS Records Convention, 1973 (Previously unissued)
Like many Nashville singers, Cash admired Chicago singer-songwriter Steve Goodman, and performed the tune seemingly most popular with country singers: "City of New Orleans," a pop hit for Arlo Guthrie's pop hit and 1984 country # 1 for Willie Nelson.
The Carter Fold, 1976 (Previously Unissued)
Cash hadn't had the success in the mid-1970s he'd had a few years earlier. It wasn't surprising. There was unevenness to his recordings during this period and with the weekly ABC show that lasted three seasons, there'd been a degree of saturation as well. This show was recorded at the Carter Fold in Hiltons, Virginia, in the middle of Carter Family country. The Fold itself is a performance hall founded by A.P. and Sara Carter's daughter Janette.
Cash performed two songs there: the patriotic number (this was Bicentennial year) "Ragged Old Flag" and the wonderfully goofy Wayne Kemp novelty "One Piece at a Time," which gave Cash his first # 1 single in six years.
Wheeling's Jamboree USA, 1976 (Previously Unissued)
These three songs, all Sun-era numbers ("Hey Porter," "There You Go" "Give My Love to Rose") are pretty self-explanatory, but energetic, aggressive performances.
Exit Inn, Nashville 1979 (Previously Unissued)
Backed by the Tennessee Three, with longtime friend Cowboy Jack Clement sitting in on guitar and pianist Earl Ball, later a member of Cash's band, he delivers his hit version of "Ghost Riders in the Sky," a 30-year old pop hit by crooner (a Jeannette native) Vaughan Monroe. The second tune, Billy Joe Shaver's "I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal" went on to become a # 4 single for John Anderson in 1981.
Like other transcendent American cultural icons, Cash commands a high degree of reverence. But the Cash on Bootleg III is anything but reverent. This is the charismatic maverick seen in that memorable photo, flipping the bird during his 1969 San Quentin concert. Bootleg III reminds that without that Johnny Cash, the rest would be vapor.
http://communityvoices.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/arts-entertainment-living/get-rhythm/
October 25, 2011
Sony Legacy's Cash "Bootleg" series is a curative to the distortion of the American albums. Bootleg Volume III consists of two discs of 1956-1979 live recordings, the vast majority never released, displaying the young, vital Cash who turned everyone's head around, projecting passion, energy and wit before and after his pill addiction. You also hear two polar opposites—Pete Seeger and Richard Nixon—introduce him at shows six years apart.
Let's go through each disc, part by part.
DISC 1
The Big 'D' Jamboree, 1956 (Previously issued)
The Big 'D' Jamboree (1956) was Dallas's answer to the Grand Ole Opry and WWVA Wheeling Jamboree. A weekly stage and radio program, it had its own cast of artists and welcomed various guests. Cash and the Tennessee Two (Marshall Grant, bass, Luther Perkins, guitar) were on the rise when they performed three of their Sun recordings, "I Walk the Line," "So Doggone Lonesome" and "Get Rhythm."
New River Ranch, 1962 (Previously unreleased)
This is an entire show from the famous Leon Kagarise collection of live country concert recordings. This show took place in Rising Sun, Maryland, just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. NRR was one of many outdoor country music parks that once existed from the 40's into the 1980's all over the East Coast. Kagarise, a young electronics technician, haunted NRR and Sunset, recording pristine copies of shows by Cash, Ray Price, Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers and many more. This is one of the few reissues of the Kagarise material available, impressive for sure.
With the addition of W. S. Holland's drums, making the band the Tennessee Three, Cash, whose extreme energy may well been by pharmaceutically enhanced, opens with "Country Boy," followed by "I Still Miss Someone" and the traditional folk favorite "Cotton Fields" before moving into "I Walk the Line." Comedy interludes were common in those days, and after Perkins unleashed some hot guitar (dubbed "Perkins Boogie,"), Cash did his usual impersonations before ending with "Rock Island Line," another folk tune he recorded at Sun and closes with his hit of the moment: "The Rebel-Johnny Yuma," tied to the TV series The Rebel starring Nick Adams.
Newport Folk Festival, 1964 (Previously released)
It's no real surprise Cash was invited to the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. Not only did the folk crowd appreciate his songs, Cash was a longtime folk fan. Cash didn't tone it down at Newport. He kicks off with "Big River," followed by "Folsom Prison Blues," slows it down for "I Still Miss Someone" only to kick it up with "Rock Island Line." Cash, a longtime Dylan fan, met him at Newport. Perhaps in recognition, he sings "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (he'd record it for Columbia that December), followed by "I Walk the Line."
Cash's single of that particular moment was Peter LaFarge's "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," the tragic tale of the Pima Indian/ Marine Medal of Honor winner who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima. Haunted by his friends' combat deaths, in those days before post-traumatic stress treatment, Hayes drank heavily and died in 1955. The song was controversial at that time. Cash took out ads in music trade publications to cajole timid country disc jockeys into playing it (it reached # 3). The closer again spoke to the Newport audience: the Carter Family's "Keep on the Sunny Side."
Long Binh, Vietnam, 1969 (Previously unreleased)
Less than a year passed since Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison album made Cash one of the nation's hottest entertainment properties. If the Folsom audience was wildly enthusiastic, the military crowd at this NCO club in Long Binh were just as raucous. The band had changed a bit; guitarist Bob Wootton replaced Luther Perkins, who died in a 1967 house fire. Sun rockabilly Carl Perkins, part of Cash's stage show, also played electric guitar.
Introduced by June, his wife of less than a year, Cash and the Tennessee Three (joined by offer the usual show-opener "Big River" and keep things high energy the rest of the set with "Wreck of the Old 97," "Tennessee Flat Top Box," "Remember The Alamo" and "Cocaine Blues," the 20 year old Roy Hogsed hit that whipped up the Folsom audience. June takes the stage for smoking duets on their signature number "Jackson" and "Long Legged Guitar Pickin' Man." They wrap up with "Ring of Fire" and Cash's hit single of the day: the Perkins gospel number "Daddy Sang Bass."
DISC 2
The Nixon White House, 1970 (Previously unreleased)
This is a true piece of American history, a significant one at that. Late 60's America was nearly as divided as now over Vietnam and the counterculture. Merle Haggard's # 1 single "Okie from Muskogee" mocked hippies and antiwar protesters. 1970 brought the Top Ten "Welfare Cadilac" (sic). Written and recorded by elderly ex-painter Guy Drake, it ridiculed fictional welfare recipients who supposedly resided in tumbledown housing and drove Cadillacs (the "l" was deliberately dropped from "Cadillac" to avoid legal troubles with GM).
Republican strategists began seeing country as a part of the GOP's evolving "Southern Strategy," their ultimately successful attempt to turn Southern Democratic states to the GOP. To White House staffers, tying Nixon to Cash, the day's top country star (with a weekly ABC variety show) seemed smart thinking. Invited to perform for Nixon at the White House, Cash was told the President requested three songs, "A Boy Named Sue," "Okie" and "Welfare Cadilac."
Cash respected the Presidency regardless of who occupied the Oval Office, and initially his sister Reba told Rolling Stone before the concert Cash would fulfill all requests. But something changed. Neither "Okie" nor "Cadilac" remotely fit his world view. It's also doubtful Nixon, never a country fan, knew these songs well and more likely country fans on the White House staff requested them in his name. Cash respectfully but firmly declined to sing either, offering various explanations, most centered on the fact (a) they weren't his songs and (b) the requests were too late for him to have time to learn them, for which he seemed quite relieved.
The concert took place the day Apollo 13 splashed down after its heroic triumph over near-disaster enroute to the moon. On the album Nixon refers to that, then delivers a typically awkward introduction, alluding to the song flap by remarking "I'm not an expert on his music. I found that out when I began to tell him what to sing. I understand, incidentally, he owns a Cadillac but he won't sing about Cadillacs tonight."
Nixon also notes that country music is "American music." Well, duh!
With a meticulously planned repertoire, Cash walks on eggs from note one, opening with his 1969 hit "A Boy Named Sue," careful to avoid the "son of a bitch" line bleeped from the hit single. He delivers four songs about working people and farm life: his own "Pickin' Time," "Five Feet High and Rising," the ancient "Wreck of the Old 97" and Leon Payne's "Lumberjack" then moves to "Jesus Was A Carpenter," written by Christopher S. Wren, a New York Times reporter present in the audience, since he was writing the first-ever full-length Cash biography: Winners Got Scars Too.
Following that comes Cash's Daniel in the lion's den moment. Unaware Nixon was readying an incursion into Cambodia and a political assault meant to further demonize the youth movement, Cash sang his current hit, "What Is Truth," praising the very youth culture and protests Nixon, Agnew and company despised. Yes, Cash tempers the message in his introduction and at the end, diplomatically declares support for Nixon's Vietnam policy. Doesn't matter. He made the point, even if it went totally past the audience.
Perhaps to relieve any tension (if there was any, which is doubtful), the five final five numbers were hymns, "Peace in the Valley," "He Turned the Water into Wine," Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)," "Daddy Sang Bass," and "The Old Account," a traditional Southern hymn he often used to end shows in those days. Nixon couldn't co-opt Cash, but in 1974, desperate for cover as Watergate hemmed him in, he attended the opening of the new Grand Ole Opry House at Opryland. No one bought it then, either.
Osteraker Prison, 1972 (Previously released)
The remainder of the set assembles bits and pieces: three songs from his 1972 concert at Sweden's Osteraker Prison: Kris Kristofferson's Sunday Morning Comin' Down" (a 1970 # 1 for Cash), the classic 1920's Vernon Dalhart ballad "The Prisoner's Song," one of the early "country" songs to sell big, and Gene Autry's "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine."
CBS Records Convention, 1973 (Previously unissued)
Like many Nashville singers, Cash admired Chicago singer-songwriter Steve Goodman, and performed the tune seemingly most popular with country singers: "City of New Orleans," a pop hit for Arlo Guthrie's pop hit and 1984 country # 1 for Willie Nelson.
The Carter Fold, 1976 (Previously Unissued)
Cash hadn't had the success in the mid-1970s he'd had a few years earlier. It wasn't surprising. There was unevenness to his recordings during this period and with the weekly ABC show that lasted three seasons, there'd been a degree of saturation as well. This show was recorded at the Carter Fold in Hiltons, Virginia, in the middle of Carter Family country. The Fold itself is a performance hall founded by A.P. and Sara Carter's daughter Janette.
Cash performed two songs there: the patriotic number (this was Bicentennial year) "Ragged Old Flag" and the wonderfully goofy Wayne Kemp novelty "One Piece at a Time," which gave Cash his first # 1 single in six years.
Wheeling's Jamboree USA, 1976 (Previously Unissued)
These three songs, all Sun-era numbers ("Hey Porter," "There You Go" "Give My Love to Rose") are pretty self-explanatory, but energetic, aggressive performances.
Exit Inn, Nashville 1979 (Previously Unissued)
Backed by the Tennessee Three, with longtime friend Cowboy Jack Clement sitting in on guitar and pianist Earl Ball, later a member of Cash's band, he delivers his hit version of "Ghost Riders in the Sky," a 30-year old pop hit by crooner (a Jeannette native) Vaughan Monroe. The second tune, Billy Joe Shaver's "I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal" went on to become a # 4 single for John Anderson in 1981.
Like other transcendent American cultural icons, Cash commands a high degree of reverence. But the Cash on Bootleg III is anything but reverent. This is the charismatic maverick seen in that memorable photo, flipping the bird during his 1969 San Quentin concert. Bootleg III reminds that without that Johnny Cash, the rest would be vapor.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Johnny Cash’s final chapter is the most compelling
By James Reed, Boston Globe Staff
http://www.boston.com/
February 21, 2010
Johnny Cash started out as country music's brash outlaw (left) while his final years making "American Recordings" with Rick Rubin saw him become a lion in winter facing down mortality with the same determined spirit. (Thurston Moore Collection (Left); Martyn Atkins / File 2002)
“Delia’s Gone’’ was the opening salvo on “American Recordings,’’ Johnny Cash’s landmark 1994 album recorded with Rick Rubin, and it was very much in synch with Cash’s dark-hearted mythology: an old murder ballad about a man unrepentant for killing his lover.
Except the song wasn’t shrouded in the signature sounds we associated with Cash. Gone were Luther Perkins’s boom-chicka-boom guitar melodies and the winking hell-raising apparent in Cash’s performances at Folsom and San Quentin prisons. You could tell it was Johnny Cash singing, but his voice - once so virile you’d expect to hear it taming a wild bear on a mountaintop - was now grizzled, more expressive than imposing.
The album featured Cash with just an acoustic guitar, yet no one could have predicted the profound impact it would have on his legacy, not even the men who made it.
On Tuesday, the final installment in the “American Recordings’’ series will be released, leaving in its path six studio albums and a box set that enshrined Cash in the last stretch to the finish line. “American VI,’’ which arrives more than six years after Cash’s death at 71, carries the gravitas of a swan song, too, starting with its subtitle: “Ain’t No Grave.’’
Sixteen years since the series’ inaugural album, this is how an entire generation of music fans know him. They remember Cash not as a brash outlaw who once bragged about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, but rather as a lion in winter staring down his mortality with a spirit as determined as his body was broken.
“Johnny had been discarded by his former record company at that point and probably felt he had nothing to lose,’’ Rubin writes in an e-mail to the Globe, explaining why Cash agreed to record that first album with him. “Also, we hit it off fairly quickly, and he seemed excited that someone cared.’’
Their rapport was apparent from the beginning. Rubin’s touch was often so light, it’s easy to underestimate the paramount role his austere production played. By allowing Cash to interpret the songs simply and directly, he separated him from the Man in Black iconography so entrenched in his persona.
His collaboration with Cash, in fact, became a blueprint for how younger musicians and producers could extract the essence of legends long past their prime, thereby reinventing them for the blogosphere. Rubin gave Neil Diamond a similarly stripped-down treatment, starting with 2005’s “12 Songs,’’ and when Jack White produced Loretta Lynn’s “Van Lear Rose’’ in 2004, the antecedent was obvious.
“American Recordings’’ was exactly what Cash, who deftly manipulated the machinery to redefine himself like few other veteran musicians could, needed to resurrect his critical and commercial clout. We suddenly remembered that Johnny Cash wasn’t just that guy who sang “Ring of Fire’’ over a blast of mariachi horns or got us to laugh about a poor boy named Sue. “I Walk the Line’’ might have made Cash an icon, but his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt’’ made him human. That’s the greatest legacy of “American Recordings,’’ that it revealed Cash was a mere mortal whose music confronted his triumphs and demons.
Cash could have coasted for his last two decades and he still would have died a towering figure in American music, beloved by everyone from Bob Dylan to Bono. Instead, Cash decided to push himself in his final decade and produce the most haunting music of his career. Listen to his stately rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,’’ his voice miked so intimately it sounds like he’s sitting next to you, and it’s hard to recall how Roberta Flack’s version goes. Other times his voice was so weak that the heartache was tangible, nearly unbearable. We’re not accustomed to our idols letting us get so close to them.
With “Unchained,’’ the second installment, the series got more ambitious. Rubin brought in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, goading Cash into rowdy country-rock territory, and that album sent a pointed message to the country music establishment, which had written off Cash to make way for rising pop-oriented musicians.
“When you have a record like ‘Unchained’ and it wins the Grammy for best country record, it says something about the way the rest of the world relates to country music,’’ John Carter Cash, Johnny and June’s only child together, says from his home in Tennessee.
The series hit its pop-culture zenith with 2002’s “American IV: The Man Comes Around,’’ featuring that celebrated Nine Inch Nails cover and a poignant video that became a hit on MTV. But as the “American’’ series progressed, something unseemly started to take shape. The song selections unintentionally played out like an obituary: “Meet Me in Heaven,’’ “I’m Leavin’ Now,’’ “I’m Free From the Chain Gang Now.’’ It smacked of cultural necrophilia, a morbid preoccupation with Cash’s failing health. He often recorded just days after being released from the hospital, and you could hear the struggle and strain in his performances.
“ ‘Hurt’ is an example of a song that was accused of that, but it was written by someone in his early 20s as a purely autobiographical song,’’ Rubin writes. “People can read what they want into these songs. When Johnny sings, it rings with truth regardless of who wrote the words.’’
Carter Cash, who was involved with editing the “American’’ series, agrees with that defense but also understands the criticism of releasing his father’s music well after his death. “I think some people may question whether this is the right thing to do - some people may even say, ‘Is this exploitive?’ - but it’s not, because it’s exactly what he intended,’’ he says.
Smokey Hormel, the esteemed guitarist who played on three of the “American Recordings’’ albums, remembers the symbiotic nature of the relationship between Cash and Rubin.
“That first record was so great that [Rubin] just left it alone, as Johnny solo, because it really gave Cash all the room he needed to show what he could do. No one had really given Cash that chance before,’’ Hormel says. “On Mr. Cash’s part, he was really looking for a chance to tell the stories that were in these songs without all the added stuff.’’
Hormel also dismisses the notion that Cash didn’t always comprehend the contemporary pop and rock songs Rubin suggested he cover, from U2’s “One’’ to Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.’’
“I was blown away when I heard his vocal performance on ‘Hurt,’ ’’ he says. “Before we recorded it, I remember Rick put on the Nine Inch Nails’s live version of it, which ends with this crazy wall of sound. We were all sitting around feeling a little nervous about how Cash was going to react. The song ended, and there’s this silence. And then he looks up and says, ‘Well, that sounds like me about 20 years ago.’ And you knew that something clicked for him. He totally got it.’’
Cash sounds especially engaged on “American VI,’’ but sometimes it’s almost too chilling to hear a man who’s on his deathbed sing songs such as “Ain’t No Grave’’ (“There ain’t no grave/ Can hold my body down’’) or “For the Good Times’’ (“Don’t look so sad/ I know it’s over’’). Rubin’s production, though, is simply elegiac, couching Cash’s voice in pastoral arrangements that imply the artist is at peace, finally.
“I truly believe that this record - which was mostly recorded after my mother died - was his greatest life’s work,’’ Carter Cash says. “I think you get a good insight into his determination. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the frailty, the weakness. You get a final snapshot of who my dad was.’’
Now that it has come to an end, Carter Cash says he sees the “American Recordings’’ series more as a reflection of his father’s lifelong mission statement.
“He would not quit or give up,’’ he says. “Even though he was heartbroken and he was sad, it was his body that gave up, not his heart.’’
James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.
http://www.boston.com/
February 21, 2010
Johnny Cash started out as country music's brash outlaw (left) while his final years making "American Recordings" with Rick Rubin saw him become a lion in winter facing down mortality with the same determined spirit. (Thurston Moore Collection (Left); Martyn Atkins / File 2002)
“Delia’s Gone’’ was the opening salvo on “American Recordings,’’ Johnny Cash’s landmark 1994 album recorded with Rick Rubin, and it was very much in synch with Cash’s dark-hearted mythology: an old murder ballad about a man unrepentant for killing his lover.
Except the song wasn’t shrouded in the signature sounds we associated with Cash. Gone were Luther Perkins’s boom-chicka-boom guitar melodies and the winking hell-raising apparent in Cash’s performances at Folsom and San Quentin prisons. You could tell it was Johnny Cash singing, but his voice - once so virile you’d expect to hear it taming a wild bear on a mountaintop - was now grizzled, more expressive than imposing.
The album featured Cash with just an acoustic guitar, yet no one could have predicted the profound impact it would have on his legacy, not even the men who made it.
On Tuesday, the final installment in the “American Recordings’’ series will be released, leaving in its path six studio albums and a box set that enshrined Cash in the last stretch to the finish line. “American VI,’’ which arrives more than six years after Cash’s death at 71, carries the gravitas of a swan song, too, starting with its subtitle: “Ain’t No Grave.’’
Sixteen years since the series’ inaugural album, this is how an entire generation of music fans know him. They remember Cash not as a brash outlaw who once bragged about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, but rather as a lion in winter staring down his mortality with a spirit as determined as his body was broken.
“Johnny had been discarded by his former record company at that point and probably felt he had nothing to lose,’’ Rubin writes in an e-mail to the Globe, explaining why Cash agreed to record that first album with him. “Also, we hit it off fairly quickly, and he seemed excited that someone cared.’’
Their rapport was apparent from the beginning. Rubin’s touch was often so light, it’s easy to underestimate the paramount role his austere production played. By allowing Cash to interpret the songs simply and directly, he separated him from the Man in Black iconography so entrenched in his persona.
His collaboration with Cash, in fact, became a blueprint for how younger musicians and producers could extract the essence of legends long past their prime, thereby reinventing them for the blogosphere. Rubin gave Neil Diamond a similarly stripped-down treatment, starting with 2005’s “12 Songs,’’ and when Jack White produced Loretta Lynn’s “Van Lear Rose’’ in 2004, the antecedent was obvious.
“American Recordings’’ was exactly what Cash, who deftly manipulated the machinery to redefine himself like few other veteran musicians could, needed to resurrect his critical and commercial clout. We suddenly remembered that Johnny Cash wasn’t just that guy who sang “Ring of Fire’’ over a blast of mariachi horns or got us to laugh about a poor boy named Sue. “I Walk the Line’’ might have made Cash an icon, but his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt’’ made him human. That’s the greatest legacy of “American Recordings,’’ that it revealed Cash was a mere mortal whose music confronted his triumphs and demons.
Cash could have coasted for his last two decades and he still would have died a towering figure in American music, beloved by everyone from Bob Dylan to Bono. Instead, Cash decided to push himself in his final decade and produce the most haunting music of his career. Listen to his stately rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,’’ his voice miked so intimately it sounds like he’s sitting next to you, and it’s hard to recall how Roberta Flack’s version goes. Other times his voice was so weak that the heartache was tangible, nearly unbearable. We’re not accustomed to our idols letting us get so close to them.
With “Unchained,’’ the second installment, the series got more ambitious. Rubin brought in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, goading Cash into rowdy country-rock territory, and that album sent a pointed message to the country music establishment, which had written off Cash to make way for rising pop-oriented musicians.“When you have a record like ‘Unchained’ and it wins the Grammy for best country record, it says something about the way the rest of the world relates to country music,’’ John Carter Cash, Johnny and June’s only child together, says from his home in Tennessee.
The series hit its pop-culture zenith with 2002’s “American IV: The Man Comes Around,’’ featuring that celebrated Nine Inch Nails cover and a poignant video that became a hit on MTV. But as the “American’’ series progressed, something unseemly started to take shape. The song selections unintentionally played out like an obituary: “Meet Me in Heaven,’’ “I’m Leavin’ Now,’’ “I’m Free From the Chain Gang Now.’’ It smacked of cultural necrophilia, a morbid preoccupation with Cash’s failing health. He often recorded just days after being released from the hospital, and you could hear the struggle and strain in his performances.
“ ‘Hurt’ is an example of a song that was accused of that, but it was written by someone in his early 20s as a purely autobiographical song,’’ Rubin writes. “People can read what they want into these songs. When Johnny sings, it rings with truth regardless of who wrote the words.’’
Carter Cash, who was involved with editing the “American’’ series, agrees with that defense but also understands the criticism of releasing his father’s music well after his death. “I think some people may question whether this is the right thing to do - some people may even say, ‘Is this exploitive?’ - but it’s not, because it’s exactly what he intended,’’ he says.
Smokey Hormel, the esteemed guitarist who played on three of the “American Recordings’’ albums, remembers the symbiotic nature of the relationship between Cash and Rubin.
“That first record was so great that [Rubin] just left it alone, as Johnny solo, because it really gave Cash all the room he needed to show what he could do. No one had really given Cash that chance before,’’ Hormel says. “On Mr. Cash’s part, he was really looking for a chance to tell the stories that were in these songs without all the added stuff.’’
Hormel also dismisses the notion that Cash didn’t always comprehend the contemporary pop and rock songs Rubin suggested he cover, from U2’s “One’’ to Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.’’
“I was blown away when I heard his vocal performance on ‘Hurt,’ ’’ he says. “Before we recorded it, I remember Rick put on the Nine Inch Nails’s live version of it, which ends with this crazy wall of sound. We were all sitting around feeling a little nervous about how Cash was going to react. The song ended, and there’s this silence. And then he looks up and says, ‘Well, that sounds like me about 20 years ago.’ And you knew that something clicked for him. He totally got it.’’
Cash sounds especially engaged on “American VI,’’ but sometimes it’s almost too chilling to hear a man who’s on his deathbed sing songs such as “Ain’t No Grave’’ (“There ain’t no grave/ Can hold my body down’’) or “For the Good Times’’ (“Don’t look so sad/ I know it’s over’’). Rubin’s production, though, is simply elegiac, couching Cash’s voice in pastoral arrangements that imply the artist is at peace, finally.
“I truly believe that this record - which was mostly recorded after my mother died - was his greatest life’s work,’’ Carter Cash says. “I think you get a good insight into his determination. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the frailty, the weakness. You get a final snapshot of who my dad was.’’
Now that it has come to an end, Carter Cash says he sees the “American Recordings’’ series more as a reflection of his father’s lifelong mission statement.
“He would not quit or give up,’’ he says. “Even though he was heartbroken and he was sad, it was his body that gave up, not his heart.’’
James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.
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