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.