Cash: The Autobiography (28 page)

began straightening out, and then she came around again. Once back, she stayed; she's steady and depend- able, and her love is unconditional. I keep trying to tempt her back to Tennessee, but so far, no luck. She and Fred like their life in Oregon. Maybe one day they'll get tired of the rain. That leaves my youngest child, John Carter, now twenty-seven. He was John Carter long before he was born or even conceived. I had brought four daughters to June, and she had brought two to me, so while we would have been very happy to have a girl together, we prayed that our child, were we to be blessed with one, would be a boy. If he was, he'd bear both our names. He's another big, strong boy, six foot four (though he doesn't work out), and another music maker. He had a metal period, which was sort of fun for me—we took each other to a Metallica show, which was spec- tacular, and he introduced me to Ozzy Osborne, who's a very nice person—but now he has an acoustic act, singing his own songs with just his guitar. He writes good songs, very different from mine; they have a depth of imagery I've never attempted. He doesn't sound anything like me, either, and he's a much better guitar player. He still can't outplay me at dominoes or Chinese checkers, though—but then, neither can most people. John Carter was born when I was forty, my first son after four daughters and my first child with June, so for those reasons alone I was completely smitten with him right from the start. He got a much better deal from me than Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara. I was there physically, and most of the time emotionally, while he grew up, and he and I were playmates in those magic years between toddlerhood and puberty when a boy and his father can really have fun. In some ways we grew up together. He might have taught me more than

I taught him. As I've said, John Carter travels with our road show, sometimes bringing Joseph along but more often leaving him at home with Mary, his wife. She's not a performer, but she used to be a model. Now she raises Joseph and goes to college. She's a godly woman, the daughter of neighbors who live a couple of houses down the street from our house in Port Richey. The first time I ever saw her was when she surprised me while I was in her backyard picking oranges—or more accurately, I surprised her. I felt bad about it, so I went over to the front door and introduced myself properly. John Carter got interested shortly thereafter. John Carter is doing well in the field he's chosen, and so are all my children. They've stayed their courses and used their talents. Quite apart from the love I have for them, and the fear, I'm very proud of them. They're good people.

I'm relaxing on the porch of my room in a beautiful hotel in Ashland, Wisconsin, beside Lake Superior, gazing out into the soft, clear morning and seeing what I can see. The lights are on in a house across the street. They didn't come on until about eight o'clock, by which time I'd been up almost three hours. The man of the house left for work about 8:45 m a little white car, one of those thirteen-thousand-dollar jobs. The house has two stories and a steeply sloping roof, like most structures where there's a lot of snowfall. A low chain-link fence sur- rounds the backyard and a barbecue grill is set up on the grass. A dog is roaming back and forth along the fence, trying to find a way out—no special breed, just a doggy- looking dog. Over on the other side of the porch is the lake, which is peaceful today. The hotel manager has offered to take us out in his boat and find some fish—he knows where they hide—and I hope I'll be able to take him up on that. I've got a large-scale map of the area (something I like to have wherever I go) and I've already spent some time por- ing over it, figuring out for myself where the fishing might be good. I've never been in Ashland, which is unusual. I like it when the road takes me places it hasn't taken me before. People are very friendly around here. Contrary to what you might expect, though, you don't see any more cheese in Wisconsin than anywhere else. I like Wisconsin cheese a lot better than the stinky stuff in Europe. Things that smell as if they've been dead too long don't turn me on. I'm not sure whether or not there's a Wal-Mart here. June and I rate places that way—“This is a Wal-Mart town, I bet. It's easily big enough,” or “Hang on, honey. Don't shop here. Tomorrow's a two-Wal-Marter”—but

I can't read Ashland well enough to make a good guess. I know it's a nice place, though. Maybe I'll go fishing tomorrow. Not today, anyway, because I have a show tonight, so as usual I have to guard my resources and energies: be careful I don't eat too much, make sure I get my afternoon nap, avoid turmoil and distraction, protect my time as fiercely as I have to. Then I'll be able to give the audience my best. When I first appear they might be thinking, I didn't know he was getting that old, or Wow, he sure gained weight, but by the second or third song they should be coming around a little. Well, he doesn't move as much as he used to. He's slowed down a lot, but he still sings fairly well. For an old guy, anyway. Hopefully, that'll continue to be the final word on Johnny Cash right up to the moment when, halfway through “Ring of Fire” or “I Still Miss Someone” or “Sun- day Morning Coming Down,” I'll just keel over and die on the stage, under the lights, with my band and my fam- ily around me and Fluke still laying down the beat. That's every performer's dream, you know. I hear people my age say, “I feel as good as I ever did.” I don't believe them. J certainly don't have the energy I once had. I live with all kinds of aches and pains, and like anyone over fifty I find myself spending an increasing amount of time in doctors' offices for a patch job here or a major overhaul there. The issue, though, is how you deal with that—how you stand up and bear the patching with grace. Not that I believe you have to “grow old gracefully.” I go along with Edna St. Vincent Millay's idea that it's okay to go out screaming and scratching and fighting. When death starts beating the door down, you need to be reaching for your shotgun. And when you know he might be in your part of town, which is true for anyone my age, you should be taking care of business. Quit gazing out the window at

the lake and start telling your stories. I have so many that I don't know where to start. Therefore I'll begin at the beginning, with the letter “A,” and see where it leads me. I'm not sure I'll get to “Z”—I can't think of any good “Z” stories or people—but before this book is done, I'll just have to say how much I think of Trisha Yearwood, so I know I'll get to “ Y.” Eddy Arnold was hotter than a pistol when I was grow- ing up, and he had a big effect on my writing and singing. Every record he released went immediately to number one, and I knew them all, word for word. Still do. My favorite is “Cattle Call,” with “Lamplighting in the Valley” close behind. You don't hear about him today the way you hear about Jim Reeves or Hank Williams or George Jones, but his records spent more time on the country charts than theirs—more than anyone's, in fact. A lot of his songs stand up over time, too, which isn't always or even very often the case with old songs. When you approach them as material to record or perform today, you frequently find that they've lost die magic you heard in them when they were hits. Or as Chips Moman put it when he and I were fishing one day and talking about using an old country hit on an album we were mak- ing, “You know, that song is as good as it used to be.” John Anderson is about as country a singer as any I've known since Stonewall Jackson, and I mean that as a high compliment. I love the way he sings and I like the way he talks. Bobby Bare is a free spirit and he always has been. I remember him in my California days, when he was out there, too, without a driver's license because he didn't want the responsibility of a car. He always had a girl to drive him around. The only thing I regret about Bobby is that he and I have talked fishing much more than we've done it. And even though it's been a long time now, I wish TNN hadn't canceled his TV show.

Bobby's buddy Shel Silverstein is an impressive man. There aren't too many people in the world equally tal- ented as a cartoonist and a songwriter (though of course Merle Travis comes to mind. Even so, Merle's cartoons, unlike Shel's, weren't a prominent feature of the glory years of Playboy magazine). Shel's song “A Boy Named Sue” was a big hit for me and a great success the first time I performed it, at the prison concert that became the Live at San Quentin album. The lyrics were so new to me that I had to sing them off a sheet on a music stand, but they were exactly right for the moment. They lightened the mood in what was otherwise a very heavy show. In fact, the laughter just about tore the roof off. Owen Bradley was the most important Nashville record producer of his time, the man behind the Nashville Sound of the 'sos and '60s. I never worked with him. but I did record at his studio once, in my bad days. A case of amphetamine laryngitis had ruined my voice, so I took out my frustration on one of his fiberglass sound baffles. He was a perfect gentleman about the whole thing— never said a word, just sent along a bill for forty-three dollars a week or two later. Owen was and still is very well liked, not just important. Patsy Cline. When I first started working with June, Patsy was on one of the tours we did together, and of course I had to check her out. I went down the hall late one night after a show and knocked on her door. The response came back immediately: “Get away from my door, Cash!” “Well, Patsy, I just wanted to talk,” I lied. “The hell you did. Now, get away from here and go to bed!” I did that, and I never hit on her again. To her credit, she was still nice to me. Patsy could cuss like a sailor, and

I'd hate to have gotten in a fight with her, but she was kind to everybody who treated her right, she loved little children, and she had the heart of an angel to go with her voice. I never knew her very well, though. She was more June's buddy than mine. Ray Charles was one of my guests on The Johnny Cash Show, and I enjoyed that. I love to watch him work. He's got such an incredible ear, and he's such a perfectionist without being obnoxious about it; nobody in his band can hit a bad note without his knowing exactly what happened. I was kind of pleased, at the time anyway, when he recorded “Busted” the way I had, rather than the way Harlan Howard wrote it. That was just arro- gance, though. Harlan never said it, but I know he didn't like me messing with his song. And he had a right. Your songs are your babies. Conway Twitty and I were alike in a lot of ways. We came from the same part of the country and shared the same kind of music, and besides that, I liked him. I thought it was a real tragedy that he died on his bus, of an aneurysm, while he was trying to get out of Branson. I don't know about Branson. I've played there, but I'd hate to get hooked into a routine there the way it happens to performers who have their own theaters. Two shows a day, every day, for months on end would kill me even quicker than lying around watching TV. Likely as not it would kill my creativity long before that, so dying just might be a relief. Let me tell you more about some of my companions in my band and crew. I've already talked about Bob Wootton, the man with the electric guitar who stands to my left, always in his snappy black Oklahoma cowboy hat, so I don't need to say anything more about him other than the fact that he's now my second most senior employee, with me since '68. That should tell you how highly I value him. I haven't said enough about Fluke, though—W. S. Holland, my drummer and the man

above Bob as far as longevity goes. He's been with me thirty-eight years. Fluke is that solid rock I can always lean on. No mat- ter what's going wrong in the show or even in my life, he's there, ready to help, ready to listen. He's been a true friend, and he's the best drummer for my music that I can imagine. Fluke is a kind man. He's a peacemaker. He's who I turn to when there's trouble in the group; he'll calm things down with his gentle, laughing, but firm ways, and we'll get it sorted out. He's a grandfather now, like me, but just the other day he and I agreed that as long as we're able to, we'll be out here doing it, on the road. There's no trouble today. On this tour, our outfit is running as smoothly as a new sewing machine. On piano and keyboards, ladies and gentlemen, over there on my right (your left), it's Earl Poole Ball, with me twenty years now. Nobody plays like Earl. He's my delta rhythm gospel boogie piano man, great on the rockabilly stuff and just beautiful with the hymns and spirituals. I love walking over there and standing beside the piano sometimes, singing right next to him while he plays— “Over the Next Hill,” “These Hands,” “Farther Along,” some great country classic, or an old song of my own. It's a back-home, intimate thing, as it is when I sing with just my own guitar: the voice and the instrument blend into just one sound. Earl is the best-educated all-around musi- cian in the group, and of course he's a good man. That should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Dave Rorick, my bass player, is another well- rounded musician and nice man, even if he's a rookie by our standards. In years with the band, he's not even into double digits yet. He has exactly the right stand-up bass technique for me, and he fits just fine. The other guys were very helpful to him when he first came along, show- ing him the ropes and telling him what to expect, and they had to be, because I'm not so good with that. I have

a way of expecting people to catch on without my hav- ing to tell them. I also have a way of failing to show my appreciation when they do catch on. My instinct is just to expect people to be competent and hardworking, and only talk to them about the job they're doing for me when I think they need to do it differently, or better. I'm working on that. I should be freer with my compliments in life, not just in this book. What goes for my band goes equally for my crew. They're solid. Jay Dauro, a twenty-year man, coordinates our travel and is the group manager, keeping the sched- ule straight, making sure everybody knows where they're supposed to be, and keeping us in touch with the home office via his laptop. Jay has a lot of vitality, even though he's not the kid he was when he joined us. You get an energy charge just being around him. When we're on stage, he's out in the audience at the lighting console; and he does a fine job there, too. The man who sits next to him, handling the sound in the building, is Larry Johnson. The most relevant thing I can say about how he does his job is that since he's been with us, I've never heard a complaint from an audience that the sound wasn't right. I myself have messed up, get- ting too loud too close to the mike or too soft too far away from it, but Larry hasn't. His partner in sound is Kent Elliot, who runs the board backstage, controlling the stage monitors so we in the band can hear each other and making sure the sound gets out to Larry and the audience. Again, no complaints there. Kent could do his job blindfolded. Brian Farmer, my guitar tech, rounds it out. He's another high-energy worker and friend, good to be around and uncomplaining despite the long hours and hard labor. All four members of my crew are responsible for unloading our equipment from the truck, setting it up in the hall, tearing it all down again after the show, and

loading it back into the truck for the next show. That's quite a job. Brian is the best guitar tech I've ever known. He has the master's touch; he keeps my guitars up to par and perfectly in tune. There again, I might be off pitch, high or low, but my guitar isn't. I usually have at least two gui- tars on stage, a D76 Martin Bicentennial Model, of which only 1,976 were made, and the black custom model that Martin made for me in 1968. If one of those two develops a problem, I've got a D18 always in reserve. Martin, by the way, just came out with a run of two hun- dred special Johnny Cash models that I helped design. They're black and beautiful, with mother-of-pearl inlay work similar to that on the D45 Martin—and yes (again), that's a commercial. The profits will go to help support the Carter Family Fold in Virginia, which in turn will help keep mountain music thriving. Behind my band and crew are the women who run the House of Cash: Kelly Hancock, Karen Adams, and Lisa Trice. Kelly is my niece, Reba's daughter. For almost her whole adult life, Reba was the one who coordinated everything in my business world and ran things at the House of Cash. In the last few years she's moved into retirement and now works only as an adviser, helping Kelly with the complexities of song publishing and a hun- dred other duties. Reba was absolutely indispensable to me for a long, long time. As well as the House of Cash, there are the houses of the Cashes, where we live, and there again the people who keep things running have been with us for many years: our staff in Jamaica, already mentioned, and Peggy Knight, Shirley Huffine, Betty Hagwood, and Anna Bisceglia in Tennessee. Anna is the widow of Armando Bisceglia, my security chief for over twenty-five years, who died in 1996. Peggy, who often accompanies us on the road, has been with us all her working life. She might je the best Southern cook in the world. So might June,  maybe they'll both try harder to get to number one. I feel comfortable, easy, safe, and lucky with these people. A man who isn't with me after all these years is Marshall Grant, the original bass player in the Tennessee Two. These days he's managing the Statler Brothers. He and I had a parting of the ways in 1980, and it wasn't a happy affair. We got to where we couldn't work together for one reason or another, it came to a head, and I fired him by letter. I've always regretted that. I don't know whether or not we could have gone on together after the problems we've had, but I do feel bad about that letter. I said things that should have been left unsaid, and I think I made a bad situation worse. Marshall and I had been so close for so long, and it was painful to have a rift between us like the one that followed. I've apologized to him since, and we've hugged each other and expressed our regrets and respect, but it's still one of the things in my life that I look back on with a shudder. I'm very glad he's doing so well now. I was there when Dolly Parton first walked out on the Opry stage. She was thirteen, up from east Tennessee. I talked to her backstage about what she was going to sing, and she was about as nervous and excited as a person can be. Then, of course, she went out there and just destroyed them. They loved her. We all did. Man, she was good. I haven't seen Dolly in almost five years. It's like that with a lot of performers I can claim as friends. We're all on the move so much that the only times we see each other, and then often fleetingly, are in airports or at awards shows. It's a shame, but there's nothing you can do about it. You can't mention Dolly, if you're in country music, without also mentioning Porter Wagoner. He was one of the first artists I toured with; I remember him singing “Satisfied Mind” on that tour. I enjoy hearing him sing. I enjoy him. We all do; he's another very popular person in the business. Sometimes, when the light's right, his approach in one of his Nudie-type suits is like a fire com- ing. Like young Queen Victoria; like Black Elk in London. Earl Scruggs was one of the stars who really helped me out and welcomed me when I first showed up at the Opry. Some people were suspicious of me, since I was one of those rockabillies from Memphis (“Hold your nose, Martha”), but not Earl and the boys in his band. I ruffled some feathers on my first Opry appearance. I went on during the segment hosted Dy Carl Smith and had to do six encores of “Hey, Porter” before the audience would let me go, some other performers lost their slots that night and weren't too happy about it. I was upset, but Minnie Pearl came up to me backstage, pinched me on the cheek, and said, “You good-lookin' thing, don't you worry about that. You deserve everything you got tonight. You've got to come back.” Then Ernest Tubb chimed in, “Yes, you do. We need people like you here.” The same message came from Hank Snow, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and more than a few others. They rallied around and made sure I knew I was welcome. For the past twenty-five years, Luther Fleaner has watched over my farm and taken good care of it and me, becoming in the process one of my closest friends. He's a country boy from Hickman County, Tennessee, a few years younger than me, old enough to have fought in the Korean War, the survivor of two bypass operations to my one, and the walking definition of good old-fashioned country kindness and hospitality. For almost thirty years Luther worked a forty-hour week at the Ford glass plant in Nashville, driving an hour to work and an hour back, as well as taking care of my place and his own. His sister, Wilma, helps him with the interior of my house. He just got married to a woman called Wanda, and that's just great. She's the same kind of person he is. My other two best friends outside the music business are John Rollins, from whom I bought Cinnamon Hill, and John Traweek, the husband of Joyce Traweek, June's close friend since high school. The Traweeks stay with us every Christmas in Jamaica, so John and I have spent a lot of time together. He retired recently from his job at Willis Wayside, a home furniture business in Virginia Beach. He's a Johnny Cash fan, but that doesn't matter; we don't have to talk about my life in music if I don't want to, which I usually don't when I've got life in Jamaica to fill up my senses. John and Joyce are strong Christians and great friends. I've got a bunch of godsons I want to mention: all the Orbison boys, including Wesley; Shooter Jennings, Waylon and Jessi's son; and sons of John Rollins and Armando Bisceglia. There are also several boys named after me: sons of Henson Cargill, Bill Miller, Johnny Quinn, Kris and Lisa Kristofferson, and James Keach and Jane Seymour (all Johns or Johnnies), and Cash Gatlin, Larry Gatlin's boy. In every case I feel as honored as I should. I know that naming your child after a person is the highest compliment you can pay them. You may have heard of the Highwaymen: me, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson all together on a single ticket, four for the price of one. We got the idea when I was doing an ABC TV Christmas spe- cial in Montreux, Switzerland. The network told me to invite whoever I wanted to be on the show, so I asked Willie, Kris, and Waylon, and off we went to Montreux. We had so much fun, we decided to make a habit of it. We shot the special in Montreux because it's beauti- ful there, and snowy, and they have a great music facility. That wasn't what Waylon said, though, when a reporter asked him, “Why Christmas in Montreux?” He gave her his famous “Who, me?” look and laid it on her: "Well, that's where Jesus was born, isn't it?“ Waylon really is the master of the one-liner. He got off a great one when he and I were recovering from bypass surgery together, which is a story in itself. It started when I went to visit him in the hospital. His doc- tor saw me and didn't like the way I looked, so he sent me off to another room for heart function tests, and the next thing I knew, he was asking, ”Who do I call to cancel your vacation?“ The following day I was in the operating room. The surgery was successful, though it's not some- thing I'd call a pleasant way to pass the time. I felt at least three-quarters dead in the few days after it, and Waylon said he felt the same. It definitely qualified as a close encounter with our mortality. Waylon was in my room with me when a nurse's aide came in and started cleaning the place up. We stopped talking while she worked and watched her puff- ing and panting through her work, having a hard time of it because she was pretty seriously overweight. She fin- ished up in just a couple of minutes and exited, sweating. ”Whew,“ said Waylon, weakly. ”I'm sure glad she didn't sing.“ The other Highwaymen don't go back with me as far as Waylon, but Kris comes pretty close. He and I have had a powerful connection ever since I noticed him sweeping out the CBS studio in Nashville in 1969 and saw the intensity in his eyes. I didn't know anything about his background—winning a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, flying helicopters in the United States Army Rangers—and I couldn't see his future, but I surely knew that the fire burning in him was a hot one. When I paid attention to his songs, of course, his genius was obvious, and since it was first revealed to me I don't think I've performed a single concert without singing a Kristofferson song. ”Sunday Morning Coming Down" is the one people identify with me most strongly, but if I had to pick the one I love best, T think it would be “Rainbow.” In fact, that might be my favorite song by any writer of our time. Besides all that, Kris is kind and funny, and honorable; he stands up for his beliefs and he won't let you down. He, too, is one I love like a brother. I don't know Willie very well. I never met him during his Nashville years, when he and Faron and the gang were trying to give Tootsie's Orchid Lounge a bad name, and after he left for Texas I didn't spend any significant time with him until we started working together in the Highwaymen (though “working” isn't quite the word). Even today I can't say I know him very well, either, because he's a hard man to know; he keeps his inner thoughts for himself and his songs. He just doesn't talk much at all, in fact. When he does, what he says is usually very perceptive and precise, and often very funny; he has a beautiful sense of irony and a true appreciation for the absurd. I really like him. He and I have done some two- man shows together recently, just him on a stool with his guitar and me on a stool with mine, trading songs and jokes and stories. That's fun. Speaking of fun, the greatest public honor I ever received, to my mind anyway, was being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980.1 was the first liv- ing person to be so honored. I've been given all kinds of awards in my career, before and after 1980, including some big ones—Grammies, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame—but nothing beats the Country Music Hall of Fame, or ever will. And then there's family. Joanne Yates is my sister. She's a singer and a very, very good one, although she's never tried to make a career of it. She also has a master's degree in Bible studies, and as I've already said, she's married to the Reverend Harry Yates. I love going to his church and hearing him preach; he opens up the Scriptures for me the way precious few can.