Johnny Cash: The Life (42 page)

Cash had turned down at least six scripts before accepting
The Trail of Tears,
which also starred Joseph Cotton, Melvyn Douglas, and Jack Palance. The project appealed to Cash because it told of yet another shameless chapter in U.S.–Native American relations, this time the forced relocation in the 1830s of thousands of members of the Cherokee and other Native American nations from their lawful homes in the southeastern United States to reservations in Oklahoma. Thousands of the dislocated Cherokee alone died from disease or starvation during the trip.

Amid all this nonstop news, there was one occurrence during the fall of 1969 that the papers didn’t cover. It was an event that could have destroyed Cash’s new superstar status.

While in California, where John was to appear on another edition of the
Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,
Cash apparently faced the biggest potential scandal since the days of Lorrie Collins and Billie Jean Horton.

According to speculation that would continue to circulate on a hush-hush basis within the deepest levels of the Cash camp for decades, June, by now five months pregnant, learned that John had had an affair. To make the report even more explosive, the talk went, the woman John had been intimate with was June’s sister Anita.

Years later, Jimmy Tittle, a musician who was married to Cash’s daughter Kathy, came across a song while organizing Cash’s publishing company files. It was titled “Forbidden Fruit.” When he mentioned the song to John, he was told that it was about Anita.

The only public reference to any Anita-John affair around that time would appear years later in the
National Enquirer,
in November 2003—after the death of all three principals. According to the scandal-minded publication, an “insider” reported that Anita, on her deathbed in 1999, asked for June’s forgiveness for the affair.

If the speculation is true, the three were able to keep the news secret from most of the people in their inner circle.

But how could the marriage survive such a traumatic event?

The likely answer is that June was nothing if not a realist. Like most women who married country music stars at the time, she had seen enough backstage affairs to wipe away any sense of innocence about the future. When she said “I do,” she was committing for life, as hard as that proved to be at times. The incident with Anita, if true, might have been more traumatic if John had an affair with someone other than her sister. In the fall of 1969, June may well have seen John’s affair with Anita as a momentary relapse, not a sign that he wanted to end their marriage.

Cash, too, was aware of all the backstage temptations, and at the time of their marriage, he and June pledged to stick together as much as possible. John told his friend James Keach, “One of the things we talked about [before getting married], and one of her conditions and one that I wanted as well, was for us to stay side to side, work together, travel together.”

After speculation arose regarding the Anita-John affair, some close to Cash saw June’s suddenly increased role in the television series as a sign that he was trying to reassure her about their relationship. During the first season she’d kept a low profile. Before the start of the second season, however, Cash told producer Stan Jacobson that he wanted June to appear in every episode. In Jacobson’s words, “It suddenly became the Johnny and June show.” It was a partnership offstage and on.

It was just weeks after this trauma that one of the world’s most influential religious figures stepped into Cash’s life, urging him to use his fame to inspire young people everywhere to turn to Christ. “When we were growing up, Billy Graham was the essence of true spirituality,” says Cash’s younger sister Joanne. “He was someone you never heard anything bad about. To Mama and Daddy, he was bigger than any singer on the radio. It meant the world to Johnny to be able to tell them that Billy Graham was coming to his house for dinner.”

Days before the dinner, Cash’s new star power was showcased on December 5, when he headlined the sold-out show at Madison Square Garden in New York, grossing $110,000, which was more than the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, or James Brown had registered at the arena. Reviews were even more glowing than at the Carnegie Hall date in 1968. In the
Post,
Alfred G. Aronowitz, a widely influential journalist in rock with ties to Dylan, focused on Cash’s emerging role in bridging youthful liberal and older conservative factions in America.

“Johnny Cash knew how to talk to prisoners and to presidents,” Aronowitz wrote. “He knew, as a matter of fact, how to talk to all America….Only Johnny knows how many times he’s been shot down in his life, but he has kept picking himself up to become a folk figure so real, so heroic and so American that he could, as he did [at the Garden] endorse Richard M. Nixon’s conduct of the Vietnam War and give a ‘V’ [peace] sign from the same stage.”

Aronowitz looked at the seeming contradiction not as a weakness or hypocrisy but as the sign of a man struggling to understand the complexities of the times. He even pointed out how Cash, rather than duck the issue, raised the matter at the concert.

“I’ll tell you exactly how I feel about it,” he announced, regarding the war. “This past January, we brought our whole show over to the air base at Long Binh, and a reporter asked, ‘That makes you a hawk, doesn’t it?’ And I said, ‘No, that doesn’t make me a hawk, but when you watch the helicopters bringing in the wounded, that might make you a dove with claws.’”

With his career expanding on all levels, Cash kept hearing he needed to build a business operation befitting a star of his level. He took the first step that month by buying the Plantation Dinner Theater in Hendersonville for $224,000, planning to turn it into a state-of-the-art recording studio facility. Not only would it give him a place to record less than five minutes from his house, but also he could make money by renting it to other musicians for their sessions. He would eventually house his publishing companies and a fan museum in the building, which he called the House of Cash.

As rewarding as the Madison Square Garden concert and the recording studio plans were for him, Cash was looking forward even more to sitting down with Billy Graham.

William Franklin “Billy” Graham Jr. was born in 1918, which made him fourteen years older than Cash, but they bonded like brothers. A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Graham started actively pursuing the ministry as a teenager, and in 1947 he initiated a series of “Crusades” that grew from simple revival tents to fill arenas and stadiums around the world. By the time he contacted Cash, he was the most famous religious figure besides the pope.

He heard about Cash through his son Franklin, who suggested that Cash could attract millions of people to the Crusades, especially young people. Maria Beale Fletcher, a Nashville TV personality, agreed to introduce him to the singer, who was delighted to invite Graham and his wife, Ruth, to the house for dinner. During dinner, Graham asked John and June to take part in his Crusades, stressing the role Cash could play in spreading the word of Christ, a message that Cash embraced. Cash explained how fulfilled gospel music made him feel, that he had never been more inspired to write a song than when he wrote “He Turned the Water into Wine” during his trip to Israel. He also pointed out how warmly that song and “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)” had been received at Madison Square Garden.

Their first Crusade appearance came in May 1970 in Knoxville, with Cash singing before 62,000 worshipers at Newland Stadium on the campus of the University of Tennessee. He and June would eventually testify at nearly three dozen Crusades in front of nearly 2 million people. Cash and Graham grew close, frequently joining hands before the crowds at the Crusades, and also vacationing together.

“We both had a mutual faith in Christ and we also came from similar backgrounds, both of our families were southern farm families,” says Graham. “But I also definitely saw the ‘preacher’ in Johnny. You heard it in his testimony and listened to it in his music. June encouraged that ‘preacher’ in him as well.”

When Cash described himself as a “C+ Christian” at various times in his life, most thought this American icon was just being humble. To those who’d been close to him at various points, it appeared he was being a bit generous with his evaluation. But there was no question Cash believed. He wasn’t using his religion as commercial strategy; he carried his Bible with him everywhere, and he regularly read books to deepen his understanding of Judeo-Christian history.

The impact of Billy Graham’s friendship and counsel was profound, which made it all the more difficult later when Cash would sometimes show up under the influence of pills at a Graham Crusade. It tore him apart to know that Graham would be looking at him and know that something was wrong, though Graham, in his forgiving way, never challenged Cash about it.

“Johnny Cash believed in the eternal hellfire and damnation,” Bill Miller says. “He believed that if he died and he wasn’t right with God that he would go to hell and he would experience the physical burning and gnashing of teeth. He never lost track of that and I think it scared him and tortured him…when he kept repeating the same sins over and over and kept asking for forgiveness. I think his [continued turning] to gospel music was his way of saying, ‘God, I’m still here. I’m not perfect, but I want to be here with you.’”

As an adult looking back over his father’s life, John Carter Cash, himself a devout Christian, was struck by the depth of his father’s spiritual beliefs and the role of Graham, his grandfather Ezra, and his mother in reinforcing those feelings.

“Billy and my father maintained their friendship all through their lives,” John Carter says. “When my father fell short, he could always reach out to Billy. Billy didn’t judge my father; he was there as his friend unconditionally. Billy would lift him up, support him, and say, ‘You can do this. Stand back up. You know who you are.’ From that point on, Dad would tell you his purpose in life was to spread the word of Jesus Christ.”

Three weeks after the dinner with Graham, Cash sat down at nine p.m. on New Year’s Eve to write his second year-end reflection. As with the 1968 note, Cash was relentlessly upbeat: “This year, 1969, tops 1968 in every good way.” In the six-page letter, he again focused almost exclusively on material accomplishments, something he would note and reject in his New Year’s Eve letter two years later. He cited the massive album sales, the summer TV show (“a hit”), nice dinners at the house (with guests such as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and songwriter Mickey Newbury), the CMA awards (“all five”), the
Trail of Tears
film, the trips overseas (“What a night!!!!”), Billy Graham, and magazine profiles. He mentioned having given up cigarettes on Christmas Day, and then quickly asked himself, “(Can I tough it out????).” He also expressed thanks that his mother and father had moved to Hendersonville from California.

The only hint of disappointment was that his daughters weren’t able to join him for Christmas. The sole trace of anger—“Bitter, Hateful”—was directed at Vivian, presumably because she wouldn’t approve the trip.

In closing, he listed seven items under his “prospects for 1970,” including the Billy Graham Crusades and the resumption of TV tapings.

Chief in his mind, however, was the item that topped the list: “Baby due March 10. Boy.”

“HELLO, I’M JOHN CARTER CASH’S DADDY.”

When Cash opened his TV show with those words on March 15, 1970, his fans, now numbering in the millions, surely smiled, but they weren’t surprised. Thanks to a burst of news reports, the first of more than two thousand floral bouquets began arriving at the small Madison Hospital within minutes of the announcement of the baby’s birth on March 3. By the time the seven-pound, ten-ounce boy headed home six days later, he had received more than five thousand gifts.

“It’s a boy, June…it’s a boy,” John said as soon as he was allowed to see his wife and his son. It seemed to June that the whole world was celebrating with them.

“I couldn’t believe the flowers—they were everywhere, from the floor to the ceiling in that big hospital room and out in the hall, even at the nurses’ station,” she said. “And the letters and telegrams! From governors and the president and people all over the world—wiring and writing and calling to say how truly glad they were that John had a son.”

When the family left the hospital, nearly one hundred patients and staff members gathered in the lobby with gifts, including a $100 savings bond and a book of biblical stories. As news photographers captured the moment, Cash leaned over and playfully grabbed one of his son’s fingers. Then he wheeled June and John Carter to his black Cadillac for the ten-minute ride home. They hired one of the hospital nurses, Winifred Kelly, to be the boy’s nanny. She became part of what was a growing household staff that included Peggy Knight, a friend of Maybelle’s who was so close to the Cashes she was often called “the third spouse,” though there was no sexual connection implied.

On the following morning, newspapers around the country, which had printed photos of Cash in handcuffs in El Paso just five years earlier, now carried photos of a family man who was well on his way to becoming a cultural icon. It was a remarkable transformation, in fact, from even two years earlier, when Columbia Records had embellished Cash’s outlaw side in ads to build interest in the
Folsom
album.

In the ad that appeared in
Rolling Stone
in 1968, readers were told: “The audience is convicts. They can’t leave when the show’s over. Some of them know what it means when the songs talk about killing a man. The atmosphere is electric….When you listen close, you hear clanging doors, whistles, shouts. Responses that aren’t the same as yours. Because they’re not walking around like you are. You’ll probably never really know what it’s like. Johnny Cash does. He’s been inside prisons before. Not always on a visit.”

Now, the Columbia ad in a
Billboard
magazine salute to Cash conveyed a much different image.

“This man’s place in American music has never really been occupied before,” the ad copy declared.

In an accompanying essay,
Billboard’
s respected editor Paul Ackerman called Cash a “great original.”

“He is at once an underground hero and a favorite of the great mass of adult record buyers,” wrote Ackerman. “His song material and style of performance cut across practically all key categories and appeal to all markets….He is the epitome of the music man who embraces realism and draws for his inspiration upon the inexhaustible accounts of his own and his fellow man’s experience. The nation and its history are his reference books. The people are his audience.”

Save for a word here and a hyperbole there, the characterizations were true. Cash was striking a unique chord with an inclusive but independent vision.

Rather than try to move toward mainstream pop in order to build an audience, Cash built the TV series—the sometimes hapless guests aside—around the songs and messages that he had been expressing ever since his Sun Records days. The signature
Ride This Train
album may have been largely ignored when it was released, but the songs and spirit of that album about the country’s frontier heritage were now being heard and embraced in living rooms across America. To the millions actually seeing Cash for the first time, he came across as someone who reflected the country’s roots and cherished values.

The timing of the TV show was crucial.

If Holiff had been lucky enough to talk CBS into a TV show even three years earlier, the Cash that America would have seen would have been a drug addict whose behavior was out of control most nights. In the ABC series, Cash was a man reborn. John Carter’s birth assisted in that process in two ways. It presented Cash to the world as a family man, and it contributed greatly to his finally staying off drugs.

“That boy changed John’s life,” Grant said. “Over the years, John told many stories about ‘quitting’ drugs and his subsequent ‘recovery.’…But the truth of the matter is that, except for a few clean and sober periods, Johnny Cash was never truly free of drugs from the late 1950s until the day his son was born.”

When taping resumed for the TV show’s second season, Cash was in a much stronger position than during the early episodes. Now that the program was a hit, ABC and Screen Gems had to keep the star at least reasonably happy. To that end, Stan Jacobson was named co-producer, which meant that Cash would have more say over choosing the guests. And sure enough, the second season, which ran on Wednesday nights from January 21 to May 13, relied much more heavily on Cash’s country favorites, including Merle Haggard, Marty Robbins, and Loretta Lynn. Even the non-country guests, such as Ray Charles, Neil Diamond, and Tony Joe White, seemed more compatible. The bulk of the music, in fact, came from members of Cash’s own troupe, including Perkins, the Statler Brothers, and Carter Family members. Most nights, too, the shows ended with a gospel song or an inspirational number.

Cash had long woven messages into his music, but he later credited Billy Graham with making him even more comfortable in that role. Over the next year or so, Cash introduced three songs that would go a long way in defining his public image. He sang the first one, “What Is Truth,” on March 18, just two weeks after John Carter’s birth. Cash had heard Merle Travis grumbling one day on the TV show’s set about how he couldn’t understand some of this new rock music, and as he often did, Cash tried to put himself in the place of the underdog, this time youth.

The country was still caught up in a severe generation gap, divided over everything from hair length to Vietnam. Still haunted by the wounded men he’d met on his trip to the Far East, Cash thought about the world his own son would someday encounter. As he sang the song on the show, he came as close to the role of a preacher as he had ever done. It was a less confrontational take on Dylan’s defense of youth in “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”

Committed to the song, Cash showcased it again four weeks later. By then, Columbia had rushed it out as a single. The
Hello, I’m Johnny Cash
album had done well, though nothing close in sales to the prison albums, largely because it didn’t produce a blockbuster single. Still, Cash regained enough pop airplay with “What Is Truth” to return to the Top 20 on the pop charts. Even more important, the song’s TV exposure added immensely to Cash’s growing role as a meaningful artist—though not everyone was pleased.

Whispers were being heard among country music circles in Nashville that all this success was going to his head. Just who did he think he was with this holier-than-thou attitude? Was he hosting a TV show or Sunday school? Instead of simply singing a gospel song at the end of the show, Cash twice devoted the “Ride This Train” segment to spiritual songs during March. Even network reps would soon begin to worry. They were starting to get feedback from affiliates that there was too much religion in the show.

President Richard M. Nixon didn’t know much about country music, but he listened when Billy Graham spoke highly of Cash and his positive impact on the nation’s youth. He invited Cash to perform some of his songs at the White House on April 17, 1970. Cash immediately passed the news along to his father, still anxious for the old man’s approval.

Cash’s decision to go to the White House was widely criticized by many of the young, liberal fans who had flocked to him after the
Folsom
album and his embrace of Dylan on the TV show. They despised Nixon, chiefly over the war in Vietnam, and they were disillusioned that their new hero was, to their minds, aiding and abetting the enemy on Pennsylvania Avenue. To Cash, his decision to go wasn’t political. When he endorsed people, it was based more on friendship than on issues. He had never even voted. Cash would have been just as thrilled to get the invitation from a Democrat. It was the office of the presidency that he respected. He didn’t weigh the impact of the move on what it would do to his image. Still, he didn’t sacrifice his principles in the process, either. Along with the invitation, Cash received a list of songs the president would like to hear, and he sidestepped the list.

One song was “Okie from Muskogee,” the hugely popular country hit by Merle Haggard which took a lighthearted slap at hippies and young protesters. Another was “Welfare Cadillac,” a novelty country hit at the time. Written and recorded by Guy Drake, the song attacked a popular conservative target of the day: welfare fraud. The lyrics spoke about a man who used his welfare money to buy a Cadillac and then laughed at those who paid taxes.

When the president’s request became public in mid-March, Herman Yeatman, the Tennessee welfare commissioner, wrote to Nixon protesting the idea of anyone singing “Welfare Cadillac” at the White House. He called the song an inaccurate depiction of welfare recipients. Sharing Yeatman’s view, but not wanting to embarrass the president, Cash announced in response to press inquiries that he wasn’t going to perform “Welfare Cadillac” because he didn’t know the song and didn’t have time to rehearse it. Don Reid of the Statler Brothers says the sole reason Cash refused to sing it was that he felt the song made fun of poor people. Cash wanted his performance to be inspiring, not political.

There were some 250 people, including many members of the country music industry, in the East Room of the White House when Nixon stepped to the microphone to introduce the evening’s featured guest. Referring good-naturedly to the flap over “Welfare Cadillac,” the president told the audience he had learned that no one tells Johnny Cash what to sing. “I understand he owns a Cadillac, but he won’t sing about Cadillacs,” he quipped.

When the laughter eased, the president addressed the role Cash was quickly assuming in pop culture.

“He was born in Arkansas and he now lives in Tennessee, but he belongs to America,” Nixon said. “It’s called country music and western music, but the truth is it’s American music. It speaks in story about America in a way that speaks to all of us, north, east, west, and south.”

Dispensing with the normal “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” greeting, a deeply humbled Cash simply said “Thank you” to the president before launching into one of the songs Nixon had requested, “A Boy Named Sue.” In view of his new son, he changed the song’s final line to “And if I ever have a boy, I’m going to name him…John Carter Cash.”