Johnny Cash: The Life (43 page)
Read Johnny Cash: The Life Online
Authors: Robert Hilburn
Dressed in the black frock coat and ruffled shirt that had become his signature attire on the TV show, he brought June onstage for “Darling Companion” and slipped in a medley of “I Walk the Line” and “Ring of Fire” later in the set. Mostly, Cash tailored the one-hour show with the same sensitivity and artistry he applied to the prison concerts. He felt as honored being invited to the White House as he had meeting Billy Graham, and he wanted to use the evening once again to testify to what he felt was important about music and himself.
“I was at such a high point in my career and there was so much to be thankful for—John Carter, June, the way God was coming back into my life,” he told me. “I had been on television hundreds of times, but the White House was something different. I was thinking, ‘If I die tomorrow, I want this show to define my goal as a songwriter and entertainer.’”
To the White House gathering he said, somewhat nervously, “I want to tell you a little bit about ourselves, about our background, where we came from, maybe why we’re here. We hope to show you a little bit of the soul of the South.” Cash then took the guests, including some Tennessee legislators and scores of Washington officials, back to Dyess with “Five Feet High and Rising” and “Pickin’ Time” to explain his roots. Then, rather than trace his career through Sun Records and his hits, he spoke to his feelings about the country and its heritage—feelings that had led to many of the concept albums.
“This is the prettiest country in the world and I’ve been to a bunch of them and there ain’t nothing like it anywhere,” he said in a speech worthy of the best of Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger. “With all these people we got in us from everywhere. Put them all together and get them to singing these songs and talking about all the things that had happened and the things that…It’s even more beautiful.” He then played a song that reflected that folklore tradition, “Wreck of the Old 97.”
Warmed up, Cash mentioned how Billy Graham had told him that the country “needed some songs, some religious songs that said something to the people of today, especially the young people.” He said the comments were a great inspiration to him and made him realize the huge platform he had in network TV.
After singing “Jesus Was a Carpenter,” he introduced “What Is Truth” by saying he wanted to warn young people about the dangers of drugs, and that he realized he would be more effective if he could show young people he was on their side. “I wrote a poem for the youth of America,” he said. “It was a twelve-verse poem, and we took four verses out and made a recording of it. It’s on their side, which was the way I was feeling at the time. Maybe I was trying to be a kid again.”
The lines about the injustices of war seemed pointed in the White House setting, but Cash softened the mood by saying respectfully that he hoped the president could bring the boys home as soon as possible. The applause was loud and long; once again Cash was being seen as “one of us.” Cash devoted the rest of the set list to gospel tunes, ending with “The Old Account,” a statement of joy at having one’s sins washed away. It was another memorable example of Cash rising to the occasion with openness and heart.
Afterward, Nixon and his wife, Pat, gave John and June a two-hour tour of the White House, even encouraging Cash to lie down on the Lincoln bed. Nixon had offered to let John Carter stay in the Lincoln Bedroom during the performance, but the youngster remained at the hotel.
The president gladly obliged when Cash asked him to pose for a photograph with his seventy-two-year-old father. Marshall Grant later said that, for the first time, Ray Cash, a man not prone to show his emotions, actually looked proud of his son. Cash would write in his year-end letter that the White House performance was his “best concert to date. God surely with me.”
The second defining song of the new season was Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.” Its message of loneliness and redemption seemed taken right from Cash’s life, but Kristofferson didn’t have the singer in mind when he wrote the song. “That was probably the most autobiographical song I’d written at the time,” Kristofferson says. “I was thinking about losing my family and living in a condemned building in Nashville.”
When he finished writing the song, Kristofferson’s first choice to record it was Cash, but another successful Nashville recording artist, Ray Stevens, heard a demo tape of the song and was so moved by it that he gave him permission to record the song in late 1969. Cash finally began to think about recording the song after he heard Stevens’s version. Still, he didn’t commit to it for several more weeks.
“It didn’t hit me until one day when I was at home and out by the lake and I realized how far I had come from the days when I felt like the man in the song…so empty and alone,” he said. “All of a sudden the lines of the song started running through my head and I realized I could identify with every one of them. I was so caught up in the song I didn’t even want to wait to go into the studio and record it. I wanted to do it as soon as possible on the TV show because Bob and I had been talking about taking some songs from the show and putting them into an album.”
Here are the lyrics:
Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An’ I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An’ stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.
I’d smoked my brain the night before,
On cigarettes and songs I’d been pickin’.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid,
Cussin’ at a can that he was kicking.
Then I crossed the empty street,
’n caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken.
And it took me back to somethin’,
That I’d lost somehow, somewhere along the way.
On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
’Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.
In the park I saw a daddy,
With a laughin’ little girl who he was swingin’.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to the song they were singin’.
Then I headed back for home,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’.
And it echoed through the canyons,
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.
On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
’Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks,
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.
Cash first sang “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” during the “Ride This Train” sequence that aired February 25 and illustrated it with footage enacting some of the scenes from the lyrics. But Cash wasn’t satisfied with that version, so he sang the song again on the April 8 show, this time with a more aggressive musical backing and a more convincing vocal. That version was included in the subsequent
Johnny Cash Show
album.
Kristofferson was at the rehearsal for that second show when he heard Cash sing “Sunday Mornin’” with the exact feeling Kris had when writing the song. When he went over to tell Cash how much he loved his vocal, John was huddling with an ABC rep who was trying to talk him into dropping the line “Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned” in favor of “Wishing, Lord, that I was home.”
“He thought the original line would offend some viewers,” Kristofferson says. “John turned and asked what I thought and I told him the line doesn’t mean the same, but I said I knew how much the show meant to him and that I would understand if he felt he needed to change it.
“I didn’t know what he was going to do until the taping. I was watching from the balcony of the Ryman, and he looked up at me just when he sang the line the way I wrote it, with ‘stoned’ in it. I was so proud of him. I could understand why people were starting to see him as the father of our country or something. He was a real hero.”
Cash introduced the third signature song, “Man in Black,” a year later in a show aimed at young people and featuring guests James Taylor, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell. In a sequence taped at Vanderbilt University, he met informally with students to answer questions on subjects ranging from drugs to Vietnam. Before the concert portion of the show was taped, Cash expanded upon his answers in a song, using his familiar black stage attire as a symbol to make the message more dramatic and personal.
Later, he was surprised when some critics accused him of being a fraud because the black clothing dated back to the Sun days and had nothing to do, really, with any social causes. “Of course,” Cash said in return, “I’m a songwriter. I use my imagination. The important thing is the message of the song, not the imagery.”
The song’s lyrics go:
Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
and why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there’s a reason for the things that I have on,
I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
livin’ in the hopeless hungry side of town;
I wear the black for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
but is there because he’s a victim of the times.
I wear the black for those who’ve never read
Or listened to the words that Jesus said
about the road to happiness through love and charity.
Why, you’d think He’s talkin’ straight to you and me.
Ah, we’re doin’ mighty fine, I do suppose,
in our “streak of lightnin’” cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back,
up front there ought to be a man in black.
I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
for the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold;
I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been.
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.
Ah, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
believin’ that the Lord was on their side.
And I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died
believin’ that we all were on their side.
Well, there’s things that never will be right, I know
and things need changin’ eve’ywhere you go.
But until we start to make a move to make a few things right,
you’ll never see me wear a suit of white.
Oh, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day
and tell the world that ev’rything’s OK.
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back.
Till things are brighter, I’m the man in black.
Rather than release the live version, Cash went into the studio and recorded it again. For one of the few times in his career, he produced the session himself. The record proved as evocative in its gentle way as his Folsom tunes had been with their defiance. The record went on to get substantial pop and country airplay when released as a single, but its main impact was from his TV show. Within weeks, “Man in Black” joined “What Is Truth” and “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” as songs that largely established Cash as a symbol of American honor, compassion, and struggle.
The Vanderbilt episode was one of the high points in a series that spoke to young and old, urban and rural viewers at a time of great division in the country. Similarly, the series challenged racial boundaries in country music, which had embraced only one African American star in decades: Charlie Pride. Besides Pride, who was a repeat guest on the TV show, the program featured such black artists as Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, O. C. Smith, and Odetta. Cash was especially proud of bringing Louis Armstrong onto the Ryman stage, where the jazz great had once been barred from performing because of his race. On the show, Armstrong re-created the trumpet solo he’d played on a Jimmie Rodgers recording of “Blue Yodel No. 9” in a 1930 session in Hollywood; Cash was thrilled to sing Rodgers’s part. By celebrating that historic pairing, Cash wasn’t just saluting his heroes; he was subtly underscoring his message of unity and tolerance.
Billy Graham and Richard Nixon weren’t the only famous people interested in cultivating America’s new hero. Bob Hope not only invited Cash to join him on his own TV show but also flew to Nashville to appear on Cash’s program. Even Lester Maddox, the Georgia governor who was a leader in the Southern resistance to segregation, managed to share the stage with Cash at a concert for prisoners at the Municipal Auditorium in Atlanta. A special guest was Sheriff Ralph Jones, who three years earlier had given Cash the sobering lecture in his LaFayette jailhouse.
All the exposure finally led Gordon Jenkins, the arranger-composer who wrote “Crescent City Blues,” to file suit in U.S. District Court in New York charging Cash with copyright infringement for using so much of “Crescent City Blues” when he wrote the lyrics of “Folsom Prison Blues.” (Cash eventually paid Jenkins $75,000 to waive all future rights and royalties to the song.)
Even Hollywood came calling again. Cash recorded songs for two films,
I Walk the Line,
a drama starring Gregory Peck, and
Little Fauss and Big Halsy,
a comedy-drama featuring Robert Redford and Michael J. Pollard. He also put together modestly successful soundtrack albums to coincide with the release of both films. Neither album felt remotely inspired, except for “Flesh and Blood,” one of Cash’s most beautifully framed love songs. The track was released as a single and went to number one on the country charts.