Johnny Cash: The Life (75 page)

Cash by the Editors of Rolling Stone.
New York: Crown, 2004. Especially: Rosanne Cash, “My Dad Johnny Cash”; Anthony DeCurtis, “Johnny Cash Won’t Back Down”; Jason Fine, “Home Sweet Home: In the Studio with Johnny Cash”; David Fricke, “The
Rolling Stone
Interview with Rick Rubin”; Mikal Gilmore, “The Man in Black”; Ralph Gleason, “Johnny Cash Meets Richard Nixon”; Steve Pond, “Broken Down in Branson”; and Steve Pond, “The
Rolling Stone
Interview: Johnny Cash.”

I Still Miss Someone.
Compiled by Hugh Waddell. Nashville: Cumberland House, 2004.

Johnny Cash and Philosophy: The Burning Ring of Truth.
Edited by John Huss and David Werther. Chicago: Open Court, 2008.

Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader.
Edited by Michael Streissguth. Cambridge, Mass.: DaCapo, 2002.

Cash, Cindy.
The Cash Family Scrapbook.
New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1997.

Miller, Bill.
Cash: An American Man.
New York: Pocket Books, 2004.

Brackett, Nathan, with Christian Hoard, eds.
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide.
New York: Fireside, 2004.

Gentry, Robert.
The Louisiana Hayride: The Glory Years. Vol. 1. 1948–55
. Many, La: Gentry, 1998. Includes ads for every Louisiana Hayride show as well as some newspaper articles about them.

———.
The Louisiana Hayride: The Glory Years.
Vol. 2.
1956–60
. Many, La.: Gentry, 1998.

Gordon, Robert.
The King on the Road: Elvis Live on Tour 1954 to 1977.
New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996.

Gray, Michael, and Roger Osborne.
The Elvis Atlas: A Journey through Elvis Presley’s America.
New York: Henry Holt, 1996.

Guralnick, Peter, and Ernest Jorgensen.
Elvis Day by Day: The Definitive Record of His Life and Music.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1999.

Lewry, Peter.
I’ve Been Everywhere: A Johnny Cash Chronicle.
London: Helter Skelter, 2001.

Smith, John L.
The Johnny Cash Discography.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985.

———.
The Johnny Cash Discography, 1984–1993
. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994.

Whitburn, Joel.
The Billboard Albums.
Menomonee Falls, Wis.: Record Research, 2006.

———.
Pop Memories, 1890–1954: The History of American Popular Music.
Menomonee Falls, Wis.: Record Research, 1986.

———.
Top Country Albums, 1964–2007
. Menomonee Falls, Wis.: Record Research, 2008.

———.
Top Country Songs, 1944–2005.
Menomonee Falls, Wis.: Record Research, 2005.

———.
Top Pop Singles.
Menomonee Falls, Wis.: Record Research, 2009.

———.
Top R&B Albums, 1965–1998.
Menomonee Falls, Wis.: Record Research, 1999.

———.
Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles, 1942 to 2004.
Menomonee Falls, Wis.: Record Research, 2004.

These sets provide detailed recording session information, including personnel, as well as lengthy and insightful essays about the various stages of Cash’s career at Columbia and Sun in the 1950s and 1960s.

Johnny Cash: The Man in Black, 1954–1958.
Bear Family Records, 1990. Essay by Colin Escott. 5 CDs.

Johnny Cash: The Man in Black, 1959–1962.
Bear Family Records, 1991. Essay by Colin Escott. 5 CDs.

Johnny Cash: The Man in Black, 1963–69 Plus.
Bear Family Records, 1995. Essay by Colin Escott. 6 CDs.

Johnny Cash: Come Along and Ride This Train.
Bear Family Records, 1991. Essay by Bob Allen. 4 CDs.

Cash: Unearthed.
American Recordings, 2003. Text by Sylvie Simmons. 5 CDs.

Ackerman, Paul, and staff. “Cash—Past and Present Together.”
Billboard
salute, May 23, 1970.

Braun, Saul. “Good Ole Boy.”
Playboy,
November 1970.

Carr, Patrick. “The Big Thumb.”
Country Music
, 1997.

Cooper, Peter, and staff. “Goodbye Mr. Cash.”
Nashville Tennessean,
September 13, 2003.

Corliss, Richard. “The Man in Black.”
Time,
September 22, 2003.

Cusic, Don, and Jennifer Bohler. “Johnny Cash–
Cash Box
–Silver Salute.”
Cash Box,
1980.

Davis, Frances. “God’s Lonely Man.”
Atlantic,
March 2006.

Dearmore, Tom. “First Angry Man of Country Singers.”
New York Times
Sunday Magazine,
September 21, 1969.

Flanagan, Bill. “Johnny Cash, American.”
Musician,
May 1988.

Guralnick, Peter. “John R. Cash: I Will Rock ’n’ Roll with You (If I Have To).”
Country Music,
July–August 1980. (Chapters 1–6.)

Kamp, David. “American Communion.”
Vanity Fair,
October 2006.

LaFarge, Peter. “Johnny Cash.”
Sing Out!
May 1965.

Linderman, Larry. “
Penthouse
Interview: Johnny Cash.”
Penthouse,
August 1975.

Martin, Gavin. “Out of the Black.”
New Musical Express,
May 30, 1987.

Oermann, Robert K. “Superstar Cash Still Speaks for the Heart of America.”
Nashville Tennessean,
April 26, 1987.

Orr, Jay. “The Man Is Back.”
Nashville Tennessean,
April 17, 1999.

Tosches, Nick. “Chordless in Gaza: The Second Coming of John R. Cash.”
Journal of Country Music
17 (1995).

Wells, Steven. “Old, Gifted, and Black.”
New Musical Express,
April 27, 1991.

Wenner, Jann. “Country Tradition Goes to Heart of Dylan Songs.”
Rolling Stone,
May 25, 1968.

Of the countless newspapers and magazines that reported on Johnny Cash, the ones that I went back to repeatedly were the
Nashville Tennessean,
the
Nashville Banner,
the
Memphis Press Scimitar, Billboard, Rolling Stone,
the
Los Angeles Times,
the
New York Times
and the scores of small-town papers whose pages can be found in the Access Newspaper Archives link on the Los Angeles Public Library website. Articles of special interest are cited in the chapter listings that follow.

Joanne Cash, Johnny Cash, Kathy Cash, Rosanne Cash, Roy Cash Jr., Tommy Cash, Damon Fielder, A. J. Henson, Everett Henson, J. E. Huff, James Keach.

Myfamily.com (a website run by Everett Henson devoted to the history of the Dyess colony).

Marty Stuart believes that Cash wrote “Folsom Prison Blues” in Germany because he heard an early version of a tape that was made on the tape recorder Cash bought in Germany. But Marshall Grant disputed that view. He said Cash didn’t write the song until well after he returned to the States. He speculated that the tape was made in Memphis.

Johnny Cash, Rich Collins, Red Ernst, Jerry Farwell, Sylvia Flye, William Harrell, James Keach, Bob Mehaffey, Bob Moodie, Ben Perea, Orville (Wayne) Rigdon, Chuck Riley, Gayle Stelter, Larry Tart, Al Thurston.

”Crescent City Blues” can be heard on Gordon Jenkins’s concept album
Seven Dreams,
a single CD which has been re-released by Basta Records. It is also on
Johnny Cash: Roots and Rivers,
a single CD on Hip-O.

http://6912th.org/cashpage.htm (a site that focuses on Johnny Cash’s 6912th Radio Mobile Squadron, which was stationed in Landsberg, Germany).

One of the haziest parts of the Johnny Cash story is how he got to Sun Records. He told at least five different versions, and none fully squared with anything Marshall Grant recounted. To make matters worse, the numbering system at Sun Records proved to be notoriously unreliable in chronicling the company’s early recording history. Because tape was expensive, Sam Phillips would often tape over something if he wasn’t planning to release it, and he would often combine tracks from various tapes onto a single tape so he could reuse the others. In the latter process, he would sometimes end up with tunes from a Cash session and, say, a Charlie Rich session or a totally unrelated radio commercial on a single tape.

To retrace the steps, I met with Grant and went over the early days in Memphis week by week, matching his earlier recollections with everything else we could find about those months in late 1954 and early 1955. During the interview, Marshall’s account often differed from what both he and John had written. He showed no reluctance to revise his timetable, however, and we came up with a schedule of events that he felt confident was “ninety-nine percent” correct.

Joanne Cash, Johnny Cash, Roy Cash Jr., Tommy Cash, Damon Fielder, Marshall Grant, Scotty Moore, Knox Phillips, Sam Phillips, Mark Stielper.

Gilmore, Mikal. “The Man in Black.” In
Cash by the Editors of Rolling Stone.

Phillips, Dewey,
Red, Hot and Blue.
Memphis Archives Records. These radio broadcasts offer a colorful glimpse of the DJ who was stirring things up in Memphis in the mid-1950s. Cash named his first Sun Records single after the title of Phillips’s radio show.

“The Sun Collection,” various artists. Rhino. This 1994 CD box set offers a comprehensive summary of the musical world Cash stepped into in 1954 and helped expand.

Johnny Cash, Roy Cash Jr., Colin Escott, Dale Franklin, Marshall Grant, David McGee, Knox Phillips, Sam Phillips.

Gilmore, Mikal. “The Man in Black.” In
Cash by the Editors of Rolling Stone.

Gilmore, Mikal. “The Man in Black.” In
Cash by the Editors of Rolling Stone.

Gleason, Ralph J. “It Looks As If Elvis Has a Rival—From Arkansas.”
San Francisco Chronicle,
December 16, 1956.

Green, Ben A. “Johnny Cash Achieves ‘Life’s Ambition.’”
Nashville Banner
, July 14, 1956.

Johnny Cash: From Memphis to Hollywood.
Columbia Legacy, 2011. This two-disc package contains the first Cash broadcast on KWEM in Memphis as well as a sample of early demos that Cash did at Sun—including “I Walk the Line,” “Get Rhythm,” and “Country Boy.”

When was “I Walk the Line” written? Many articles about Cash point to the November 19, 1955, show in Gladewater, Texas, but that date goes against much that Cash said and virtually everything Grant said about the song. (We won’t even get into Vivian’s claim that he wrote the song while they were driving in the car one day; most likely he was simply singing the song to her for the first time.)

In his first autobiography in 1975, Cash said he wrote the song after his first Hayride appearance in Shreveport, which would have made the song’s birthday December 3, 1955. In his second autobiography, he placed the song in 1956, when he was “having a hard time resisting the temptation to be unfaithful to [Vivian] back in Memphis.” He goes on: “I put those feelings into the beginning of a song and sang the first two verses for Carl Perkins backstage before a show.” If the Gladewater location holds, the date would most likely have been February 12, 1956, because Cash and Perkins had played the Louisiana Hayride the night before.

When I asked Marshall Grant about the song just weeks before his death in 2011, he wasn’t buying any of Cash’s recollections. He said Cash heard him doing some slow, repetitive bass runs while warming up before an afternoon show in Longview, Texas, during the spring of 1956. “John told me to play the run again and he started humming along—just the way he did on the record—and he came out with the opening line ‘I keep a close watch on this heart of mine,’ then he stopped and said, ‘Whatever you do, Marshall, don’t forget that run.’ That night in the car, John wrote ‘I Walk the Line,’ and Sam recorded it as soon as we got back to Memphis.” If Grant is correct the song was probably written after Louisiana Hayride appearances on March 24 or 31. What is certain is Cash recording “I Walk the Line” on April 2, 1956, in Memphis.

Norm Bale, James Burton, Louise Burton, Johnny Cash, Roy Cash Jr., Jack Clement, Larry Collins, Lorrie Collins, Sylvia Flye, Marshall Grant, Billie Jean Horton, David McGee, Sam Phillips, Johnny Wessler.