Johnny Cash Has Died

This has been a hard year for many greats.
I do not recall a time when so many in the entertainment
world died in such a short period.

May the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by.
There's a better home a'waiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky.

June Carter Cash

Carter Cash Leaves "Flower"

Final work by country legend is about family

June Carter Cash recorded what became her final album with the help of her family -- including husband Johnny Cash, their son (and producer) John Carter Cash, and her daughters and daughter-in-law -- all chipping in. Due September 9th, Wildwood Flower was recorded over a span of four days at the Carter Family estate in Maces Spring, Virginia, and the current Cash enclave in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Finished just before her death on May 15th, the album features seven songs written by her uncle A.P. Carter and serves as a kind of June Carter Cash career retrospective.

"We sat down together and went over songs that made sense for her," says John Carter Cash. "They were a great part of her heritage and upbringing. She grew up singing those songs. She sang them when she was a kid, and it made sense to come full circle."

The daughter of the Carter Family's Mother Maybelle Carter, June Carter Cash began performing with her siblings Helen and Anita as the Carter Sisters in 1937. Though she famously co-wrote "Ring of Fire" about falling for Johnny Cash, who eventually became her husband of thirty-five years, Carter Cash released little music under her own name, only recording the long out-of-print Appalachian Pride in 1975 and the Grammy-winning Press On in 1999 before beginning work on Wildwood Flower.

One of the album's warmest moments comes in the form an impromptu spoken-word goof on tough-guy actor Lee Marvin to the audible amusement of all in the studio. "That was out of left field," her son says. "No one knew that's what she was going to do. She was a wacky comedienne. She was always surprising and mildly shocking you."

June's ability to surprise gives her final album a buoyant feel. The grave Carter Family classic "Storms Are on the Ocean" is followed by with a radio snippet of June Carter Cash as girl, flirting and joking on air with a DJ. "Church in the Wildwood/Lonesome Valley" begins with her explaining some of the history of the Carter Family home where the song was recorded.

"Our goal was to capture, to clarify," John says, "not to 'plastify.' There's so much material I hear that sounds like it was done in a laboratory. This is the real thing. You push a button and stand back when you're done and look at everything you got later. She's magic. It's there."

COLIN DEVENISH
(September 2, 2003)

THE STORMS ARE ON THE OCEAN

I'm going away to leave you, love
I'm going away for awhile.
But I'll return to you some time
If I go ten thousand miles.

The storms are on the ocean
The heavens may cease to be.
This world may lose its motion, love
If I prove false to thee.

Oh, who will dress your pretty little feet
Oh, who will glove your hand
Oh, who will kiss your rosy red cheek
When I'm in a far off land?

Oh, Poppa will dress my pretty little feet
And Momma will glove my hand
You can kiss my rosy red cheeks
When you return again.

Oh, have you seen those mournful doves
Flying from pine to pine.
A-mourning for their own true love
Just like I mourn for mine.

((I'll never go back on the ocean, love
I'll never go back on the sea
I'll never go back from the blue-eyed girl
Till she goes back on me.))

Recorded 8/1/27 Bristol, Tn
5/9/35 New York, NY

Damn, first John Ritter, then Johnny Cash. A sucky night so far.

Well, from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Some guy named Anthony Decurtis, a foppish, effeminate reporter from Rolling Stone magazine, dressed in a NYC suit and tie... couldn't they have done a hook-up with someone from Nashville, etc?

I'm in Nashville and the coverage here is actually very good. They've been speaking with a few people who knew Johnny, etc. Even the local anchorman shared some personal stories about him! As you can imagine, this is very HUGE story right now in Nashville. So far its been pretty true to Johnny.

Thanks for the link.

Johnny Cash:

More of his albums (45) remain in print today than most artists ever make.

He is the youngest person ever chosen for the Country Music Hall of Fame and the only person ever selected for the Country and Rock Music Hall of Fame, until this 1998, when Elvis Presley was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

He has placed 48 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop charts, about the same number as the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys.

He has tallied more Pop hit singles than Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson (including his Jackson 5 hits), the Four Seasons, David Bowie, the Supremes, Elton John, Billy Joel, Kenny Rogers, the combined totals of Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon and Simon & Garfunkel, Martin Gaye, B.B. King, Roy Orbison, Kool & the Gang, Linda Ronstadt. Diana Ross, the combined total of all of the Osmond Family, Jerry Lee Lewis and the combined total of Lionel Richie and the Commodores.

He has won 11 Grammies, the most recent include the 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2002 shared Grammy for Best Country Album. Two of his Grammys came for writing liner notes, for his At Folsom Prison album and Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline record.

Cash's 1987 Grammy came through his participation in The Class Of '55 recordings with the late Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. The project represented a rebirth of "The Million Dollar Quartet" recordings featuring Cash, Perkins, Lewis and the late Elvis Presley and, interestingly enough, it predated Orbison's participation in The Traveling Wilburys.

He has had chart success as a solo artists, as part of a duet, as the leader of a trio, and as a part of the award-winning Highwayman quartet.

Long before the term "concept album" was coined, Cash created such thematically unified albums Ride This Train (1960), Blood, Sweat, & Tears (1963), Bitter Tears (1964). and Johnny Cash Sings Ballads Of The True West (1965).

People forget just how hot Johnny Cash was, when his sales career was at its zenith. In the fall of 1969, Johnny Cash was the hottest act in the world, selling around 250,000 albums per month of his Folsom Prison and San Quinten albums. At that time, he was even outselling the Beatles.

As Rich Kinezie observed it Country Music magazine 10 years ago, Cash "strengthened the bonds between folk and country music so that both sides saw their similarities as well as their differences. He helped to liberalize Nashville so that it could accept the unconventional and the controversial and he did as much as anyone to make the 'outlaw' phenomenon possible."

As host of The Johnny Cash Show on ABC-TV (1969-1971), he served up 60 hours of prime-time TV, which featured performers like Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Linda Ronstadt, Ray Charles, Neil Young, James Taylor, Neil Diamond, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Kenny Rogers, Roy Orbison, Hank Williams Jr., Dennis Hopper, Judy Collins, Charley Pride, the Oak Ridge Boys, Patti Page and Merle Haggard, most rarely seen on TV back then.

His 1975 autobiography Man in Black has so far sold around 1.5 million copies, about 300,000 in hardcover.

He is one of the very few people in the history of music to sell more than 50 million records.

He has placed at least two singles on the Country charts for 38 consecutive years, including an amazing 25 hits between 1958 and 1960.

He produced and co-scripted a movie about the life of Jesus, Gospel Road, and filmed it in Israel. The film was distributed by Billy Graham's organization and is still in great demand today.

He has starred in four additional theatrical films including one of the last great westerns, A Gunfight, with Kirk Douglas. In addition, he has been a featured star in seven TV movies including The Pride Of Jessee Hallam, a hard-hitting, poignant story of one man's struggle against illiteracy. The show has proven to be a valuable tool in the battle against illiteracy.

He has posted over 130 hits on the Billboard Country singles chart, more than anyone in history, except George Jones. (Discounting duets by both men, Cash's total exceeds Jones.)

• He has won over two dozen songwriting awards from BMI; two of his songs, Folsom Prison Blues and I Walk The Line have earned million-performance citations from BMI.

Over a hundred acts have recorded Cash's I Walk The Line.

He has toured extensively for 38 years on a scope far beyond the normal tour bus routine of U.S. honky-tonks, state fairs, and showrooms. Hundreds of thousands of fans in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe have seen The Johnny Cash Show. He has toured in Vietnam and throughout the U.S. State Department, he has appeared in concert in many Eastern European nations such as Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

He has fathered four daughters (Rosanne, Tara, Cindy and Kathy) and a son (John Carter), all of whom have performed with him at one time or another. In addition, Rosanne has become our of country music's top singer-songwriters.

Cash's influence on younger musicians in the Rock/Pop field is as strong a it was in the 60's: A group of European musicians last year released Til Things Get Brighter, an album 100% composed of Johnny Cash covers by such acts as Michelle Shocked and Marc Almond. In addition, fresh recordings of Cash classics like I Still Miss Someone and Big River have recently been made by Stevie Nicks and the Beat Farmers. He is a featured guest soloist on U-2's album ZOOROPA.

His last three albums earned him Grammy Awards:American Recordings Best Folk Album 1994; Unchained - Best Country Album 1998 and Solitary Man - Best Country Male Vocal Performance 2000. Cash received the most coveted of Grammy award for Lifetime Achievment in 1999.

Cash was honored with a Kennedy Center Award in December of 1996.

Despite country music stations refusing to play his newer music, Cash and American Recordings were honored with Country Music Television-Europe's #7 Video of the Year for Rusty Cage, and Playboy Magazine honored Cash with the 1998 Music Poll Winner "Hall of Fame" Award.

SUNSET
(Apologies to Emily Dickinson)

I'll tell you how the sun set.
As shadows marched in lines.
And God sent west his rainbows.
A color at a time.

The hills put on their blankets.
The hawk and crow were done.
And as I said softly in twilight.
See you tomorrow, sun.

I sat out in the darkness.
And felt the dew drops fall.
I watched the moon rise in its place.
I heard the night birds call.

God's world, in perfect order.
In line, one after one.
May I be in accordance.
On my last setting sun.

Johnny Cash 1996

Recently on Country Music TV, they rated the top 100 country singers of all time. They had Cash #1.

Cash was always one of my favorites although I would have rated Hank Williams as better.

Thanks for sharing the lyrics and pictures. Today is certainly a sad day. God rest his soul.

So you see what I meant with "from the ridiculous to the sublime."

Maybe you don't know who Anthony DeCurtis is, but maybe you should find out before you hastily criticize his appearance on the show. DeCurtis is one of the most recognized and respected music journalists in the business. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of a huge number of genres and musical eras. He is more than well qualified to speak about Johnny Cash. And I say that as a Nashvillian who's in the music industry.

Absolutely.

As someone who loves Hank Williams' music, and wouldn't want to detract from it in the least, I have to say that Johnny had a spiritual dimension that made his music ultimately more significant.

And of course, HW died so young, while Johnny enjoyed a full career.

"As you can imagine, this is very HUGE story right now in Nashville."

It's a huge story everywhere, they just don't realize it.

May the man in black, with the voice that sounds like coal, rest in peace.

My first musical love was "Ring of Fire" when I was two years old. My parents say I used to jump up and down and bang on the dashboard when it came on. It was my earliest acquaintance with the ecstasy of music.

It turned into a lifelong obsession with music. Johnny opened my eyes to that feeling in 1962. I have always loved him for that.

A man among men.

Fair enough. I stand corrected, and appreciate the information on DeCurtis.

But I would say that the ideal guest would have been someone with an emotional connection to Johnny, rather than someone who seemed to have more of a remote and academic perspective. However, as mentioned, I did recognize that Today probably had to scramble overnight for a guest, and it was understandable that they would take someone from NYC.

I guess we agree they were both great.

Actually Hank Williams also had a lot of spirituality in his music too. Two which come to mind offhand are "I saw the light" and "Men with broken hearts"

Johnny Cash

J.R. Cash (February 26, 1932 - September 12, 2003) was an American country music singer and songwriter. He became known as John R. ("Johnny") later in life.

He was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, the son of a poor farmer. His family soon moved into a farm in Dyess, Arkansas—provided cheaply by the government as part of the New Deal—and by age five he was working in the cotton fields. He began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy and in high school sang on a local radio station.

After serving in the United States Air Force, Cash moved to Memphis, Tennessee where he sold appliances and studied to be a radio announcer. At night, he played in a trio and one day approached Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Because he had been singing mainly gospel tunes, Phillips said "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell." He did and in 1955 his first recording at Sun, "Cry Cry Cry", was released, meeting with reasonable success on the country hit parade.

His next record, "Folsom Prison Blues," made the country Top 5 and his, "I Walk the Line," was number one on the country charts and made it into the pop charts Top 20. In 1957, Johnny Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. The following year he left Sun to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records where his single, "Don't Take Your Guns to Town," would become one of his biggest hits.

Within a few years, Johnny Cash had to battle drug problems that severely affected his career and on several occasions he wound up spending a night in jail, charged with a variety of offenses. Despite this, his record, "Ring of Fire," went to number one on the country charts and broke the Top 20 on the pop charts.

The mid 1960s saw Cash release a number of concept records, including Ballads Of The True West (1965) -- an experimental double record mixing authentic frontier songs with Cash's spoken narration, let down by the modern arrangements -- and Bitter Tears (1964), with songs highlighting the plight of the native Americans. However, his drug addiction deepened and in 1965 he was arrested in El Paso, Texas for attempting to smuggle amphetamines into the country stashed inside his guitar case. His destructive behaviour led to a divorce and numerous problems performing.

The personal problems continued until he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, purchasing a home at Old Hickory Lake next door to his friend Roy Orbison whose home burned down in 1968, claiming the lives of his two young sons. Deeply affected by Orbison's tragedy, Cash was trying to make changes in his life including his marriage to June Carter (a member of the Carter Family), who had co-written "Ring of Fire", that year.

With Carter's help, and influenced by a religious conversion experienced during a failed suicide attempt, he overcame his addictions and became a born-again Christian. Soon, Johnny Cash released his most successful album ever titled "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison." The following year, he released another prison album titled, "Johnny Cash at San Quentin" that included Shel Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue." Released as a single, "A Boy Named Sue" went to number one on the country charts and to number three on the US Top Ten pop charts.

Immensely popular, and an imposing tall figure, he began performing dressed all in black, wearing a long black knee-length coat. Dubbed "The Man in Black," in 1969 he had his own television show on the ABC network and sang with Bob Dylan on Dylan's country-rock album, "Nashville Skyline."

In the mid-'70s, Cash's popularity and hit songs began to decline, but his autobiography, titled "Man in Black " was published in 1975 and sold 1.5 million copies. (A second, "Cash: The Autobiography", appeared in 1998). During the 1980s his records failed to make a major impact on the country charts, but he continued to tour successfully. As his relationship with record companies and the Nashville establishment soured, he occasionally lapsed into self parody, notably on "Chicken In Black".

After this quiet spell, his career was rejuvenated in the 1990s. Unwanted by major labels he signed with Rick Rubin's "American Recordings" label, better known for rap and hard rock than country music. Under Rubin's supervision he recorded the album American Recordings (1994) in his front room, accompanied only by his guitar, which was well received by critics, while his versions of songs by more modern artists such as death metal band Danzig and Tom Waits helped to bring him a new audience. Cash wrote that his reception at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival was one of the highlights of his career.

The formula was repeated on Unchained (1998) which, in addition to many of Cash's own compositions, contained songs by Soundgarden ("Rusty Cage") and Beck ("Rowboat"), as well as a guest appearance from Flea, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

In 1997 Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome -- a diagnosis that was later altered to autonomic neuropathy, associated with diabetes -- and his illness forced him to curtail his touring, and he was hospitalised in 1998 with severe pneumonia, which damaged his lungs. The album A Solitary Man (2000) contained his response to the illness, typified by a version of Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down", as well as a powerful reading of U2's "One".

Over the course of his career, Johnny Cash won 11 Grammy awards, one of which came for a 1985 album with Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. Titled, "The Class Of '55," the record celebrated their debut days at Sun Records. He received a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999.

Johnny Cash was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. In 1996 he was honored with a Kennedy Center Award and he has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6320 Hollywood Blvd.

In 2002, he was honored at the Americana Awards show with a "Spirit of Americana Free Speech Award".

Cash released American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002) consisting partly of original material and partly of covers, some quite surprising. The video for "Hurt", a song originally by Nine Inch Nails, was nominated in seven categories at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards) and won the award for Best Cinematography.

The most popular Johnny Cash songs:

"Hey Porter"
"Cry, Cry, Cry"
"Folsom Prison Blues"
"I Walk the Line"
"Don't Take Your Guns to Town"
"Ring of Fire"
"Orange Blossom Special"
"Daddy Sang Bass"
"A Boy Named Sue"
His wife, June Carter Cash, died on May 15, 2003 at the age of 73.

Johnny Cash died due to complications from diabetes, which resulted in respiratory failure, while hospitalized at Nashville, Tennessee.