Int Life 1994

~ Country music had a spectacular breakout in the late 1960s. Some say that the eye of the hurricane was your house.

In 1968, '69, when I was doing my TV show, we'd invite singers and guitar players over for dinner. Afterward, everyone had to take the hot seat and do at least two songs. The most memorable night was in '69. Kris Kristofferson sang "Me and Bobby McGee," Bob Dylan sang "Lay Lady Lay," Joni Mitchell sang "Both Sides Now," Graham Nash sang "Marrakesh Express," and Shel Silverstein sang "A Boy Named Sue"&emdash;all in the same night. People had never heard those songs, and the very next week, when I played San Quentin prison, I took "A Boy Named Sue" with me.

~ That first TV show was incredible: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the Statlers, the Carters .

Well, it was the No. 1 show for a while. Of course, when we first talked about doing it, I heard grumblings. "We're not going to have so-and-so on this show in Nashville." And I heard Pete Seeger's name mentioned. Pete's a friend of mine. I've sat in his cabin in New York and played rhythm while he played fretless banjo for many hours. So I told them, "If I do a weekly show, I insist on Pete Seeger being one of my guests, as well as Bob Dylan, if I can get them." There was grumbling, there were heads huddled, and finally I had to say, "It's either my way or the highway. I'm gone. " So they went for it. They thought they were "closely monitoring" everything Pete Seeger did. But it turned out he was just a folksinger with a banjo&emdash;which, by the way, worked really good on the show&emdash;and how much can you monitor a folksinger with a banjo?

~ You mentioned San Quentin. How did you start playing the jailhouse circuit?

The word got around among the convicts that I was one of them, because of the songs I sang. So I started getting a lot of requests for prison concerts and started doing a lot of them. I first did San Quentin prison in, I think, 1958&emdash;oh, Merle Haggard can tell you the date. He was in the audience.

~You discovered Glen Sherley in prison, didn't you?

The night before I was going to record at Folsom prison, I got to the motel and a preacher friend of mine brought me a tape of a song called "Greystone Chapel." He said a convict had written it about the chapel at Folsom. I listened to it one time and I said, "I've got to do this in the show tomorrow." So I stayed up and learned it, and the next day the preacher had him in the front row. I announced, "This song was written by Glen Sherley." It was a terrible, terrible thing to point him out among all those cons, but I didn't think about that then. Everybody just had a fit, screaming and carrying on. After a year or so, he was paroled. He did an album, a good one, and he wrote "Portrait of My Woman,~' which Eddy Arnold had a hit record off of.

~What happened to him?

There are two stories, and I don't know enough to tell you which one to believe. It was either suicide or cancer, I know there was a gun involved. The last time I saw him, he was back in California, working for some big cattle company, feeding 10,000 cattle a day. He lived in the cab of a semi truck. He didn't want any more of public life. Just couldn't handle it.

~ The help you gave the Rouse brothers had a happier outcome.

I recorded "Orange Blossom Special" in the mid'60s, and in those days everybody that recorded it claimed the "arrangement" because no one knew who wrote it. But Mother Maybelle Carter was at the session, and I asked her, "Do you know who really wrote 'Orange Blossom Special'?" She said, "Sure I do. Ervin Rouse and his brother Gordon." And I said, "Where are they? " She said, "Last time I heard, they were in Florida." It was the only clue I had. I called a disc jockey down there named Cracker Jim Brooker, and I asked Cracker Jim, "Did you ever hear of Ervin Rouse?" And he said, "Aw, I know Ervin. He lives with the Seminoles out in the swamp, and he makes swamp buggies for a living." I said, "You got any idea how I could talk to him?" And he said, "Sure. I'll announce it on the air: 'Ervin, call me and I'll give you Johnny Cash's number."' It wasn't an hour till Ervin Rouse called me from some little settlement in the swamps. I said, "Ervin, I happen to be coming to Miami on tour. Would you come to my show and do 'Orange Blossom Special' with me?" He and Gordon came in the clothes they worked in. I brought Ervin up to play the fiddle, and he absolutely killed them. At the end of the song, they were applauding and he literally got down on his knees. He was such a sweet, humble man. Gordon's still living. I still see him every time I'm down there.

~ Another songwriter you helped was Kris Kristofferson.

Kris was a janitor at CBS. He used to slip tapes of his songs into my wife's purse. The next time he saw me, he'd say, "Did you hear that song?" I'd say, "Not yet, but I will." And this went on for a long time. In fact, I had so many tapes come in that I just didn't want to hear them. I used to open the balcony to our lakeside room and throw them in the water. Then one Sunday afternoon he landed a helicopter out here in my yard.

~ Truly?

Yup. He landed a helicopter, fell out with a beer in one hand and a tape in the other and said, "You're gonna listen to my song." I said, "Come on in." I listened to "Sunday Morning Coming Down." I listened to all of his songs after that.

~ What singers do you particularly admire? Hank Snow is my favorite.

I just bought his boxed set last month. I was with Rick Rubin, my new producer. We went to Tower Records, and I saw it and said, "Did you ever listen to Hank Snow?" And he said, "No, I don't think I've ever heard of him." I said, "Well, you're going to." I bought it, we took it to his house, and Rick kept it.

~: Rubin is known as a hard-rock producer. How did you two get together?

He heard I wanted to cut ties with Mercury Records because it had been an unsuccessful venture, on their part and my part. So Rick called my manager and said he'd like to sign me. He didn't say he'd like to talk about it, he said he'd like to sign me. So when we met, I asked him, "What kind of album would you like me to record?" And he said, "Whatever Johnny Cash is, that's what I want on a record." He made me feel like Sam Phillips made me feel.

~ High praise. How did Sam Phillips, the Sun Records impresario, discover you, anyway?

He didn't discover me. I called him three times and was turned down. Finally, I just sat on his steps one morning and waited with my guitar beside me. He came up, and evidently he'd had a good night. So I said, "I'm Johnny Cash. I think if you'd listen to me that you'd be glad you did." That line has never failed me. He said, "Well, come on in, let's hear it?' The first thing I recorded with Sam was "Wide Open Road" and then "Folsom Prison Blues." But he liked "Hey, Porter" better, and he said, "Go home and write me a weeper to go with it, a crying-in-your-beer song." So I went home and wrote "Cry, Cry, Cry." I thought that really sounded like a weeper&emdash;not cry once, but cry three times. You know, Sam had vision. We need more of that today. I miss the tried and-true and the dyed-in-the-wool. I guess that's a typical comment from an artist my age. Glory for the new artists, great. But country radio doesn't program hardly anybody over 40. Country music is about tradition. And they're Iosing that tradition. In my mind, anyway.