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Video for ``September When It Comes,'' a Duet by Rosanne Cash and Her Father Johnny Cash, to Air on CMT Beginning December 24th HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 2003-- Rosanne's "Rules Of Travel" Receives Grammy Nomination For Best Contemporary Folk Album One of the most moving moments at the Johnny Cash Memorial Tribute concert held in November at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium was a quiet one. In a stunning montage set to a song sung by Cash and his eldest daughter Rosanne, the crowd was given a glimpse of the Cash family's private photo collection, unforgettable images spanning the legendary musician's career and life as a husband, father and grandfather. (Cash passed away on September 12, 2003.) Most of the photos had never been seen by the public before. The song providing the backdrop was "September When It Comes," from Rosanne's "Rules Of Travel" album. It was a moment that resonated with fans and family alike -- so much so that afterwards Rosanne's siblings suggested the homage be released as a video. Beginning on December 24th, CMT, which aired the tribute concert, will begin airing the resulting video of "September When It Comes." It can also be seen on Rosanne's website (http://www.rosannecash.com). The duet is a sparse, stunning and beautiful reflection on mortality that Rosanne penned with her husband and producer, John Leventhal. It has been a difficult year for the Cash family, as Rosanne writes on her website: "Thank you for the tremendous outpouring of sympathy, love and respect for my father and my family. It has been deeply comforting. This has been a painful year for my extended family, to say the least....I know that deep relationships, like the bond between father and daughter, do not end with death. I know that parents keep teaching us even after they are gone." "Rules Of Travel" was recently nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
Ohio.com Posted on Sun, Dec. 21, 2003 Think inside the box From Beacon Journal wire services Still looking for a grand gift for someone on your list? Here are just a few of the new box sets that hit store shelves in time for the holidays:
CASH UNEARTHED Johnny Cash American/Lost Highway
Johnny Cash's late-career renaissance began a decade ago when he started working with Rick Rubin, the producer who made his mark working with the Beastie Boys, Run D.M.C. and Slayer. Using Rubin's open-minded approach to material and no-frills production values, Cash made songs written by artists as diverse as Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Beck and Tom Waits sound like his own and captured a new audience.
Unearthed is an elegantly packaged set that features three discs of previously unreleased outtakes from past sessions with Rubin, plus an all-new acoustic gospel album. The fifth and final disc is a best-of collection from the four previously released Rubin albums.
This fitting epitaph for the Man in Black, who died Sept. 12, is filled with emotional high points, starting with the first track on the first disc: Long Black Veil. It's a stark ballad Cash performed live for more than three decades, and its lyrics focus on love, death and murder --quintessential Cash themes.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers provide sympathetic backup on disc two, making Neil Young's surreal Pocahontas and poignant Heart of Gold shine brightly. The late rockabilly legend Carl Perkins plays guitar on his own classic Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby and sings with Johnny on Chuck Berry's Brown Eyed Handsome Man.
Quieter, more introspective moments dominate disc three, including the classic Wichita Lineman and the lesser-known beauty A Singer of Songs. For many, nothing will match a version of Bob Marley's Redemption Song performed by Cash and the Clash's Joe Strummer. Listening to the fervent, ragged-but-right vocals of these two icons, both of whom died this year, is incredibly moving.
My Mother's Hymn Book, the fourth disc, is Cash at his most personal. The gospel songs offer a glimpse at a complex, faith-filled man contemplating his last days.
The extraordinary packaging of Unearthed includes a 100-page clothbound book with rare photos and Cash's and Rubin's thoughts about every new song.
--Martin Bandyke, Detroit Free Press
Her father's daughter, but her own woman Monday, December 22, 2003 BY BEN HOROWITZ Star-Ledger Staff
The past year has been a rough one for Rosanne Cash. The singer-songwriter has experienced the deaths of four relatives, including her father, country-music icon Johnny Cash, and her stepmother, June Carter Cash, a performer with lineage in country-music royalty.
But, as they say, suffering makes for good art. Cash offered a clear demonstration of that phenomenon during her sold-out concert Friday evening at the Outpost in the Burbs in Montclair's First Congregational Church.
"I learned that relationships with those you love don't end with death," Cash said, as she delivered a stunning, intimate, holiday-season performance that included several tributes to her father and stepmother.
Rosanne Cash's music runs parallel to her father's, but it's distinctively different. While Johnny Cash's earthy music mostly explored country and early rock'n'roll, Rosanne's more literary leanings head in the direction of folk and folk-rock. Her silky-smooth, resonant singing contrasts with his stark, gruff voice. But father and daughter have one element that's identical: Their music cuts to the emotional bone as directly as a sharp knife.
Although the 47-year-old Cash has lost several relatives, one key person remains by her side: Her husband, guitarist and producer, John Leventhal, who played an amplified, acoustic lead guitar and sang backup with his wife as they performed as a duo on Friday. Leventhal, producer of Cash's excellent, Grammy-nominated 2003 album, "Rules of Travel," proved himself a versatile, eclectic lead-guitar man before the packed house of 700.
Cash's first tribute to her father came on her song, "September When It Comes," in which her father confronted his impending death when he sang on it for her recent album. "I was blessed to have my dad sing with me," Cash said, as she and Leventhal drew out this gorgeous song in a way that took its haunting, tender qualities to the limit.
Playing rhythm guitar on some songs and trading light banter with Leventhal, Cash walked a fine line between tragedy and cheerfulness. Calling her father "one of the greatest American songwriters," she performed two of his songs. On the catchy, fun-loving "Tennessee Flat Top Box," Leventhal wowed the crowd by duplicating Johnny Cash's patented walking-guitar style. The evening's most emotional moment came on a slowed-down version of Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss Someone," as Rosanne's mournful, hymn-like singing was fitting for the church setting and left herself along with some audience members in tears.
Rosanne Cash is a first-rate songwriter and performer in her own right, and the rest of the concert proved that. She showcased the high quality of her recent album with haunting, expressive renditions of "44 Stories," "Rules of Travel" and "Hope Against Hope." For the Christmas holiday, she offered a quiet, English folk-style "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and noting it was also the first night of Chanukah, she performed the pensive "Western Wall" from her new album.
Cash's biggest hit, 1981's "Seven Year Ache," was a lilting, playful yet yearning delight. Another major song from her career, 1993's "The Wheel," ended her set as a soaring folk-rock triumph that drew a standing ovation.
After leaving everyone heartbroken by beginning her encores with "I Still Miss Someone," Cash managed to send the audience out on a more hopeful note by ending the concert with a folky, warm version of a show tune, "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" from "My Fair Lady." Despite all the recent sadness in her life, Cash still has her room somewhere with her man and her career in high gear, so there was a lot more to her message Friday than the emptiness of death.
Terence Martin, a singer-songwriter whose '60s-flavored folk style reflects his New York home, jump-started the cold evening's warmth with a solid, earnest set that featured his deep voice and guitar and the mandolin and lap-steel guitar contributions of his accompanist, Dan Bonis.
Knoxnews Dec. 22, 2003 Patsy Is In The News
MEMORIES OF JOHNNY CASH: A Knoxville couple helped provide footage of Johnny Cash for an upcoming CMT special. "Noisemakers" (9 p.m. Friday) will recap major country news events that happened in 2003. Cash is one of the main subjects, and the special will a portion of a videotape that Patsy and John Elmore of Knoxville took on July 5, 2003, at The Fold in Virginia. It was Cash's last performance of any kind before the public.
Gill remembers Johnny Cash as friend, open-minded artist 12/19/03 Chuck Yarborough
Vince Gill is a standard feature at the Country Music Awards show. And not just in the wings or on the sidelines waiting nervously to see if he won. Gill and his wit have been behind the CMA podium as host for a dozen years. This year's installment was especially poignant to the affable Gill. It was his first since the death of his friend, Johnny Cash. Cash, 71, died of complications from diabetes on Sept. 12, nearly four months to the day after his wife, June Carter Cash, died at the age of 73 after developing complications from heart surgery. "We were friends," Gill said of the Man in Black in a call to talk about tonight's "Simply Christmas" show with his wife, Amy Grant, at the Cleveland State University Convocation Center. "I did some television shows with him 20-plus years ago when I was playing with his former son-in-law, Rodney Crowell. And I played in [daughter] Rosanne's [Cash] band." (Though known today mostly for his sweet, emotive tenor, Gill began his career as a guitar player. Such was his virtuosity that no less than Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits once asked him to join the band as lead guitarist.) Gill may be one of the few people who were not caught mouth agape when multiple CMA nominee Toby Keith was blanked last month, losing out to Cash, among others. Cash won album of the year for "American IV: The Man Comes Around" and single and video of the year, both for "Hurt," off that album. "I'll tell you this," Gill said, pish-poshing any notion of a sympathy vote for the late legend, "I think Johnny Cash would've won whether he lived or not. I just think people were so taken with his music once again." It's not hard to hear the awe in Gill's voice when he talks of Cash. "I just thought how cool it was for him at the end of his life, almost 50 years after he started [in music], to reach out and show the world once again what true art really looked like," Gill said. "We all get so caught up in having this politically correct, friendly, noninvasive three-minute ditty that doesn't offend anybody. We kind of settle for stuff. To me, Johnny Cash was never about that." Equally impressive was that Cash's last success came on a song created for a genre so disparate from his own. Honestly, Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails aren't the first names you would normally connect to stone country. Again, Gill is anything but surprised. "You look back at his whole life and you see how much he embraced songwriters and songs," Gill said. "And when he did the TV show in the '60s, look who he had on: Dylan, Joni Mitchell and on and on. He was someone with a completely open mind. He didn't say, You can only be this' or I only like one kind of music.' " To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: cyarborough@plaind.com, 216-999-4534
News From Kathy Cash December 17, 2003 06:40 AM Subject: John Carter Cash and laura Cash CD I called Laura to ask her where these CD's could be ordered from. They will be available for ordering after January 1st 2004.
here's the information:
c/o House of Cash 700 Johnny Cash Pkwy. Hendersonville TN 37075
John Carter Cash BITTER HARVEST c/o House Of Cash 700 Johnny Cash Pkwy. Hendersonville TN 37075
The CD's are $17.00 each...that includes shipping and handling. Just make the check or money order out to Laura Cash or John Carter Cash...whichever CD you are ordering. xoxoxo Kathy
Posted on Sun, Dec. 14, 2003
Johnny Cash 'would sing like he was praying' Rick Rubin, producer of the Man in Black's final four albums, recalls the reverence he inspired. "Discarded" tracks from those sessions are part of a new five-disc box. By Tom Moon Inquirer Music Critic
Rick Rubin will never forget the day that Flea, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, came to play on a Johnny Cash record. It was the second album Cash and Rubin, the producer whose credits include major works by the Beastie Boys and Slayer, had made together. The band was gathered around the revered country singer to record Josh Haden's pensive "Spiritual," and everyone in the room was expected to play together. After a few minutes, the usually imperturbable rocker told Rubin he couldn't watch Cash perform. "He said he had to look away. He couldn't play his bass and look at Johnny," Rubin recalled recently, tripping back through the 10 years he spent recording Cash, a legacy that yielded four Grammys and the new five-disc box Unearthed. "He was captivated, and it was getting in the way of his playing," Rubin, 40, says. "I totally understood what he meant: Johnny had his hands gripped together in front of his chest, his eyes were closed. He would sing like he was praying. Flea kept saying that Johnny was so into it, he was startled. It made him cry. "That was how John did it - his commitment was 1,000 percent. He was right there in the moment, just being the song. It could be startling if you weren't ready for it." Cash, who died in September at 71 after a long struggle with multiple illnesses, had that effect on people. Rock stars known for their preternatural cool crumbled in his presence. Atheists sitting at his dinner table were moved by the way he blessed the meal. From a distance, the singer who cut a mythic figure across six decades of American popular music seemed as severe and foreboding as his authoritative baritone. But up close, he was a model of sensitivity. "I remember when [punk singer-songwriter] Nick Cave came in," Rubin says, "and you know how blasé he is... . Well, Nick was really nervous. I don't think he realized until they were about to record what an intimidating presence Johnny was. So they recorded something, and, listening back, Nick said, 'I sang flat.' Right away Johnny said, 'No, it was me,' and took the pressure right off him." Such incidents are woven into the back stories of Cash's four American titles - 1994's American Recordings, 1996's Unchained, 2000's American III: Solitary Man, and last year's American IV: The Man Comes Around - as well as the many "discarded" tracks that show up on Unearthed. When Rubin listened to the enormous amount of material to cull pieces for the box, what most impressed him wasn't just the quality of the performances, but the sense of calm composure that permeated the tracks. No matter how many musicians were on hand, no matter how complicated the song, Cash's steady personality anchored the sessions. "He was just such a force," Rubin says. "When you were around him, you saw in him an honesty and purity that was like a throwback to another time. His core sense of himself, and his beliefs, was so strong that you just went with it. I remember once telling someone that one reason it's easy making records with John is because he really believes for all of us." Unearthed offers stark glimpses of that belief. Cash - a deeply spiritual man who was led back to the church by his wife, country singer June Carter Cash - had always sung gospel and hymns. During the making of the second American collection, he mentioned several times that he wanted to record spirituals. At first, the idea didn't register, Rubin says: "We were working on so much at any one time, that was just another idea." But as the years went by, and Cash's health crises came and went, the singer kept returning to it. "Then one day [in early 2002], I think it was the anniversary of his mom's death, at any rate it was a day of some deep emotion for him, he came in and wanted to record gospel," Rubin remembers. "He had that hymnbook his mom had used to sing to him since he was a little baby, and we just went." Over the next few days, they recorded the 15 songs that appear on volume four of Unearthed, titled My Mother's Hymn Book. Rubin describes the sessions as "incredible." Though it was only a few months before Cash's death, "his voice was strong. And he'd been singing these songs all his life, so they were very familiar to him. When he was feeling really good, we'd get on a roll and record a lot. Sometimes he'd come [to Rubin's Los Angeles studio] and we'd work a whole day on one song. He would have to stop after every couple of lines and lie down, but he kept going. "Especially since June died [in May], he needed the mental distraction of work. He told me if he didn't work every day he would die, and you could feel that. There was a lot of loneliness and sadness in him." That the American recordings exist at all is a minor miracle. When Cash and Rubin met socially, in the early '90s, the producer was one of the most important record-makers in hip-hop and hard rock, with no shortage of projects. Cash, by contrast, was by then a marginal figure: Without a record contract, his influence was limited to reissues and certain country-oldies circles. "I think in many ways he felt like he was done, and that nobody cared about what he was doing anymore. He had no motivation around him." Rubin cared, and managed to convey that to Cash. The two sat around talking about old songs for hours, and began to discuss making the 1994 record that would introduce Johnny Cash to generations who had never heard "Ring of Fire" or "A Boy Named Sue." "At his funeral, a good friend of his, a movie producer, told me that the reason Johnny trusted me was that I heard something in him that he himself didn't know was still there," Rubin says. "To me it was obvious. But he had to be confronted with it, on tape, before he believed it." The two made a pact before the American Recordings sessions started: Rubin told Cash they wouldn't stop until the singer felt this was the best album he'd ever made. Setting the bar high got Cash's attention, and pretty soon he was spending days in the studio. He recorded constantly, until they had generated more than 100 tracks. "The goal we shared was greatness," Rubin says, "and I really think nobody had inspired him or challenged him like that in a long time." As they grew comfortable, Rubin began to suggest works outside of Cash's usual repertoire of train songs and murder ballads, everything from Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," which competed for six MTV Video Music Awards in August, to U2's "One." "One of the first things I realized was Johnny had this uncanny ability to put himself into these songs. You sometimes can't tell they're lyrics he didn't write; he conveys them with more authority than the people who wrote them do. I heard that constantly from the artists he covered - Trent [Reznor of Nine Inch Nails] told me that it wasn't until Johnny's version of that song that people understood what it was about." Rubin, who is now producing the efforts from Weezer, International Noise Conspiracy, and System of a Down, says that his approach is the same whatever the style of music. He considers the work a long-term relationship, and describes much of what he brings as a producer as "feed your head." "With John, and really all the artists I work with long-term, it's just a constant discussion - about how to make art great, about what inspires us, books we've read, and everything else. John knew so much religious history and ancient history, it was always just great being around him. "He was truly open-minded, and everything he did followed from that... . My feeling is the way we get the most interesting work is if everyone involved is constantly thinking about and talking about what's inspiring. I don't like it to feel like we're making an album: The best records grow out of a process of experimentation that has less of a start date and end date attached to it. "For me, the trick is to constantly be trying stuff. When you do that, you get away from the idea that anything you're doing is important." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact music critic Tom Moon at 215-854-4965 or tmoon@phillynews.com.
Johnny Cash: Unearthed CD OF THE WEEK Fiona Shepherd Johnny Cash: Unearthed AMERICAN RECORDINGS/LOST HIGHWAY, £49.95 Neil Young famously wrote that it was better to burn out than fade away. At the end of his life Johnny Cash, one of the all-time great folk singers, found a third way - he stepped up, imbuing his final works with dignity, passion, innovation and the sheer gravity of his experience. There was weariness and vulnerability in his voice but fire behind his eyes. The results were four exceptional albums for American Recordings in which Cash revisited standards and discovered and owned songs by his musical descendents, from Bruce Springsteen to Will Oldham, Beck to U2.
The other musical hero in the story of Cash’s last decade is Rick Rubin, rock superproducer and owner of American Recordings, who pioneered the chest-beating rap/rock genre but proved just as adept at producing these skeletal country gospel gems and idiosyncratic cover versions.
Together, these two unlikely allies sourced the 79 tracks on this essential five-CD box set. While Cash obviously introduced Rubin to the gospel tunes which make up the fourth CD, titled My Mother’s Hymn Book, it was doubtless Rubin, with his heavy rock background, who suggested Cash record Hurt by overwrought industrial metal guru Trent Reznor. Cash’s stark, vulnerable version became his heartbreaking swansong, accompanied by a staggering, emotional video featuring the last footage of the wizened Cash with his late wife June.
Unearthed is a treasure trove for Cash fans, the collection we’ve all been waiting for since it became clear that there was so much more material from this period which had not been released. It gathers 64 previously unavailable tracks from these fertile sessions over four CDs and the set is rounded off with a compilation of highlights from the existing American Recordings albums. This is no standard posthumous career overview, but a comprehensive document of a great artist’s productive twilight years, which was originally planned by Cash for release when he was still alive.
The first three CDs - subtitled Who’s Gonna Cry, Trouble In Mind and Redemption Songs - explore Cash’s favourite themes of God, love and murder (the name of a previous Cash box set), often in the course of the one song, such as Maybelle Carter’s archetypal murder ballad Banks Of The Ohio.
The first of these draws on country and gospel traditions, so Cash is in his element. The majority of these older songs showcase his gift for telling a dramatic story, as he generally picks characters he can inhabit convincingly. He ends The Caretaker, a self-penned tale of an elderly graveyard attendant, with a knowing chuckle. It’s not in the script, just a golden, intimate moment to which the listener is privy.
‘Unearthed is a treasure trove for Cash fans, the collection we’ve been waiting for since it became clear that there was so much more material from this period which had not been released’
Later, he sets up camp in rock and pop territory, rendering Neil Young’s Heart Of Gold and Jimmy Webb’s Wichita Lineman with almost predictable yearning beauty, fronting a rock’n’roll band for his take on Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby and working with an orchestra on a majestic concert recording of Leonard Cohen’s Bird On A Wire. He plays to perfection the voice of paternal reason in Cat Stevens’s Father And Son, though why Fiona Apple needs to twitter away in the background, other than to score some cred points for herself, is never apparent.
Other collaborators are kindred spirits, from his gnarled contemporaries Willie Nelson and Carl Perkins to his obvious successor as voice-of-doom preacherman, Nick Cave. On the fifth CD, Best Of Cash On America, he cements the kinship by covering Cave’s torrid Death Row meditation Mercy Seat, a song he could have written himself, in a voice of sombre resignation.
Grown men will weep to hear his duet with the late Joe Strummer, another one of the good guys (not that Cash was always a good guy personally, but creatively he’s one of the angels). However, their version of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song verges on the bizarre. It makes sense that Cash would find an affinity with the deeply spiritual Marley, but not that this great re-interpreter would elect to sing the song in its original Jamaican register.
On the fourth volume of the collection he sticks with the familiar spiritual language of his forefathers, performing 15 hymns (I Am A Pilgrim, Doo Lord, Just As I Am) with just an acoustic guitar and his exposed soul for company. Spellbinding.
Totally subjective highlights from across the box set include two careworn versions of Dolly Parton’s I’m A Drifter, one recorded with Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers and another with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, and a cracking, rollicking rendition of Steve Earle’s Devil’s Right Hand, boasting a sharp, witty and, sadly, timeless set of lyrics about who to scapegoat for America’s trigger-happy culture. But these could change with another listen.
It is rare for an artist to end their career at the top of their game like this. Unearthed is a noble testament that the Man In Black did not need youth on his side to perform at his best - he just needed a guitar, a microphone and a song he could relate to.
NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Johnny Cash's Unearthed Where the Soul of Man Never Dies Chet Flippo 12/04/2003 (NASHVILLE SKYLINE is a column by CMT/CMT.com Editorial Director Chet Flippo.)
You asked me to pick my favorite album I've ever made and this is it, My Mother's Hymn Book. On that album I nailed it. That was me. Me and the guitar, and that's all there was in it and all there was to it. I'm so glad that I got that done. -- Johnny Cash, in the liner notes for Unearthed
The most important thing that producer Rick Rubin ever did or -- ever will do -- was to ask Johnny Cash to just sit down with his guitar in front of a microphone and sing the songs he loved, the songs he wanted to sing. This was in the early 90s when Cash had long ago been discarded by Nashville's record labels and was convinced that his recording career was over. When Rubin said he'd like to record Cash, the latter replied, "What for?"
The answer was the four American Recordings albums that Rubin and Cash collaborated on. The results not only gave Cash a renewed career but also resulted in a remarkable new chapter in country music history and in all of American popular music, for that matter. Cash's simple and direct songs, delivered in a frank, straight, technologically unimpaired artist-to-listener mode, struck a chord with new audiences. The many awards started to come for Cash and when Unchained claimed a Grammy for best country album of the year, Cash took the opportunity to run his now-famous flipping-the-bird-photo in Billboard, with the inscription reading, "American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support."
What a great, simple and pure concept -- just Johnny Cash and his guitar and a microphone, just like when he started out auditioning for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in 1955. And he starts singing and all of a sudden, he's reaching out and taking your hand tenderly -- or more likely grabbing you by the throat -- and saying, "I think you need to hear this. I think you might like it." What he recorded was at times painfully intimate but made all the more beautiful by that intimacy and immediacy and vulnerability. And its utter simplicity. Just as he later did with the video for "Hurt," Cash was acting without precedents, blazing his own trail once again. He was just singing what he felt in his heart.
He and Rubin recorded batches of songs beyond those that made their way onto the four American Recordings releases. They're now collected in the new 5-CD box set Cash Unearthed. Volume One is titled Who's Gonna Cryand includes such old Cash favorites as "Long Black Veil" and "Flesh and Blood." He also performs favorites by Jimmie Rodgers and Billy Joe Shaver and an alternate version of Tom Waits' "Down There by the Train." Volume Two, Trouble in Mind, includes accompaniment by Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers on most of the songs. Highlights include a rocking version of Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" with fellow Sun Records pioneer Carl Perkins and a fuzz-toned reading of Steve Earle's "Devil's Right Hand." Especially striking is a version with alternate lyrics of his eloquent Vietnam War saga "Drive On."
Volume Three, titled Redemption Songs, includes one of the late Joe Strummer's last recordings on a duet with Cash on Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." Other duets are Cat Stevens' "Father and Son," sung here with Fiona Apple, "Cindy" with Nick Cave and "Gentle on My Mind" with Glen Campbell. Volume Five is a collection of "Best Of" songs from the four American Recordings CDs, with such selections as "Delia's Gone," "Rusty Cage," "Solitary Man," "The Man Comes Around," "Hurt" and "We'll Meet Again."
What Cash refers to in the liner notes as the favorite album that he ever recorded appears here as Volume Four of Unearthed as My Mother's Hymn Book. It's the true heart and soul of this work and it's simplicity at its purest. Some of Cash's strongest childhood memories from the farm in Dyess, Ark., were of his mother Carrie playing and singing her favorite hymns from her Heavenly Highway Hymns book. Throughout his career, he tried to include at least one gospel song or hymn on each of his albums, as a salute to his mother. When he decided to record this album, he found his mother's ragged old hymnbook and picked his favorites from its pages. And he sings them, very simply, with just his guitar accompanying him. Very plain and unadorned -- and eloquent.
The songs are timeless hymns: "Where We'll Never Grow Old," "I Shall Not Be Moved," "If We Never Meet Again This Side of Heaven," "Where the Soul of Man Never Dies," "Just As I Am" and the rest of them. Cash never forgot singing "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder" at his brother Jack's funeral in 1944, and he lovingly re-creates that feeling here. Cash sounds very much peaceful and at one with the eternal verities of these rugged old hymns.
What we lost when Johnny Cash died was our most enduring musical conscience. There are others holding up their end of the American fabric and the social contract: Bruce Springsteen and Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan and Steve Earle and John Prine and a few more that I'm disremembering right now. But Cash was the whole deal, the real deal, the strongman who could carry you and me along on the journey. He knew the path and the landmarks and could show the way.
Johnny Cash's American IV: The Man Comes Around Is Certified Platinum Tuesday December 2, 10:00 am ET First Ever Platinum Studio Record for the Man in Black LOS ANGELES, Dec. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- American IV: The Man Comes Around (American Recordings/Lost Highway), the Grammy-winning 2002 release from the legendary Johnny Cash has been certified platinum, for sales of over 1,000,000 by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). This is The Man In Black's the first-ever platinum studio record in his remarkable career. On November 5, American IV: The Man Comes Around won three Country Music Association Awards for ALBUM OF THE YEAR, SINGLE OF THE YEAR ("Hurt") and VIDEO OF THE YEAR ("Hurt"). The album was released in November 2003, and features original songs as well as covers of classics such as, Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" w/Fiona Apple, Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" w/Nick Cave, and a haunting version of Trent Reznor's "Hurt" (Nine Inch Nails). Produced by Rick Rubin, American IV: The Man Comes Around is the fourth in a series of Grammy Award-winning albums Cash and Rubin have collaborated on. The series began with 1994's critically acclaimed American Recordings, followed by Unchained (1996) and American III: Solitary Man (2000). On November 25, American Recordings/Lost Highway released Unearthed, a five-CD boxed set containing 79 tracks recorded during Johnny Cash's American Recordings era. Four of the five CDs in Unearthed contain 64 never-before- heard recordings. A fifth CD contains tracks from the four American Recordings albums Cash made with Rick Rubin.
Coldplay Wrote Song For Johnny Cash Friday November 28, 2003 @ 04:00 PM By: ChartAttack.com Staff
Like many of today’s popular artists, the members of Coldplay are huge fans of the late Johnny Cash. The band had written a song for the legendary Cash, but anxious fans will never hear it because the track was not finished before Cash died. According to NME.com, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin said the band had recorded the song, but Cash was unable to complete the vocals before his passing. "We did a song for Johnny Cash," Martin said on the band’s website. "We recorded it with Rick Rubin and everything and all that was missing was his vocals. He was going to fly out to L.A. the week after he died. It’s really sad." The legendary country singer died on September 12 of this year, at the age of 71. During his four-decade-long career, Cash was known for pushing the boundaries between rock and country. This was clearly even in recent years when he recorded a version of Nine Inch Nails’ "Hurt" and Depeche Mode’s "Personal Jesus," both off the last album he released in his lifetime, 2002’s The Man Comes Around. Cash fans that are upset about the lost Coldplay collaboration will have something that may console them for the time being. Earlier this week (November 25), the Johnny Cash Unearthed Box Set was released. The Rick Rubin-produced collection features five discs of classic Cash tunes. Coldplay fans have a little while to wait until that band releases their third album. The band is currently working on songs for the new disc, which is rumoured to be released some time in the latter part of next year. —Manuela Spizzirri
Johnny Cash's youngest daughter pays tribute to her dad with a show of family memorabilia 11/29/03 JOHN FOYSTON The world knows the Man in Black -- the late Johnny Cash, member of the Country Music and Rock and Roll halls of fame, whose granite-hewn face gazes down from the Mount Rushmore of American music. But just a few people knew the man who signed his letters "love, Daddy." "Hi, Tara; I wanted to give you something personal for your birthday," reads a handwritten note in one of the showcases set up in Music Millennium Northwest. "Everybody wanted these cards, so they might be worth having. My love to all, Dad." With that note in September 2000, John R. Cash sent his youngest daughter a pair of report cards from 1948-49, his junior year in Dyess High School in Dyess, Ark. (His scores in English were less than stellar, but Cash walked the line even then -- his conduct rated straight A's.) The note and the cards are just a fraction of the fascinating Cash memorabilia -- most of it never before displayed -- on exhibit at Music Millennium (through Thursday), thanks to transplanted Portlanders Tara Cash and her husband, Fred. "I feel very fortunate to have had him for a dad," said Tara Cash earlier this week, as she helped her art-director husband set up the display. "I learned so much from him, and this is a way to share some of that with our adopted home. There have been so many tributes to him since his death (Sept. 12) -- books, a Country Music Television tribute concert. We wanted to honor this part of him by displaying all the things he's given me over the years." "It was originally just going to be a guitar in the window," said Fred, as he and Music Millennium owner Terry Currier opened a brown guitar case and gazed at the sunburst Gibson J-200 nestled in the red plush lining. The guitar had "Johnny Cash" inlaid on the fingerboard and still bore its owner's honest sweat. "But pretty soon, we were cataloging everything we had," said Fred, "and we began to realize that we were in this situation where we could do something more -- if we were going to do this, we might as well tell the story that hasn't been told." That story occupies several glass cabinets and a good chunk of the back wall at Music Millennium. And there's a good chance that it'll be told just this once, said Tara Cash. It covers decades: a copy of schoolboy's doodles (a city, cars, an airplane spiraling into clouds) from March 1944 signed J.R. Cash, Dyess School; a silvery Johnny Cash Fan Club membership card from 1961-62; a pair of tall, concho-bedecked black boots; gold guitar plaques commemorating sales of "Ring of Fire" and "What Do I Care"; a fan's hand-embroidered banner: "Johnny Cash, King of Country Music." There are tour jackets, ruffled shirts and a black frock coat; posters and photos by the score; the cotton boll that was on Cash's casket and letters of condolences from Presidents George W. Bush and Carter. Tara's favorite remembrances are a tape she made during a visit with Cash last summer and a book titled "Daddy, Tell Me Your Story." The book has a question every day for a year and space for a written reply. Cash filled out every page: "Tell about the best Christmas present you ever received as a child:" "A big box of assorted fireworks," Cash wrote, "from the Spencer Fireworks Co. of Polk, Ohio." "Who was your first girlfriend?" "Louise Nichols," Cash replied, "But she didn't know it." "Have you ever seen or met a president of the United States?" "Yes: Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Nixon, Carter, Bush and Eisenhower. . ." John Foyston: 503-221-8368; johnfoyston@news.oregonian.com
Johnny Cash's Legacy of Emotions, on CD's NY Times
I'll play you one song," the record producer Rick Rubin said over the telephone. Two clicking sounds could be heard in the background. Then a voice, singing, came through the earpiece: "I never thought I needed help before/Thought that I could get by by myself." The voice was that of Johnny Cash, accompanied only by a softly strummed guitar, the song by Larry Gatlin. Cash's voice cracked and wavered with each word, at times falling out of tempo and tune as if fighting against extinguishment. Yet it continued, slow, determined, choking back emotion: "But now I know I just can't take it anymore/And with a humble heart on bended knee/I'm begging you please for help." The song, Mr. Rubin said, was recorded two months after the death of Cash's wife, June, and two months before Cash's own death on Sept. 12 at 71. It is one of 40 to 50 songs that Cash had recorded for "American V," the fifth CD in a 10-year collaboration between Cash and Mr. Rubin, who started his career producing the Beastie Boys and Run-D.M.C. The disc is expected to be released next year. In the meantime a five-CD box set that includes 64 previously unreleased Cash recordings was released this week under the title "Cash Unearthed" (American/Lost Highway), a name that Cash helped select. The CD includes collaborations with Joe Strummer, Carl Perkins, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty, Nick Cave and, in a moving version of the Cat Stevens song "Father and Son," Fiona Apple. The solo material ranges from bittersweet new tracks like "Singer of Songs" to stripped-down classic gospel and country, like an organ-enhanced "Big Iron" that rivals the Marty Robbins hit. "Isn't it amazing that my father would pass away and such a body of work would come out?" said Cash's son, John Carter Cash. "It looks like a 30-year section of music, but it was all recorded in the last few years. And what's amazing is how much more there is." In his last years, especially once he stopped touring in the late 90's, Cash was constantly in the studio, recording as many as four songs a day. "I spoke to him when he was in the hospital when June passed away," Mr. Rubin said. "And he said: `I'm not going to do all the things that people normally do when they lose their partner. I'm not going to go out and spend money or chase girls. I'm just going to work every day.' " Cash was in a wheelchair and almost blind at the time, Mr. Rubin said. Yet his work ethic only grew stronger. He and Mr. Rubin had already recorded four of a projected 10 CD's, and Cash was scheduled to travel to Los Angeles to complete the fifth later in September. Even the box set was not a posthumous idea but a project that Cash, his son and Mr. Rubin had worked on together. "He said that anytime he wasn't working, all he could do was think about June and he didn't want to be alive," Mr. Rubin said. "When he was working, there were people around, and there was music going on, and he was singing, and it was a reason to continue on. Because without that, there was none." John Carter Cash said that for his father writing and recording songs were ways "for him to express his grief, his angst, his faith in God, everything." The songs that came out of Johnny Cash's last decade add up to one of the most moving musical monologues delivered by a man to his maker. Even the extras on the box set hold up to any of the Grammy-winning single CD's that Cash and Mr. Rubin released together, testifying to a body of work just as powerful as the first songs Cash recorded when he stepped into Sun Studio in the 1950's. Back then, Cash was a young rebel with a rolling basso profundo that rattled listeners with the intensity of a caged beast torn between domesticity and the wild. With his last recordings, the power comes from the resignation, vulnerability and honesty in Cash's voice as he reflects on his own mortality. His version of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt," for example, from "American IV," is much more stirring than the original; when a man in his 70's surveys the "empire of dust" that is his life, it has a much more palpable sense of regret than when a man in his 30's expresses the same sentiment. Even more direct, in a new recording of his lesser-known 1959 song "The Caretaker" on the box set, Cash sings, "Who's gonna cry when old John dies?"
Johnny Cash Box Set Released
NEW YORK (AP) -- Fans of the late Johnny Cash have a lot to keep them occupied: A box set being released Tuesday contains a staggering 64 never-heard-before recordings. The five-disc box, "Unearthed," is all material recorded during the last decade, during Cash's fruitful partnership with Rick Rubin, who had been known best as a rap and rock producer.
Cash died Sept. 12 at age 71 of complications from diabetes. "It seems like a nice punctuation," Rubin said. "It seems like a bookend with the beginning of his career and the Sun (Records) work. It's a beautiful way to sum things up." The set includes a duet with the late Joe Strummer on Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," and collaborations with Fiona Apple, Nick Cave, Carl Perkins and Glen Campbell. Cash tackles two Neil Young songs, "Heart of Gold" and "Pocahontas," as well as material by Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton, Steve Earle, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry and Willie Nelson.
The Cash-Rubin collaboration seemed like an odd one: a long-haired, somewhat mysterious impresario who was one of rap's behind-the-scenes pioneers and a music legend who had been largely written off as a contemporary recording artist. But a mutual love of music enabled them to overcome differences. Cash responded to Rubin's desire to record him largely unadorned, and their musical open-mindedness took them down intriguing paths. "When he was too ill to continue being on the road, that affected him," Rubin said. "It was a large part of his life, communicating with people on a regular basis. He took all that energy and put it into record-making. It was his reason to exist."
Cash participated in the making of "Unearthed," finished just before he died. He offered reflections on each of the new songs in the liner notes. Rubin would send Cash CD after CD of song suggestions before each of the recording sessions, and they tried a lot. (Not every idea: Rubin, unsuccessfully, kept trying to get Cash to make a version of Radiohead's "Creep.") This meant a huge amount of outtakes, and they fill three of the five "Unearthed" discs. A handful can rightly be called failures; Cash misses the essence of Earle's "The Devil's Right Hand," for instance.
But many were cut simply because they didn't fit the concept of a particular album. On most of the second disc, Cash is backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and he works with three members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Young's "Heart of Gold." The fourth disc is an entirely new gospel album, "My Mother's Hymn Book," which Cash describes in his liner notes as "my favorite album I've ever made." "I nailed it," Cash said. "That was me. Me and the guitar, and that's all there was in it and all there was to it. I'm so glad that I got that done."
The fifth disc is the only one with previously released material: a collection of highlights from the four-album American Recordings series. "It's a lot of material," Rubin said. "Most box sets are mostly a collection of material that's already been out. This is like getting four brand new albums all at once." At some point, Cash's record company may break up the box set into smaller, more affordable chunks (list price is $78.98), but there are no clear plans for that, Rubin said.
Cash may soon rival Tupac Shakur as one of the most prolific posthumous artists. In preparation for the fifth disc in the American Recordings sequence, he recorded some 50 new songs after his wife, June Carter Cash, died in May. None of these songs appear on "Unearthed." "I think he would have continued doing this for a long time," Rubin said.
A new box set shows that the scope of the Man in Black's persona is broader than fans imagined Star-Telegram Staff Writer Posted on Mon, Nov. 24, 2003 In 1994, Johnny Cash stumbled out of decades of pill addiction and musical obscurity to summon some of his career's finest work -- all through an unlikely pairing with Rick Rubin, who produced albums for the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC. Cash sat down with an acoustic guitar and sang free of the Nashville glitz, the corny arrangements and clodhopper rhythms that cluttered his earlier albums. Listening to American Recordings and the three follow-ups it inspired, you saw straight into Johnny's heart: his defiance, love for the downtrodden and simple, backwoods faith. That is the Johnny Cash celebrated on UnEarthed, the five-CD, 79-song box set that Lost Highway Records will release Tuesday, two months after Cash's death. None of his steely Man in Black anthems appear: no Ring of Fire, no I Walk the Line, no A Boy Named Sue. Instead, this collection includes Cash croaking Hurt, a bleak addiction confessional written by Nine Inch Nails, like a final gasp. It dips heavily into Cash's gospel songs, including an entire disc called My Mother's Hymn Book. It is hard to think of any song that could be more poignant on a Cash collection, so soon after his death, than the hopeful hymn Never Grow Old. But this set shows its real value with a string of oddball duets and cover songs. Johnny Cash's impact grows even more vast when you consider the variety of artists who worshipped him: gloom-rocker Nick Cave, tortured-soul pop tart Fiona Apple and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. UnEarthed opens with Long Black Veil, a ballad sung from the perspective of a dead man, betrayed by the lover who secretly visits his grave. Cash first sang it in the '60s, but on the albums, it sounded just like Orange Blossom Special with its hokey harmonica and boom-chicka-boom beat. On the new box set, he performs it alone, accompanied only by the strum of an acoustic guitar -- far more fitting for such a haunting song. It's hard to hear Cash moan "the night winds wail" over a harmonica. The stripped-down quality continues throughout, especially in Cash's gospel songs. I'm Gonna Try To Be That Way tells the story of a man who compares himself to Jesus and decides to follow the example of the man who "knew how to live right, tried to be a light." On the old albums, show-tune trumpets are blaring all through this epiphany -- irrelevant filler. If I Gave My Soul from UnEarthed pares away everything but Cash and his guitar, and it sounds appropriately ragged. Along with the odd matchups, UnEarthed has a half-dozen duets that make perfect and blissful sense: Willie Nelson, Carl Perkins . . . Cash's most fitting partner, though, is Joe Strummer, founder of the Clash, who died unexpectedly late last year. Though a generation younger and a genre apart, Strummer wrote the same kind of righteous, fist-shaking "conscious" music that made Cash so respected. UnEarthed includes their duet Redemption Song, one of Bob Marley's folkish departures from reggae. This song is a gem just for Cash's imitation of Jamaican dialect: "Old pirates, yes, they rob I, sold I to the merchant ships . . ." Hearing Cash and Strummer together, though, is a precious treat. This is no celebrity pairing. Both of them mean every word they sing. Cash covers dozens of songs on this collection. Some, like Bridge Over Troubled Water or You Are My Sunshine, may have been thrown in for novelty's sake. But it is nicer to imagine Johnny picking through a list of his favorites, culling the songs of six decades and finding the ones that fit inside the pockets of his black suit jacket. GRADE: A UnEarthed Johnny Cash Lost Highway
Cash and Carry New CDs spotlight Johnny Cash's extraordinary career By Greg Cahill In March 1998, shortly after Johnny Cash won the 1998 Grammy award for Best Country Album for Unchained (American), the Man in Black made headlines when his record label took out a controversial ad in the music trade magazine Billboard. The full-page ad depicted a younger Cash flipping his middle finger, accompanied by a short text that sarcastically thanked country radio stations for dumping him from their play lists a decade earlier and derided "the country music establishment in Nashville," which he felt had unfairly cast him aside at the height of his career. It was classic Cash, a rare artist who left this world with his integrity intact. As daughter Roseanne Cash pointed out last week at an all-star Nashville tribute to her late father, who died Sept. 12 from complications of diabetes, Johnny Cash was a walking paradox. Over a career that spanned more than five decades, Cash earned a reputation as the tender-hearted crooner who was a master of the murder ballad, a man equally familiar with devils (his own) and angels, and a liberal-minded performer whose antiwar stance flew in the face of his conservative country peers. The outtakes and previously unreleased material from those now-infamous American Records sessions fuel a new five-CD box set, Unearthed (American/Lost Highway), featuring 79 tracks and a 104-page clothbound booklet with extensive liner notes and a lengthy interview with Cash. The American material introduced Cash--who first crossed over to the pop charts with his 1956 hit "I Walk the Line"--to a whole new generation, thanks to the haunting 1994 MTV hit "Delia's Gone" and powerful, stripped-down interpretations of such contemporary rock songs as Trent Reznor's "Hurt" and Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," both from his Grammy-winning 2002 recording American IV: The Man Comes Around. Before his death, Cash had indeed gotten the last laugh on his detractors. In August he was nominated for four Country Music Association Awards for Single of the Year and Music Video of the Year ("Hurt"), Album of the Year, and Vocal Event of the Year ("Tears in the Holston River" with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band). His video for "Hurt" won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Cinematography and was nominated for Video of the Year, Best Male Video, Best Direction, Best Art Direction, and Best Editing. The first four discs in the Unearthed set comprise 64 never-before-heard recordings. A fifth CD contains tracks from Cash's four Grammy award-winning albums with producer and American Recordings founder Rick Rubin. Disc one ("Who's Gonna Cry"), disc two ("Trouble in Mind"), and disc three ("Redemption Songs") feature such unreleased gems as "Trouble in Mind" and solo acoustic versions of "Long Black Veil" and "Flesh and Blood." The discs also contain Cash's renditions of Steve Earle's "Devil's Right Hand," Roy Orbison's "Down the Line," and Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" and "Pocahontas." Other highlights include some of Cash's extraordinary unreleased duets, including Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" with Joe Strummer, Cat Stevens' "Father and Son" with Fiona Apple, Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" with Carl Perkins, "Cindy" with Nick Cave, and "Like a Soldier" with Willie Nelson. All of that material has been culled from the recording sessions for American Recordings (1994), Unchained (1996), American III: Solitary Man (2000), and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002). Disc four is a new spiritual album titled "My Mother's Hymn Book," featuring 15 solo acoustic performances drawn from Cash's mother Carrie's book of hymns that she taught him as a boy. Disc five, titled "Best of Cash on American," features previously released tracks from the four acclaimed American Recording releases. Meanwhile, Cash can be heard on two other recent discs. Johnny Cash: Live Recordings from the Louisiana Hayride (Scene Records) captures the country legend in concert at the beginning of his career. Recorded between 1956 and 1963 from Shreveport, La.'s KWKH on Saturday nights, Cash can be heard amid the screaming girls with his longtime backup band the Tennessee Two (guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant), who helped define Cash's trademark sound. The sound quality is spotty at times, but the performances are astounding throughout. While the Lousiana Hayride era found Cash exploring the carnal side of life, his contribution to the new Livin', Lovin', Losin': Songs of the Louvin Brothers (Universal South), a soothing duet with Pam Tillis on the bluegrass spiritual "Keep Your Eyes on Jesus," finds him getting right with God as he recites a parable from the Gospels and warns against succumbing to the pleasures of this world. Vince Gill probably said it best: "If God has a voice, I'm sure he sounds just like Johnny Cash."
CMT Top Stories 11/20/03 Back
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MUSIC REVIEW Nashville Tribute to Johnny Cash By JON PARELES Published: November 12, 2003 NASHVILLE, Nov. 11 — Johnny Cash was remembered as a musician and a songwriter, a maverick and a believer, a hell-raiser and a mentor, an icon and a family man in a concert on Monday night at the Ryman Auditorium here, where he made his Grand Ole Opry debut in 1956.
In the first public memorial to the singer, who started as a Memphis rockabilly and became a Nashville patriarch, musicians he had known and admired played songs from his enormous repertory, singing about love, death, struggles and faith.
Cash's legacy was not claimed by country music alone. Performers included the rock songwriters Sheryl Crow, John Mellencamp and Kid Rock along with country figures like Willie Nelson, George Jones, Hank Williams Jr., Travis Tritt and Kris Kristofferson. The Fisk University Jubilee Singers gospel choir opened the show. Al Gore, the former vice president and senator from Tennessee, recited the lyrics to Mr. Cash's song "The Man in Black," a manifesto of sympathy for the the downtrodden and unfortunate. The concert was taped for television by the cable channel CMT, which will broadcast a two-hour version on Saturday night.
Nashville has been missing and honoring Cash since his death on Sept. 12. His resolute individuality and his determination to recognize life's darker side have become a symbol, and a reproach, to a country music business that now depends on blandly inoffensive songs geared to radio-station formulas. "He had his integrity intact up to the end," said his daughter Rosanne Cash, an organizer of the tribute.
At the Country Music Association Awards last week, "Hurt," Cash's version of a bleak Nine Inch Nails song, was named Single of the Year, and the album it appears on, "American IV: The Man Comes Around," was album of the year. "He's on the artistic mind of the music business right now," said Brian Philips, senior vice president and general manager of CMT. "He's casting a tall shadow."
The tribute concert mixed heartfelt performances with reminiscences and video homages from Bono, Ray Charles, the Rev. Billy Graham, Dan Rather and others. As host, the actor Tim Robbins spoke about Cash's excesses along with his virtues: "He could kick out those footlights better than any of them," he said.
Marshall Grant, the bassist in Cash's first backup group, the Tennessee Two, displayed the guitar — actually Mr. Grant's guitar — that Mr. Cash used to record "I Walk the Line," and he explained the genesis of Mr. Cash's trademark beat, somewhere between a march and bluegrass picking, as arising from musical ineptitude.
"So many people think we spent 10 years creating that style," he said, "It was there the first eight bars we played, and we spent the next four years trying to get rid of it."
The performers seemed both humbled and inspired by the occasion. Rosanne Cash sang "I Still Miss Someone" with a quiet purity that turned a lost-love song into an elegy. There was a ghostly moment when Hank Williams Jr. sang "Ring of Fire" in a voice that sounded uncannily like Cash himself. Steve Earle, who has spent time in jail, sang "Folsom Prison Blues," diving toward Cash's low register. Ronnie Dunn (of Brooks and Dunn) shared the jaunty bickering in "Jackson," originally recorded by Cash and his wife, June Carter, with June's daughter Carlene Carter.
Ms. Crow performed "Hurt" with a backdrop of richly tolling guitar chords that was far different from Cash's sparse arrangement, but equally somber.
And Kid Rock revived "What Is Truth," which defended Vietnam War protesters, hippies and other 1960's idealists against conservatism. (Cash was against the Vietnam War but went to perform for the troops.)
Other singers were determined not to imitate Cash. Mr. Mellencamp turned Cash's first rockabilly single, "Hey Porter," into a pensive, almost spectral ballad. Travis Tritt slowed down "I Walk the Line" to half-speed, lingering over its temptations and resolve. Willie Nelson, George Jones and Kris Kristofferson each put his own vocal idiosyncrasies into "Big River," and Mr. Nelson returned to perform "If I Were a Carpenter" with Ms. Crow and to sing a gospel song, "Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)" with calm conviction.
The lineup mixed stars and local figures — the producer and songwriter Jack Clement, the disc jockey Johnny Western — and a parade of Cash's illustrious musical sons-in-law and ex-sons-in-law, including Rodney Crowell, John Leventhal, Marty Stuart and Jimmy Tittle. A daughter-in-law, Laura Cash, played fiddle and sang with Larry Gatlin. At the end of the concert, Cash family members from multiple generations completely filled the stage, singing "We'll Meet Again."
Johnny Cash 'Hurt' By Nashville Rejection (LAUNCH, 11/07/2003 By LAUNCH Radio Networks
Johnny Cash's near sweep of this year's CMA Awards was a long time in coming. He last received awards from the Country Music Association in 1969, when he took home five awards, including entertainer and male vocalist of the year. Cash's daughter, Cathy, says that being overlooked by the Nashville music industry hurt her father. "I think it bothered him a little bit because that's your peers and that was his art, and he was so proud of his art," Cathy said. "I don't think it made him mad or bothered him as much as it maybe hurt his feelings. He was really sensitive and he was always rooting for the other guy, but I think it stung." Despite the 34-year lag, son John Carter Cash says his father's three new CMA awards are better late than never: "It would've been great if it would've happened earlier--that his career would've gotten the notice that it deserved three years ago, four years ago. However, that it happened now it can't be denied, it's importance, and I guess they forgave him." Cash won awards this year in the categories of single and video of the year for "Hurt," as well as album of the year for his last album, American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002).
Johnny Cash tribute fills Ryman; pastor reflects on legend's life Nov 11, 2003 By Erin Curr Johnny's journey Johnny Cash's legacy - musically and spiritually - continues on; within weeks after his death, "The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash" was released by Relevant Books NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Johnny Cash's mother played an instrumental role in his life, especially in his struggle with fame and drug addiction, his longtime pastor and friend Courtney Wilson said. "He had a wonderful mother and father. His mother was a woman of deep Christian faith and commitment and loved the Lord. She was more of an influence on Johnny as he grew older and got used to the fame," Wilson, former pastor of First Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn., told Baptist Press. "He realized the heart of happiness was in serving God and doing His bidding in real life, and that's what he tried honestly to do. He struggled with addiction to the pills, but Johnny was a person who never quit struggling. He continued his fight, and to me, he won a victory over it." Cash died of complications from diabetes in September, and a cast of friends and fellow musicians paid a tribute to him for more than four hours Nov. 10 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Wilson told Baptist Press his last visit with Cash was at Baptist Hospital in Nashville just before he died. He said Cash understood how sick he was, and the two prayed together and bid each other goodbye. "I think sometimes we don't understand that when you're like Johnny was, he couldn't take any pain medicine because there was always the fear of dropping back into the clutches of the drugs," Wilson said. Wilson identified two lessons people can learn from Cash's life. "One thing I hope they'll learn is that drugs are no substitute. It doesn't really lead you to the good life," he said. "But God is a helper of those who turn to Him, even those who make mistakes in life. "And I think we might learn that Johnny loved his family and he was good to his family -- his sisters, mother, father, all of his children -- and that speaks well for a man, especially a man who's quite famous. Sometimes there's a tendency to forget those you love and those that have been with you along the way, but he didn't do that." Wilson told Baptist Press he had been interviewed by Time magazine, The New York Times and other publications and was impressed that they wanted to know about Cash. "His music affected a great many more people than most of us realized, and I'm thankful for that," he said. Among the memories Wilson recounted for the media was the one of a milestone in Cash's spiritual life. Cash had been in a spiral from drug abuse and had started a relationship with June Carter, whom he would soon marry. She urged him to attend a service at First Baptist Hendersonville with her, but he was reluctant. "He said he didn't think he was ready for that," Wilson told Time magazine. "But she told him they could go late and leave early. They came late and sat in the back." That day, the message Cash heard from Wilson about Jesus being the Living Water would help turn his life around in a direction more attuned to God. Among the many testaments to how Cash's career continues to influence the music industry even after his death, the late legend won three Country Music Association awards Nov. 5 -- music video of the year, single of the year and album of the year. "I'm totally overwhelmed with honor and respect to know that my father's legacy lives on," John Carter Cash, son of Johnny and June, said in accepting the best single award at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville. The Nov. 10 tribute in Nashville featured the Fisk Jubilee Singers who opened the evening and such headliners from country music as Willie Nelson, George Jones, Hank Williams Jr., Travis Tritt, Brooks & Dunn and, from pop music, Sheryl Crow and John Mellencamp. A broadcast of the event is scheduled for CMT Nov. 15. W Publishing Group, a division of Thomas Nelson, has announced the signing of an exclusive authorized biography of Cash to be titled, "The Man Called CASH: The Life, Love and Faith of an American Legend," and released next September. The book will be penned by veteran music biographer Steve Turner. W Publishing initially began discussions with Cash about the project in September, publisher David Moberg said. Already on the market: "The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash," written by Dave Urbanski and released by Relevant Books, a division of Strang Communications. To read an excerpt from the book, go to www.relevantstore.com. (BP) photo posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo title: JOHNNY’S JOURNEY.
Song on final Cash album pleads with God Singer recorded stripped-down version of Gatlin's 'Help Me' Thursday, November 13, 2003
NEW YORK (Billboard) -- Johnny Cash's final album will most likely include an emotional, newly recorded version of country star Larry Gatlin's "Help Me."
Previewed for Billboard.com by producer Rick Rubin, the stripped-down, acoustic track proves a heart-wrenching listen, as it finds Cash -- just a few months before his death -- asking God for more time on Earth and wrestling with life after the May death of his wife and longtime singing partner, June Carter.
He sings, "Lord, help me walk another mile, just one more mile/I'm tired of walkin' all alone/Lord, help me smile another smile, just one more smile/I know I just can't make it on my own/I never thought I needed help before/I thought that I could do things by myself/Now I know I just can't take it any more/With a humble heart, on bended knee/I'm beggin' you, please, for help."
One of between 40 and 50 songs Cash and Rubin had prepared for what was to be their fifth album together, "Help Me" was performed by Gatlin at Carter's funeral in June. Gatlin told Billboard.com that just days before her death, she whispered into her husband's ear and asked him to make sure that the Gatlin Brothers perform the song at her funeral.
"The first time I heard it, it freaked me out and made me cry," said Rubin. "It's amazingly personal and revealing and intimate. And for an artist to go there, it's a shocking thing to see. It's kind of what music's all about. We just don't get to hear it so often, something so revelatory as that."
A pallbearer at Cash's funeral, Gatlin added, "It was doubly poignant for me, under the circumstances of knowing that the man didn't have long to live, that he chose one of my songs as one of the last he would record."
In the early '70s, Cash issued a more elaborate, string-laden version of the song, which has been recorded by the Gatlin Brothers, as well as Elvis Presley and longtime Cash friend and collaborator Kris Kristofferson. This version is sparse and features Cash singing while strumming an acoustic guitar.
Gatlin said he visited Cash at home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, the day the new version was recorded. Before he left, Cash told him, "I do not understand death, but I do not fear it."
"I think he knew even then that his days were numbered," Gatlin said. "He knew his health was not good. And I think he missed that dear woman. I think he died of a broken heart."
On Monday, Gatlin appeared at an all-star tribute to Cash at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. During the show, he performed "A Man Can't Live With a Broken Heart Too Long," a song he wrote about Cash on the morning of September 12, when he died at age 71.
Apart from "Help Me," Rubin said it's tough to tell at this point what's going to make he and Cash's final studio album. In addition to a number of rock projects, including forthcoming albums from Weezer and Slipknot, Rubin has been busy preparing the lavish, five-disc Cash box set "Unearthed" for a November 25 release on American Recordings/Lost Highway.
"Unearthed" will feature four CDs of previously unissued outtakes from the sessions for Cash and Rubin's first four American titles. The fifth disc is a collection of the best work from those four albums. None of the aforementioned 40-50 songs appear on "Unearthed."
... another Johnny Cash
Upcoming biography shows Man in Black was also a man of letters
By Michael E. Ross MSNBC Nov. 12 — A legendary hellraiser with a dark and volatile edge, the late country-music icon Johnny Cash also had a warmer, more vulnerable side, a dimension of his persona his former wife and a co-author intend to show in a biography, a book that will reveal the Man in Black as a man of letters. “BEFORE THERE WAS a love story between June and Johnny, there was a love story between Vivian and Johnny,” said Ann Sharpsteen, the co-author of the book being written by her and Vivian Distin, Cash’s first wife (formerly Vivian Liberto). Cash died Sept. 12 of complications from diabetes resulting in respiratory failure, at the age of 71. But he lived long enough to get the ball rolling, approving use of his letters, revelations of his life before the liberation, and torment, of fame. “It’s about 50 percent done,” Sharpsteen said. “Johnny had given permission to use these hundreds of hundreds of letters that they exchanged during their courtship, which lasted about three and a half years.
PUTTING IT ON PAPER “Vivian kept them tucked away for 50 years — no one has seen these letters,” Sharpsteen said. “She wanted to give a candid, frank story going into great detail about her life with Johnny ... There are so many inaccurate assumptions.”
Cash had a need to put his experiences down on paper; befitting a man with an outsize life, he wrote two autobiographies. What’s perhaps less well known is his art for the letter. “Johnny wrote every day over the course of three and a half years, sometimes multiple letters in one day,” she said. “It gives astonishing insight into who he really was.” “It’s really her story,” Sharpsteen said. “Most of it will be in the first person and it will cover the period when she met Johnny as a 17-year-old student. She met Johnny in a skating rink. On a bet Johnny asked her to skate and that was the beginning of a great love story. That was three weeks before he was shipped off to Germany.” ‘WILL YOU MARRY ME In July 1950, fresh out of high school, the 18-year-old Cash enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, and was soon stationed in Landsberg, Germany. It was during his four years in the service that Cash developed a passion for music; he formed a group, the Barbarians, and enjoyed the joys of those early paying gigs: Sharpsteen noted that he once performed at a March of Dimes benefit, “playing for $1 a song.” In 1954 after being honorably discharged, Cash returned to the United States and married Liberto. “He asked her to marry him over the phone,” Sharpsteen said. “The connection was really horrible, so he was shouting over the phone, ’WILL YOU MARRY ME?’ ” The couple took up residence in Memphis, where Cash took broadcasting classes, worked as a door-to-door appliance salesman and laid the groundwork for the musical career to come. Liberto had four daughters by Cash, including Rosanne Cash, a singer and songwriter in her own right.
FIRST BLUSH OF SUCCESS ‘The pills made him do a lot of things he never would have done.’ — ANN SHARPSTEEN biography co-author Cash auditioned for the legendary Sam Phillips at Sun Records, with a group he started shortly after leaving the Air Force. The first release by Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, “Hey Porter” and “Cry, Cry, Cry,” sold more than 100,000 copies, and established Cash as a country talent to watch. “Folsom Prison Blues” came in 1956, followed by the song that for many remains a Cash classic, “I Walk the Line.” Cash had his contradictions. He gave credence to the outlaw aspect of popular culture but was, according to Sharpsteen, “very much a God-fearing man. In these letters, after they’d fallen in love, he told (Vivian) that infidelity was something despicable to him. It was not even in his realm of comprehension.” Indeed, Cash’s steadfast belief in marital fidelity was the basis for the lyrics of “I Walk the Line” — a song that Sharpsteen said Cash wrote with Vivian in mind. But Cash and temptation were no strangers. “Johnny’s relationship with June began seven years before his divorce from Vivian,” Sharpsteen said. “Vivian struggled for years to save her marriage, but drugs got a hold of him. The pills made him do a lot of things he never would have done.”
CRASHING AND BURNING The success of the early songs led to Cash signing with the Columbia label, and to a period of great creativity — in 1963 Cash had a No. 1 hit with “Ring of Fire,” co-written by Merle Kilgore and one June Carter, daughter of Mother Maybelle Carter of the legendary Carter family. It was also a time of trial: Drug abuse followed, culminating in Cash’s arrest in Texas for attempted smuggling of amphetamines in October 1965 and, later, a serious car accident and a near-fatal 1967 drug overdose in Georgia. Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash in 1975. "Johnny's relationship with June began seven years before his divorce from Vivian," said Ann Sharpsteen, co-writing a biography of Cash's first wife. By then Cash and Liberto had divorced. In 1968 he married June Carter, who previously had helped Cash accept fundamental Christianity, and to come to grips with the demons of substance abuse. Despite relapses Cash would suffer over the years, they remained married until the end of their lives; June Carter Cash died in May, the Man in Black four months later. “Her story is such an inspiration,” Sharpsteen said of Liberto. “It will have incredible insights into his life. Women will be inspired by Vivian’s story and how she went through a difficult time, and really reunited with Johnny at the end of his life. They always maintained a warm relationship, but especially at the end. The last meeting they had together, they laughed and cried about old times.”
‘IT SHOULD BE YOU’ ‘He threw 150 percent of his love and support behind this project, and it’s sad that he died when he did.’ — SHARPSTEEN on Johnny Cash's commitment to the project “He told her, ‘if anyone should write a book about me, it should be you. I want to do what I can to help.’ He threw 150 percent of his love and support behind this project, and it’s sad that he died when he did.” Sharpsteen, a television writer and producer, has done long-form biographical programs on Cash, Dwight Yoakam and others. Formerly living in Kansas working on news and entertainment shows, Sharpsteen said she moved to Nashville and started to freelance as a writer and producer. “I pretty much stopped doing television producing because I wanted to do this book,” she said. “It’s sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something that really means something.”
ANOTHER BOOK HEARD FROM The Sharpsteen-Distin effort will follow recent announcements of the planned publication of “Johnny Cash — He Walked the Line,” written by country and western music journalist Garth Campbell. The timing of that book’s pending publication is said to have been pure chance for Campbell, a lifelong Cash fan. “We are not cashing in on Cash,” publisher John Blake told Reuters shortly after Cash’s death. “This is a warm and heartfelt tribute to a man who changed the face of music. It just happened to be in preparation when he died.” “We had planned to publish in 2004 and then tragically he passed away,” Blake told Reuters. “It will now be out in November.” Not to be outdone, Sharpsteen and Distin are pressing ahead with the help of veteran literary agent Henry Morrison. “Two publishers have expressed interest in doing the book,” said Morrison. “We decided to pull back until a reasonable period of mourning passed.” Morrison said Cash had been enthusiastic in assisting the project. “He was agreeable to Vivian using all or some of their love letters from when they were courting, and after they married,” he said. “Theirs is a very interesting personal story, and Vivian’s the only one who can tell it.”
‘THE USUAL CREATIVE PROCESS’ The agent said the collaboration between Sharpsteen and Distin is well underway. “They’ve been organizing Vivian’s papers, and Ann’s been talking to Vivian on a number of days ... It’s the usual creative process,” said Morrison, whose clients have included Robert Ludlum, whose novel “The Bourne Supremacy” is being made into a movie (Matt Damon is set to reprise his role from “The Bourne Identity”). Morrison said he hopes to have a manuscript “by late summer 2004,” with publication late that year or early 2005. Meantime, other tributes and remembrances have been emerging: The CMT (Country Music Television) cable channel will rebroadcast “Inside Fame: Johnny Cash,” a documentary Sharpsteen wrote and produced, from Nov. 15-17. The film, mostly an interview taped with Cash in December, at the singer’s winter home in Jamaica, contain some of his last public appearances. And Sheryl Crow, Willie Nelson and George Jones were among those paying their respects at a tribute concert Monday at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole Opry. Sharpsteen said the high emotion of that event was the reason Distin couldn’t speak for this story. ”(Monday) night was so emotional,” Sharpsteen said. “She’s just really grieving.”
The late Johnny Cash was the authentic voice of America By Don Shaw October 29, 2003, 06:00:25 AM PST
I don't get to a lot of concerts featuring the big names of American music, and, as a result, the ones I have attended over a period of four or five decades stand out quite vividly in my memory. It's such a wonderful thing -- memory -- for it enables me to see and hear distinctly such remarkable performers as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Miles Davis and Van Morrison, among others, live and unforgettable in my private world of recollections. Another performer on memory's stage I'm remembering with particular fondness is a black-bedecked musical legend with an awesome deep bass voice who entertained me and many others at the Stanislaus County Fair somewhere around the late '80s. I'm referring, of course, to Johnny Cash. I'm trying to think what more could possibly be said in the way of tribute to this great artist. So many thousands of words have already poured out in the weeks following Johnny Cash's death: words of praise, of lament, of memories uncovered, of critical estimation -- some profound words, many inadequate words. I can think of just one to add -- "authentic." There was an authenticity evident in Johnny Cash that you don't often see in public performers. His personality seemed utterly free of pretense and artifice; no image-enhancing gimmickry was ever apparent in either his public or private persona. Cash only knew how to be Cash and it was as simple as that. Some might argue that his "man in black" routine was a bit contrived and on the pretentious side, but I would respond that no merely symbolic gesture, no contrivance, could have served so convincingly to convey Cash's sense of identification with the troubled side of humanity. He was undeniably a man of sorrows, hence man in black, but -- and here's an important distinction -- he was never a man of gloom. Even as he sang in empathy with economic victims, convicts and addicts, he could be whimsical and upbeat. There was no defeatism in even his darkest songs. Cash was a religious man in the best sense of the word. He obviously loved traditional gospel music, but he never appeared to ally himself with the exclusionists of Christianity, those who would question an individual's right to search for truth in his own way. He was country to the core, but he had moved beyond the Nashville mainstream to create during his final decade perhaps his finest work -- music of utmost simplicity: stark, unadorned, heartfelt songs sung with such rough-edged sincerity that even old chestnuts like "Danny Boy" and "Streets of Laredo" become fresh and moving. Those who only know the Johnny Cash of "I Walk the Line" or "A Boy Named Sue" will be amazed by these final albums, so aptly labeled "American Recordings." He was, in the end, the voice of America.
Laura Cash fiddles around with best of 'em Sunday, 10/26/03 The Tennessean
Hi Ken: I've just purchased June Carter Cash's last recording, Wildwood Flower, and have a question about one of the artists. Laura Cash was shown as performing on several of the selections. I presume this is John Carter Cash's wife. She was shown to be playing different instruments, which caused me to wonder about her musical background. — J.B./Brentwood Dear J.B.: Laura Cash is, indeed, the wife of John Carter Cash, and she is a champion fiddler. I tracked her down in Germany via the wonder of the Internet and she responded with the answers to your question. Born Laura Weber and growing up in Corvallis, Ore., she began playing the fiddle at age 9. She started entering competitions at 12 and fiddle contests became a part of her life. She spent hours practicing daily and in 1984, 1985 and 1986 was Oregon State Junior Champion. At the age of 17, she became the National Junior Champion. The young fiddler met Roy Acuff in Nashville in 1987, and after hearing her perform, he asked Laura to play on the Grand Ole Opry. Later, Acuff encouraged her to move to Nashville to pursue a professional career in music. She followed his advice, and after high school graduation she came to Music City and got a job touring with Patty Loveless in 1989. In 1991, Laura moved to Sakaide, Japan, for a year to play bluegrass music. In the 10 years that followed, she toured with artists such as James House, Pam Tillis, Ray Price, Chalee Tennison and Sara Evans. ''In April 1999, I was invited to play and sing on the road with June Carter Cash. On this tour, I met my future husband, John Carter Cash,'' Laura said. ''We married in July of 2000 and had a daughter, Anna Maybelle Cash, in July 2001.'' Over the past three years, Laura played guitar and fiddle on June's album Wildwood Flower and Johnny Cash's albums Solitary Man and The Man Comes Around. She has recently completed her own album, Among My Souvenirs, which is a compilation of her favorite traditional country songs and is dedicated to the artists who have influenced and inspired her style and vision of music. ''I am a fan of old-time fiddle music, as well as traditional country music. I was honored to have some of the veteran musicians who played on the original cuts of these songs accompany me,'' Laura said. ''These included Lloyd Green on Touch My Heart, Buddy Spicher on Among My Souvenirs and Uncle Josh Graves on Tis Sweet To Be Remembered. What a thrill! I was also honored to record a duet with my father-in-law, Johnny Cash, on his song I Still Miss Someone.'' Laura currently is on tour in Germany with husband John Carter Cash, who is doing a promotional tour for his album Bitter Harvest, which was released in Germany by AGR Television/ Universal. When the couple returns to Nashville in November, Laura will begin searching for a label to release her album. In the meantime, she says, ''I will continue to enjoy, play and promote the old-style country music.'' Johnny Cash’s Stepdaughter Found Dead 10:20am 10/21/03 Two bodies, including that of a stepdaughter of late country music superstar Johnny Cash, were found in a bus parked off a highway, authorities in Tennessee said today. Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Ted Denny released few details, but he called the deaths ”suspicious”. Officials said carbon monoxide from lanterns in the bus may have caused the deaths on Friday of Rosie Nix Adams and a man, whose identity was being withheld until his family was notified. Adams, 45, and her husband, Philip Adams, had recently sold a home in Montgomery County and were preparing to travel in the bus, The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper reported. They had parked the vehicle behind a house on state Highway 12 for repairs. Emergency Medical Service spokesman Mell James told the newspaper that workers found drug paraphernalia, including needles and pipes, on the bus near the bodies. Rosie Adams was the daughter of June Carter Cash and Richard Nix. She was a songwriter and had pursued a performing career. The Leaf-Chronicle identified the man as a bluegrass fiddle player. Adams’ |
