Published November 21, 2004
Country
Music connects Macks Creek man and Man in Black for
life.
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B.J. Carnahan sings "You Ain't Never Had
Lonesome," a country song he wrote years ago. Many say his
singing voice is similar to that of his longtime friend Johnny
Cash. Carnahan taught Cash how to play guitar chords and the two
formed a band while stationed in Germany in the '50s.
Bob Linder / News-Leader
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Cash and Carnahan at the latter's home in
Springfield in the late 1950s. Cash was in town to perform on
the "Ozark Jubilee."
Carnahan Family Photo
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B.J. and Iris Carnahan have been married for 51
years. Carnahan didn't take Cash up on an offer to join his band
because he knew touring was tough on relationships.
Bob Linder / News-Leader
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Cash's personality was never tainted by stardom,
his old friend says. Here, he pays a visit to Audio Loft while
touring in Missouri.
Carnahan Family Photo
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B.J. Carnahan examines photos of artists who
have visited or recorded at Audio Loft Recording Studios, which
he founded in 1977.
Bob Linder / News-Leader
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By Michael A. Brothers
News-Leader
Taking the guitar he rarely plays anymore out of its case, B.J. Carnahan
strikes a quick chord to check his pitch and begins singing a country
song he wrote years ago called "You Ain't Never Had Lonesome."
His voice is rich and deep, his phrasing swooping and smooth. The
sound is familiar, even to ears that have never heard Carnahan sing.
The 72-year-old Macks Creek man has heard that response before.
"I'm not trying to do John when I sing," he says, "but
everybody says I sound like him, and I guess I do."
He's referring to the man the world knows as Johnny Cash. To those
who knew him well, the country music legend was just John.
Carnahan was close to Cash long before he became the Man in Black,
and had a small hand in shaping the eventual star's career more than 50
years ago. Carnahan taught Cash how to play guitar chords and later the
two formed their first band.
Carnahan's life, too, was forever changed because of his friendship
with Cash.
He wrote Cash's song "Roll Call" and Cash used his old
friend's name — Billy Joe — for the main character in his song
"Don't Take Your Guns to Town."
Carnahan had an opportunity to join Cash's band when he signed to a
little no-name record label in Memphis called Sun, but turned it down to
focus on family. He eventually came back to his native Ozarks, started
his own band and opened a recording studio that's still going strong
nearly 30 years later.
As for the singing voice, Carnahan is just being himself. It's the
way he has always sounded, he says. He won't go so far as to say he
directly influenced Cash's singing style. That would take something away
from the man Carnahan calls "the most intelligent man I have ever
met in my life, bar none."
Instead he chalks it up to the same reason the pair became instant
pals the day they met in on a U.S. military base in Germany 51 years
ago: similar backgrounds.
"Where we were raised and the way we were raised might have
something to do with the way we think about songs," he says.
Old friends
Billy Joe Carnahan was born in 1932 and was raised in Macks Creek. He
joined the Air Force after marrying his high school sweetheart, Iris.
Once he finished his training, the couple was stationed in Landsberg,
Germany in 1953.
Walking with a duffel bag over his shoulder that first day on base,
he ran into two men playing guitar and singing songs. Carnahan had grown
up playing country music with his family and was a guitar player
himself.
"That's all it took for me to stop," he recalls.
He dropped the bag, sat down on top of it and listened. One of the
men, named Cash, was an Arkansas native just learning to play chords on
the guitar. The two were introduced and quickly became friends.
They were very much alike. Both were from the Midwest and grew up
with little money. They were outdoorsmen who bonded over fishing and
sailing trips in the Alps. And they loved music.
"The music was the center, of course, of why we got along,"
Carnahan says.
The men did radio intelligence work for the Air Force's 12th Radio
Squadron Mobile, working six days on and three days off. They could get
a lot of fishing and playing done in three days' time.
Eventually the music grew into more than a hobby. Together with
fellow servicemen Reid Cummins and Ted Freeman they formed a band called
the Landsberg Barbarians (a play on the word Bavarians).
"It was strictly amateur," Carnahan says.
But it was the origin of a legend. It was in Germany that Cash bought
his first guitar, and it was Carnahan and Cummins who taught him how to
play chords and rhythms on it. This was Cash's first band, and he and
Carnahan were the vocalists.
Cash hadn't been playing as long as some of the other guys, but
Carnahan recalls he was a quick study. The Barbarians were together for
a year and half, playing country covers on base and in a few local pubs.
Carnahan may have influenced Cash's singing style. He recalls that
Cash once credited the Barbarians as an influence on his later career in
a magazine interview. But like many of Cash's letters and other
memorabilia, Carnahan didn't save a copy of the magazine. He didn't see
a need to.
"He was a peer," Carnahan says. "I admire him for the
things he's done, but it's not a situation of me being a fan and looking
up to him. We were always on an even keel."
Cash made that apparent in one letter written after the men had
returned to the States and gone about their separate lives. Cash had
been discharged, married his first wife Vivian Liberto and settled in
Memphis, while Carnahan and his wife were stationed near San Diego.
In the letter, Cash told Carnahan he had a spot in the band if he
wanted it. By that time Cash was with Sun Records and was beginning to
get some attention as a singer and a songwriter with the single
"Hey Porter"/ "Cry, Cry, Cry."
Carnahan talked the idea over with Iris, but wasn't enticed.
"I knew enough about music to know if you don't do it right it's
not very conducive to marriage," he says.
Iris says she would have supported her husband's decision to join
Cash, but was relieved when he didn't.
"He wanted my opinion on it, and I told him I'd rather ride in
my little Ford with him than in a Cadillac without him," she says.
Carnahan's life could have been much different had he joined Cash and
his ground-breaking bandmates Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant. Yet he
has no regrets.
"I can tell you exactly why I don't regret it," he says
nodding toward the next room. "She's standing in the kitchen and
she's been with me for 54 years."
Their separate ways
Carnahan and Iris moved back to Missouri and eventually settled in
Springfield after he was discharged in 1956. The couple got to see their
friend John when the singer came to town to perform on the "Ozark
Jubilee," a country variety show broadcast live nationwide from the
Jewell Theater downtown.
Carnahan was working in the refrigeration business and Cash was a
rising star, but that never changed their relationship.
"As far as John is concerned he always treated me like an
equal," he says. "He knew he was a star, there's no question
about that. He had to know. But he never acted like it."
Cash paid homage to his pal in his 1958 hit "Don't Take Your
Guns To Town," using his name in the opening line, "A young
cowboy named Billy Joe grew restless on the farm / A boy filled with
wanderlust who really meant no harm."
By the mid-1960s Carnahan had moved back to Macks Creek and formed
his own group, the B.J. Carnahan Band, which performed across the
Midwest on weekends. He continued to write and record songs, three of
which were recorded by Cash in the late '60s.
Two of the three were never released, but the military-themed
"Roll Call" was issued as a Cash single in 1969. Iris recalls
her pride in hearing the record for the first time.
"John was a person that didn't necessarily do anyone a favor
unless it was something he liked," she says. "I knew it was a
good song or else John wouldn't have done it."
A framed copy of the single hangs on the wall of Carnahan's studio
next to a letter from Cash dated 1974. The letter is a response to an
album Carnahan's band recorded at his friend's House of Cash studio and
museum in Tennessee. The songs took him back 20 years, Cash said, to
fishing trips and late nights with guitars and a few beers.
"But ain't it strange how things work out," Cash wrote.
"We came home in 1954, you to Missouri and me to Arkansas and we
went our separate ways for many years. Now it appears that I was the one
with the luck, but you were there all along with that talent.
"I'm so proud of you that I could cry. And I want to go on
record as saying this is one of the finest albums I've ever heard by any
artist."
Cash's death last year hit Carnahan hard. He did not attend the
funeral because "I have too many wonderful memories with him,"
Carnahan says.
Staying in the music
Carnahan disbanded his group in the mid-1970s, after 13 years of
performing. He was too busy with his day job, he says, and couldn't keep
up with the legwork that goes with leading a band. But music meant too
much to drop it completely.
"I had to stay in the music," he says.
Carnahan had a small recording studio in his home, and wanted to
build a full-fledged studio. He had read a few articles about how
hardwoods like oak were the ideal building material for a studio.
"I came out of the house one morning and there it stood right in
front of me," he says, "the old barn."
The oak-framed barn was built by Carnahan's uncle around 1930. He
spent two years turning it into a fully-equipped professional studio.
Audio Loft Recording Studios opened for business in 1977.
Carnahan admits that Macks Creek, with a population of less than 300,
is an unusual place for a recording studio. But location and atmosphere
have worked to Audio Loft's advantage. He and longtime partner and
general manager Brad Edwards bill it as a quiet, laid-back place to
record.
It's worked. Audio Loft has had a steady stream of clients over the
years and the facilities have been upgraded from its original four-track
capabilities to 24-track digital.
The vast majority of artists are local but a few, like singer Leona
Williams or Grandpa Jones of "Hee-Haw" fame, are more
well-known. The Beach Boys even did some post-production work for a
television show there a few years ago.
Edwards, who has worked with Carnahan since he was a teenager in the
late 1970s, bought the business in 2000. He calls Carnahan a mentor.
"(Music) drove him tremendously, especially when I first met him
in the '70s and early '80s," Edwards says. "He loved to
perform and he loved to visit with people about music and he still does.
... It's just a part of him and probably always will be."
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