Johnny Cash stories 09/13
PUSSSYKATT
Sunday's edition of "60 Minutes' (7 p.m., CBS) will include the late Harry
Reasoner's interview with the country legend Johnny Cash.
At 9 p.m. Monday, Trio! will repeat "Kindred Spirits: A Tribute to Johnny
Cash,' a music and interview special featuring covers of Cash hits by Roseanne
Cash, Travis Tritt, Marty Stuart and others.
MUSIC GIANT'S FADE TO BLACK:
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/40163.htm
Fade to black:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/117191p-105689c.html
Johnny Cash's Legacy Crosses Generations:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2F0314E5
Neil Haislop's Nashville Update
Johnny Cash, ''The Man in Black'' died early Friday morning due to
complications from diabetes, which resulted in respiratory failure,'' Cash's
manager, Lou Robin, said in a statement issued by Baptist Hospital in
Nashville. He was 71.
Cash died at the hospital at 1 a.m. EDT.
''I hope that friends and fans of Johnny will pray for the Cash family to find
comfort during this very difficult time,'' Robin said.
Cash had been released from the hospital Wednesday after a two-week stay for
treatment of an unspecified stomach ailment. The illness caused him to miss
last month's MTV Music awards, where he had been nominated in seven categories.
Cash had battled a disease of the nervous system, autonomic neuropathy, and
pneumonia in recent years.
The word "Legend" is so carelessly applied these days to the media-hyped,
trend-du-jour artists of America, that it has all but lost its meaning. To find
a true measure for the term "Legend," look at Johnny Cash. In a career that
spanned six decades he loomed nearly as large as a pop icon, as he did a
country mega-star. Since his debut on Sun Records in 1955, he recorded over 500
albums. From them came over 140 country hit singles and some 50 singles that
made the Billboard Hot 100 Pop chart. He was there at Sun along with other true
legends-to-be like Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis, all
key ingredients in the primordial soup that congealed into a thing called rock
& roll, while Johnny simultaneously began to help re-define country music. It
is not surprising that he is the first artist enshrined in the Country Music
Hall of Fame and the Roll and Rock Hall of Fame.
Johnny (b. J.R. Cash, Feb. 28, 1932, Kingsland, Arkansas) grew up in Dysess
Colony, Northeast Arkansas surrounded by all images that appeared throughout
his autobiographical songs like strands of pure gold interlaced through the
cotton fiber cloak of a common man. For fifteen years he lived on the
Mississippi River, next to share-croppers and cotton pickers. He was fascinated
by the trains that passed by their farm and impressed by the hot brimstone
messages and soul grabbing music of the Pentecostal church his mother was
devoted to.
He loved the music that came from the Grand Ole Opry and he idolized Ernest
Tubb, Hank Williams, Roy Acuff and Hank Snow. He also watched his brother Roy
actually put a band together in the 1940s called the Dixie Rhythm Ramblers.
They were experiences that imprinted in his subconscious ready to be accessed
when he began to write, or to be transformed into raw emotion when he sang. Sun
Records' Sam Phillips recognized that when John Cash (He was born with only the
initials J. R. and John evolved as a name, but the R. remains just an initial.
Phillips changed John to Johnny) auditioned for him in 1955.
Johnny had moved to Memphis to attend a disc jockey school on the G.I. Bill. He
thought he was auditioning to be a gospel singer, but Phillips had other plans.
During the audition Johnny sang an original song called, "Hey Porter." Phillips
ordered his engineer to start recording and said to Johnny, "Sing it again."
That was his first recording. Phillips then told him, "Now, go home and write
me a hit to go with it." The result was "Cry! Cry! Cry!," Sun's first country
chart hit.
Although Phillips considered Johnny to be the most "country" of his stable of
future legends, the lines between identified music genres were blurred back
then and radio played everything that was a hit. Between '55 and '58, Johnny
released Sun recordings that would become seminal, American classics like
"Folsom Prison Blues," "I Walk the Line," "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" and
"Guess Things Happen That Way." Johnny's records had such broad appeal because
they were pure and simple arrangements stripped of the usual steel guitar,
background vocals and fiddle licks that identified "country & western" at the
time. Johnny told writer Bill Flanagan, "Sam Phillips had a vision. He saw
another direction for the music and I did too. I never liked fiddle and steel
guitar on my music and Nashville was grinding out songs that sounded the same,
calculated and predictable. My music wasn't done to sound like somebody else in
Nashville or in rock."
Johnny was a true original and an instant star. No wonder that Phillips cried
foul when he was lured away in 1958 by Columbia Records, his musical home for
the next 32 years ('58 to '90). Between the late '50s through the early '70s
nearly all of Johnny's country releases crossed over to the pop chart with big
country hits like "Ring of Fire" and "A Boy Named Sue" becoming significant pop
hits. That was a tribute to an artist who transcended categorization.
Nevertheless, he was a star of country music, as proud of its traditions as he
was of the innovations he was responsible for along with some of his
forward-looking friends like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris
Kristofferson. He was as comfortable singing roots country and gospel with his
wife June Carter and her sisters, as he was singing "If I Were a Carpenter" or
recording a Highwayman album with Kris, Waylon and Willie. He is as ready to
praise young artists bringing something new to traditional country music, as he
was to support the progressive music of his daughter Rosanne Cash and
stepdaughter Carlene Carter. He understood them all.
Like many of his peers, Johnny's presence on the country chart diminished in
the late '80s and early '90s. That did not signal the end of his career. "I
will continue to do my music and record albums," he declared. In 1994, Rick
Rubens (producer of rock acts like Red Hot Chili Peppers) approached Johnny
about recording an acoustic record for his American Records. The CD Johnny
Cash: American Recordings became his best selling album in a decade. With
stark, guitar vocals of songs like "Deliah's Gone," "Drive On," The Man Who
Couldn't Cry," "Redemption," etc., Johnny had gotten back to the basics, just
his songs presented by that all-knowing voice. The album was critically
acclaimed and sparked the interest of young, new age fans who were discovering
him for the first time. He said, "There are more young people coming to my
shows than ever before. I don't know if they are going to respond by buying
millions of my records, but this album is an expression of my art that I've
always wanted to do, just to sit down with my guitar and sing a song, just me
and you, personal and close up to let people hear what I really am."
The truth is, that big, earth quaking voice always seemed up close and
personal, instantly recognizable and eternally evocative, the internal echoes
of a simple man who became bigger than life and, in the process, sold over 50
million records. His late wife, June Carter Cash, may have summed him up best
when she said, "He is a man. The kind of man who could talk sweetly to his
family and protect them physically if he has to, who loves his son and six
daughters and shows understanding to his wife. He uses all his talents to best
advantage and he has such dynamic charisma on stage that he can make a person
half a mile away from the stage think he is seeing the pupil of John's eye."
The following reactions have poured in today in response to Johnny Cash's
death early this morning from complications of diabetes. Cash died at
Baptist Hospital in Nashville at 1 a.m. EDT, today. He was 71.
TIM McGRAW:
"Bigger then any musical genre was Johnny Cash. He was an American music
icon that set the standard for how to make music on your own terms. We will
miss him."
DIXIE CHICKS:
"It's a sad day in country music today. Johnny Cash's voice was arguably
one of the most recognizable and influential in country music. It's
devastating to lose two great country artists in the same year. Johnny Cash
and his wife June Carter Cash were truly a dynamic force in shaping the
music industry. Our thoughts and prayers are with their family.
MERLE KILGORE:
Merle Kilgore, best-man to Johnny Cash at his wedding to June Carter Cash
and co-writer of "Ring of Fire," is deeply saddened with the news of Johnny
Cash's passing. "It's a sad day in Tennessee, but a great day in Heaven. The
'Man in Black' is now wearing white as he joins his wife June in the angel
band."
GEORGE JONES:
"This is a very sad day for me as well as for millions of music fans around
the world. John was a very dear friend - we had a long history together.
We both went through a lot of messes in the old days but ended up realizing
what was important in life and changed our ways. I just went out and
visited him a few weeks ago and he looked so good and was busy recording new
material. I know that the angels will sing today and heaven is a better
place with the addition of Johnny Cash. I'm sure he is happier now that he
is with his beloved June."
BRAD PAISLEY:
"Country music has never had a more powerful personality than Johnny Cash.
So much can be said about this incredible man. Rock, country and Gospel
will be fighting to claim his music as their own -- and, in the end, they
all get to. He brought a Memphis rock-n-roll attitude to country music, and
all things good about country to rock -- and married both of these to Gospel
music at the same time. There will never be anyone like him ever again."
EDDIE MONTGOMERY:
"Even though all of us try to wear black, there will only ever
be one Man In Black. I hate to see our outlaw heroes leave because they
have influenced country music so much. I don't know that anyone can
stand on the mountain like they have."
KIX BROOKS:
"It's really hard to put into words all the things I feel about Johnny
Cash. I learned to play guitar by learning about 100 songs by Johnny Cash,
who was my hero as a songwriter. As a man, he was the rock of our nation.
Growing up, I remember watching him on "The Johnny Cash Show" and seeing
him play "John Henry" -- just being floored by that. He was such a dynamic
personality, a great leader and he always stood for the right things. So, how
can you even begin to put into words a loss like that?"
KENNY CHESNEY:
"I don't know if I can say this, but it's how I feel...
To me, Johnny Cash was the original bad ass in music. Not just country
music, but all music. Everybody strives to be universal, but he was
the first one to make it so... to make it where everybody could see
themselves in the songs, in that music. When you can give people all that,
their dignity, their power, then you've really made a mark -- and that's the
kind of mark that will last beyond forever."
TERRI CLARK:
"Growing up in Medicine Hat, everything seemed larger than life... but few
things seemed as larger than larger than life than Johnny Cash. THAT
voice... THAT voice, as close to the voice of God as mortal man can get --
and it was a voice that was only lifted for the right things, righteous
causes, the people no one wanted to recognize.
Johnny Cash rocked hard. Harder than anyone. But what really made him
stand out, more than the backbeats, the tv shows, the hit records, was how
he stood up for the little people, the way he believed in the right
things... He was a beacon for both musical and personal integrity, and he
set a bar most of us can only gaze at and dream of, which is the best
inspiration of all."
RODNEY CROWELL:
"I am deeply saddened by the loss of my children's grandfather and my
very dear friend. I loved big John with all my heart. The citizens of
the world have lost one of their most enduring guiding lights. As a
musical hero to millions, a trailblazing artist, humanitarian, spiritual
leader, social commentator and most importantly, patriarch to one of the
most varied and colorful extended families imaginable, Johnny Cash will,
like Will Rogers, stand forever as a symbol of intelligence, creativity,
compassion and common sense. I'm thinking Mt. Rushmore."
ANDY GRIGGS:
"Johnny Cash was not only bigger than country music; he was bigger than
life. The world will never be the same without the man in black."
JEFF BATES:
"Johnny Cash stood for the common man... He made it okay to be flawed, to be
human, to be poor or mixed or whatever you thought was wrong with you. He
was my Daddy's favorite artist, and those songs were some of the hardest
reality I've ever heard in music, but I related to it because it was where
we came from, too. He walked through this world and gave respect to everyone he
encountered, from the highest to the lowest. And if you looked up the word
"redemption" in the dictionary, there'd be his picture."
JEFF HANNA (NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND):
"Johnny Cash was the first voice you hear on Circle Two's 'WIll The
Circle Be Unrboken.' Who else would you give that first verse to, after all?
And he also brought us a wonderful Carter Family standard -- 'Life's Railway
To Heaven,' which he recorded with Helen, June and Anita Carter. To have the
Carter Sisters with Johnny Cash on that song, what else could we have opened
that record up with?
"For Circle Three, Johnny told us he had a song he'd never recorded that
he really wanted to. It was called 'Tears In The Holston River,' and it was
about Mother Maybelle and Sara's funerals... And there were plenty of tears
when the tracking went down. He was the first guest we had for that
record... and he absolutely set the spirit for that project, one where our
sons were also part of the music... because that's what Johnny Cash always
believed: the music will always carry us along."
CMA - ED BENSON EXECTIVE DIRECTOR:
"Johnny Cash was an international ambassador for Country Music and a musical
trailblazer throughout his life, possessing one of the most recognizable
names, faces and voices the world has ever known. Recording music in six
different decades, Cash remained one of the music industry's most vital and
important artists throughout his life as demonstrated by his recent
nominations for four CMA Awards, as well as the myriad of honors and praise
bestowed upon him during the last year. It is incomprehensible to imagine
what Country Music would have been like without Johnny Cash and his music.
Through the years CMA honored him with six CMA Awards (including Entertainer
of the Year in 1969) and inducted him into the Country Music Hall of Fame in
1980. We are deeply saddened by his loss, but find comfort in knowing that
his music and influence will live forever."
STEVE HOLY:
"Johnny Cash is not only a monument to Country Music but to all genres of
music. We all should be proud that Johnny Cash extended his talents as a
gentleman and an artist to create the foundation of Country Music."
SUZY BOGGUSS:
"Johnny touched so many lives in this business. One of the greatest learning
experiences of my life was a four hour cross country plane ride with Johnny
and June. They showed me that it's possible to use celebrity to do good in
the world, and at the same time, to enjoy life."
JEFF CARSON:
"You know, two years after I moved to Nashville, I was in a guitar shop
casually looking around and I just about bumped into this man (and he was
dressed in black). When I turned around and realized who it was, I remember
just standing their in awe. I kept pretending like I was looking at the
guitars on the wall, but I just couldn't take my eyes off of him. I was
just frozen. I'll never forget how I felt just to be that close to him. I
guess that tells you the effect Johnny Cash had on me!"
BRAD MARTIN:
"All I can say is I'm very sad today. Here is a legend who inspired other
legends. My heart is heavy and my prayers go out to the Cash family and
anyone who's life he impacted. He will be deeply missed, but never
forgotten."
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