Johnny Cash's Redemption Song
JOHN LETTIERE
Johnny Cash's Redemption Song
by John Nichols
Later this year, Rick Rubin’s American Recordings label will release
a collection of Johnny Cash songs including a collaboration between
the legendary country singer and one of his greatest fans, the
Clash's Joe Strummer. The pair's version of Bob Marley's "Redemption
Song" will serve as a poignant reminder of why Cash, who died Friday
at age 71, was so revered by his fellow musicians -- if not always by
a music industry that had a hard time figuring him out.
"In a garden full of weeds," explained U2's Bono, Cash was "the
oak tree."
Cash loved playing with younger artists who shared his recognition
that a song ought to come with an edge -- and maybe even a little
politics. His collaborations with Bob Dylan, U2 and Strummer, and the
delight with which he covered songs by Nine Inch Nails, Nick Cave,
Beck, Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen, made it impossible to slot
Cash into the narrow categories where contemporary radio programmers
consign artists. "He's an outsider, never been part of a trend,"
Rubin said of Cash.
In his remarkable 1997 autobiography, Cash reflected on a career that
began with hit singles but eventually saw him searching for a proper
record label -- a search that ended only when Rubin, a groundbreaking
rock and rap producer, signed him to American Recordings and produced
four starkly brilliant albums. When people wondered why a country
singer was on his label, Rubin said, "A rock star is a musical outlaw
and that's Johnny."
Cash embraced that outlaw image, singing in his signature song, "Man
in Black":
Well you wonder why I always dress in black/Why you never see
bright colors on my back/And why does my appearance seem to have a
somber tone/Well there's a reason for the things that I have on/I
wear the black for the poor and the beaten down/Livin' in the
hopeless hungry side of town/I wear it for the prisoner who has
long paid for his crime
Cash took sides in his own songs, and in the songs he chose to sing.
And he preferred the side of those imprisoned by the law -- and by
economics. Cash's obituaries are quick to quote the lines at the
start of his classic song, "Folsom Prison Blues," which go:
When I was just a baby my mama told me son/Always be a good boy don't
ever play with guns/But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die...
Later in the song about a prisoner listening to a passing train,
however, Cash sings:
I bet there's rich folks eatin' in some fancy dining car/They're
probably drinkin' coffee and smokin' big cigars/Well I know I had it
comin' I know I can't be free/But those people keep a movin' and
that's what tortures me
Though he was not known as an expressly political artist, Cash waded
into the controversies of his times with a passion. Like the US
troops in Vietnam who idolized him, he questioned the wisdom of that
war. And in the mid-1960s, at the height of his success, he released
an album that challenged his country's treatment of Native Americans.
That album, Bitter Tears, featured an powerful version of Peter
LaFarge's "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow," a sad, angry rumination
on the mistreatment of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois nation, and
of how the US government "broke the ancient treaty with a
politician's grin."
Years later, Cash would remember that, as he prepared Bitter Tears,
“I dove into primary and secondary sources, immersing myself in the
tragic stories of the Cherokee and the Apache, among others, until I
was almost as raw as Peter. By the time I actually recorded the album
I carried a heavy load of sadness and outrage; I felt every word of
those songs, particularly 'Apache Tears' and 'The Ballad of Ira
Hayes.' I meant every word, too. I was long past pulling my punches."
The Bitter Tears project inspired one of Cash's many disputes with a
music industry that wanted him to entertain rather than educate.
"I expected there to be trouble with that album, and there was," Cash
wrote in his autobiography. "I got a lot of flak from the Columbia
Records bosses while I was recording it -- though Frank Jones, my
producer, had the sense and courage to let me go ahead and do what I
wanted -- and when it was released, many radio stations wouldn't play
it. My reaction was to write the disc jockeys a letter and pay to
have it published as a full-page ad in Billboard. It talked about
them wanting to 'wallow in meaninglessness' and noted their 'lack of
vision for our music.' Predictably enough, it got me off the air in
more places than it got me on."
Even in the 1960s, Cash said, "craven worship of the almighty dollar"
was interfering with the ability of artists to get good music heard.
Thirty years later, as Clear Channel and other radio conglomerates
sucked what life there was out of radio, Cash would argue, "The very
idea of unconventional or even original ideas ending up on ‘country’
radio in the late 1990s is absurd."
In 1998, after Cash won the Grammy award for best country album,
American Recordings purchased a full-page ad in Billboard that was
addressed to country radio programmers who had failed to play his
music. The ad featured a picture of a much younger Cash with his
middle finger held high in a fierce gesture of defiance.
Even as Cash was widely honored in his last years, his music was
seldom played on mainstream country radio. And, yet, Johnny Cash kept
being heard, singing the last track of a U2 album, appearing in a
haunting video that somehow found a place on MTV and joining in that
one last "Redemption Song" with a late British punk named Strummer
who recognized that no one rocked like the Man in Black.
John Lettiere GM
Preferred Computing Inc.
"You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows"....Bob Dylan
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John Lettiere GM
Preferred Computing Inc.
"You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows"....Bob Dylan
http://perfcomp.homestead.com/Prefcomp2.html
K.F. Raizor
Cash was never a stranger to recording "non-country songwriters". I believe
he was one of the first (if not THE first) country singers to cover a Bob
Dylan song ("It Ain't Me, Babe"). On "Johnny Cash is Coming to Town" (from
his years on Mercury, a very underrated album IMO), he did a cover of Elvis
Costello's "The Big Light". A musician friend of mine was told by Johnny's
recording engineer that Cash was a fan of my friend's music and had planned
to record one of his songs. My friend is straight traditional
country/bluegrass. Yet Cash could turn around and cover a Danzig song.
Sir Paul said, I believe in an interview in "Hit Parader" (do y'all remember
when "Hit Parader" was NOT exclusively a heavy metal magazine? <g>), "I just
like good music. And, you know, you've got to search for it. It's not in
every cut on every album." (This interview was in 1974, before the release
of "Excitable Boy", so don't fault him for saying that. <g>) It might amaze
people to know that some of the most die-hard "traditional" country music
fans (that's the Cash/Haggard/Hank/Webb/Buck stuff, not the Tim McGraw/Faith
Hill mush permeating so-called "country music" today) are rock singers.
(Marshall Crenshaw, for instance, produced an excellent compilation called
"Hillbilly Music...Thank God!", as well as wrote the liner notes to the
Razor & Tie Louvin Brothers anthology.) They aren't afraid to step outside
their genre to find that good music.
Johnny could've easily done an interpretation of some Zevon songs. Johnny
is mourned because he, like Warren, refused to be trapped into a mold.
Freddy get ready, rock steady
When Johnny Cash strikes up the band!
Best,
Karen
--
They say love conquers all
You can't start it like a car
You can't stop it with a gun.
--Warren Zevon, 1947-2003
Jim Capaldi
guest on his prime time TV series. Cash received a lot of flak from both
ABC-TV and the right-wing public before the broadcast, but insisted on
having the still-blacklisted Pete Seeger (except for the Smothers Brothers
appearances) on his show.
Jim Capaldi
Pete Seeger Appreciation Page
http://home.earthlink.net/~jimcapaldi
KLR
joining in that one last "Redemption Song" with a late British punk
At Telluride Blues and Brews last weekend, young rap/blues performer
G. Love led the crowd in a singalong of Folsom Prison Blues at the end
of his set. Amazing and heartwarming that so many knew all the
words......
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>
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Mad Dan
>
> "In a garden full of weeds," explained U2's Bono, Cash was "the
> oak tree."
>
Nice to see Bono finally showing some awareness of what he is
RatsLinger1
Nice shot.
Nice shot, man
---Pennsylvania's own Filter
Mark E.