Johnny R. Cash is the man in black, the voice of the disinherited in the United States, a country icon turned reference point of American popular music who lived for music throughout his troubled life. Few artists have managed to go from hell to heaven as many times as the musician from Dyess (Arkansas) without ever losing the public’s favor thanks to hits like I walk the line or Folsom prison blues.
From Folsom prison to the White House, Cash traveled through all the spaces of American society through compositions that are the center of Johnny Cash, life in letters (Libros del Kultrum), a compilation of 125 songs from the more than 1,000 he composed throughout his career, selected with the help of John Carter Cash, singer and pastor like his father, only child born of the love that united him for almost his entire life in also the musician and composer June Carter, author of the famous Ring of fire. Beyond the legend, the new work delves into Cash’s compositional side with a compilation of images and manuscripts for the enjoyment of fans of the musician, who never renounced his gospel origins, even when the sales left him or his life went to the opposite end of the Christian commandments.
“Many people appreciate my father for his open-mindedness and support for people who suffer and the forgotten,” explains John Carter Cash via video conference from the Cash Cabin studios in Tennessee, where his father lived for many years and recorded many of the tracks collected on American recordings, the last batch of discs with versions that brought him back to a new generation of fans thanks to producer Rick Rubin.
“He still has many young fans who come and discover his music, he is considered a respected artist, but also an accomplished composer; everyone wants to dress and look as cool as Johnny Cash, a lot of people find connections with his life and his music.”
In search of these connections, John Carter has chosen ten songs linked to other topics that his father dealt with throughout his career.
religion
Over the next hill
We’ll be home. A believer sings the truth, 1979
On a car trip in 1979, a young John Carter asked his father: “Are we there yet?”. Question to which Johnny Cash, acting as a father, replied: “After the hill, we’ll be home”. The theme talks about “the search for a light, something bigger than our life. Faced with a confrontation or the same darkness, we will return to the truth, we will be at the center again”, explains Carter. “Religion can mean looking for ways to meet other people; you can go buy vegetables in a religious way”.
Jack Cash
We’ll meet again
American recordings IV, 2002
Cash included this classic from 1939 in the fourth volume of American recordings, “it’s a song that the father didn’t write, but it talks about the hope of seeing his brother again one day”. Jack Cash died at the age of 14 after a week of agony due to an accident with a wood saw. On his deathbed he asked his mother: “Can you hear the angels? I wish you could, they are so beautiful”.
The prison
San Quentin
At San Quentin live
The musician from Arkansas became famous for his performances in prisons in the United States. “At San Quentin, he connected with the inmates, you couldn’t tell he was different from them,” a bond Carter relates to the “honest love of people” that his father, known for having acted several times for to the condemned At the 1969 performance, he introduced this track, “it wasn’t his favorite song, but it obviously connected with the people he was writing for.” It helped that the song sent the California penitentiary to hell.
Paternity
My children walk in truth
Believe in him, 1986
“Dad always taught me the ten commandments, for him the first was to honor your mother and your father; that’s what I saw him do,” explains Carter about a song written in 1982 but not published until four years later, due to Columbia’s rejection of gospel songs. “Cash cherished his mother and father, visited them every day; almost every time he came home he went to see them. I spent time with them, talked to them; he never failed to respect his family”.
The forgotten ones
Big foot
America
The slaughter of the Sioux at the hands of General Custer at Wounded Knee in 1890 is the central theme of the song, written in 1968. Cash had previously dedicated an entire album to Native Americans, Bitter tears, written mainly by Peter Lafarge. “These are topics that relate to the difficult situation of the Native Americans, their struggles, it sheds light on their present to show a suffering that they didn’t want to know anything about.”
Fame
Man in black
Man
The theme that made Cash forever the man in black is the one that best reflects his philosophy of life. “Fame didn’t necessarily bring him happiness, rather it worried him because it took him away from his own identity. He wanted to be at peace with the simple person he was.” Sometimes painfully, musical success distanced Cash from his family, from the things he loved the most: “He knew it, but it was his job, he loved making music, he never stopped. Fame became secondary to creativity.”
June Carter
Turn around and you’re gone
Carter remembers Far side banks of Jordan, composed by Terry Smith, sung as a duet by his parents and published in 1977 on the album The last gunfighter ballad. A topic that talks about “the spiritual or religious idea that my mother was talking about, about the hope that they would be together eternally in heaven”. But he adds another title that Cash composed at the end of his life to which he never set music: Turn around and you’re gone. “He wrote it after his mother died and it’s very powerful, it talks about his relationship, about everything she meant to him and the void she left him.”
The United States
Ragged old flag
Cash recited this epic poem from the dais of the US House of Representatives during the celebration of 200 years of independence. It is a journey through the history of the country, from the origins to the Vietnam War, in which he shows his appreciation “for those who fight for American freedom and remain faithful to the commitment of patriotism”. A song that “is not political, it is patriotic”, in the line of the musician himself, who never took a declared side for any side.
Country music
Will the circle be unbroken
Although Cash composed hundreds of country songs, the son chooses this classic hymn composed in 1907 by Ada R. Habershon that was made famous in the years before World War II with the 1935 rewriting of A.P. Carter, one of the members of the Carter family. “Dad sang it at a lot of concerts, even though it’s a Carter Family song, of course, but he made it his own in a lot of different ways. It speaks of continuity and gratitude to those who came before in music”.
the darkness
Hurt
The track that Trent Reznor composed for Nine Inch Nails was Cash’s last hit, and earned him a Grammy just months before he died. “It talks about redemption, there are links with this hellish and murderous attitude, like in Cocaine blues. But in terms of looking into the soul, Hurt defined his ability to expose himself in his own struggles and not lose his dignity.”
