Johnny R. Cash is the man in black, the voice of the disinherited of the United States, a country icon turned benchmark of American popular music who lived through and for music throughout his troubled life. Few artists have managed to travel 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 areas of North American society through compositions that are the center of Johnny Cash, Life in Letters (Libros del Kultrum), a compilation of 125 songs from more than 1,000 that he composed throughout his career, selected with the help of John Carter Cash, singer and pastor like his father, the only son who was the result of the love that united him for almost his entire life with 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 gave up his origins in gospel, not even when sales abandoned him or his life traveled the opposite extreme of the Christian commandments.

“Many people appreciate my father for his open-mindedness and his support for people who suffer and the forgotten,” explains John Carter Cash by videoconference from the Cash Cabin studios in Tennessee, where his father recorded many of the songs included in American recordings. , his latest batch of albums with versions that recovered him for a new generation of followers 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 songwriter, everyone wants to dress and look as cool as Johnny Cash, many people find connections with his life and his music” . In search of these connections, John Carter has chosen 10 songs linked to as many themes that his father dealt with throughout his career.

We’ll be home. A believer sings the truth, 1979

During a car trip in 1979, a young John Carter asked his father, “Are we there yet?” To which Johnny replied: “After the hill we will be home.” The theme talks about “the search for a light, something bigger than our lives. In the face of a confrontation or darkness itself, 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.”

American recordings IV, 2002

Cash included this 1939 classic in the fourth volume of American Recordings, “it’s a song that Dad 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.”

At San Quentin Live, 1969

The musician from Arkansas became famous for his performances in prisons in the United States. “In San Quentin, he connected with the prisoners, you couldn’t tell he was different from them,” a bond that Carter relates to his father’s “honest love for people.” In his 1969 performance he presented this song, “it was not his favorite song, but it certainly connected with the people he wrote for.” He helped that in the song he sent the famous penitentiary to hell.

Believe in him, 1986

“My father 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 the Columbia record company’s rejection of gospel songs. “Cash appreciated his mother and his father, he visited them every day; Almost every time he came home from the road, he went to see them. “He spent time with them, talked to them, never disrespected his family.”

America – a 200 year salute in story and song, 1972

The massacre of the Sioux at the hands of General Custer at Wounded Knee, in 1890, is the central theme of this song written in 1968. Cash had previously dedicated an entire album to the natives of North America, Bitter tears, written mainly by Peter Lafarge. “They are themes that are related to the difficult situation of the Native Americans, their struggles, it sheds light on their present to show a suffering that no one wanted to know anything about.”

Man in black, 1971

The song that made Cash forever the man in black is the one that best reflects his philosophy of life. “His fame did not necessarily bring him happiness, rather it worried him because it distanced him from his own identity. He wanted to be at peace with the simple person that he was.” Sometimes painfully, musical success took Cash away from the family, from the things he loved most: “He knew it, but it was his job, he loved making music, he never left it. Fame became secondary to creativity.”

Not published

Carter remembers Far Side Banks of Jordan, composed by Terry Simth and sung as a duet by his parents, released in 1977 on the album The Last Gunfighter Ballad. A theme that speaks “of that spiritual or religious idea that my mother talked about about the hope that they would be eternally together in heaven.” But he adds another title that Cash composed at the end of his life that he never set to music, Turn around and you’re gone. “He wrote it after my mother passed away and it is very powerful, it talks about her relationship and how much she meant to him and the void that she left him.”

Ragged old flag, 1974

Cash recited this epic poem from the podium of the House of Representatives of the US Congress during the celebration of 200 years of independence. It is a journey through the history of the country, from its origins to the Vietnam War where it shows its 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 line with the musician himself, who never took a declared side for any side.

 Keep on the sunny side, 1964

Although Cash wrote hundreds of country songs, his son chooses this classic hymn composed in 1907 by Ada R. Habershon that became famous in the years before World War II with A.P.’s 1935 rewrite. Carter, one of the members of the Carter family. “My father sang it in many concerts although it is a Carter Family song, of course, but he made it his own in many different ways. He talks about continuity and gratitude to those who came before in music.”

American IV, the man comes around, 2002 

The song that Trent Reznor composed for Nine Inch Nails was Cash’s last hit, which won him a Grammy months before he died. “It talks about redemption, and there are links to that infernal and murderous attitude, like in Cocaine blues. But when it came to looking into the soul, Hurt defined his ability to expose himself in his own struggles and not lose his dignity.”