The Legend of Johnny Cash
I don’t remember
when I first heard Johnny Cash, it must have been
in 1956. I was ten and loved the radio.
Mom always had on WOR, but my sister would put on
WINS, WABC or WCBS for the more popular music.
Walk The Line was release in fifty-six, and I
was crazy about it from the first time I heard it.
It's
always been one of my favorites; the hum between the
stanzas always makes me smile. Johnny Posh, one
of my oldest friends loved Johnny Cash too. We used
to sing his songs together and laugh; the hum in
Walk the Line was fun to mimic. And of course, we
loved Rebel - Johnny Yuma, Cash sang the theme song
for the TV show we both loved to watch.
It had been a long time since I
listened to Johnny Cash. I must have four or
five of his albums, but they're old LP records,
packed away for at least ten years now. This
CD has me obsessed with Johnny Cash all over again.
One day Christian dropped by
with a gift, a CD called The Legend of Johnny Cash,
he told me that he was reading Cash, the
Autobiography and loving it. "The way the
book is written is like he's talking to you.
He ends a chapter like this, 'I think that blah,
blah, blah. What
do you think?' I can hear his voice when I'm
reading the book."
I went up to amzaon.com and
read the first few pages, you know they offer that
LOOK INSIDE; I ordered it on the spot.
The first track of the CD is
Cry Cry Cry, his first hit. The
wonderfully simple, but the unique sound of Cash's early
recordings draws you right into the story he's telling.
And he's always telling you a story.
Next up is Hey Porter, a song I loved as a kid
but had forgotten about. I remembered all the
words, well, almost all of them. The great and
wildly popular Folsom Prison Blues and
Walk the Line are next. All unmistakably
Johnny Cash, simple and compelling. Ring of
Fire rounds off these early songs nicely.
The Jackson duet with
his wife June Carter is a great rendition of that
fun song. "We got married in a fever, hotter
than a pepper sprout. We been talkin' bout
Jackson, ever since the fire went out."
Jackson is obviously a party town for connecting up.
I'm sorry I've never been there, although the Bronx
in the day had some great hook-up joints.
His famous A Boy Named Sue
recorded live at San Quentin Prison is pure male
entertainment. This song
about a ruff and tumble man searching for his father
so he can beat and kill him, for having named him Sue, is
really appreciated by the inmates. Their yells,
applause and laughter make the song that much
better. The Shel Silverstein lyrics are are
great. Here is a verse that shows off the male
poetry:
Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes
And he went down, but to my surprise,
He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my
ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth
And we crashed through the wall and into the street
Kicking and a' gouging in the mud and the blood and
the beer.
But it was this verse
that gets the men in the audience screaming:
He said: "Now
you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you "Sue.'"
His song, Man in Black and
the
funny One Piece At A Time - about a guy who
steals a car one piece at a time from his job on the
assembly line over a thirty-year period - well, they end off the first
three decades of his career, the fifties through the
seventies.
The Highwayman was
recorded in 1985. This four stanza epic by
Jimmy Webb is
started by Willie Nelson:
I was a
highwayman. Along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five
But I am still alive.
Willie is followed by Kris
Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash sings
the last stanza of this great song:
I fly a starship
across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again, and again and again and
again and again...
(The Highwayman written by Jimmy
Webb)
If you like this song at all,
you are going to love it. You won't be able to
get enough of it; you'll want to hear it over and
over again. Listening to The
Highwayman is like scratching the surface of an
epic story; it leaves you wanting more. Jimmy
Webb wrote the song, but there is the poem The
Highwayman by Alfred Noyes (written in 1906)
that may very well be the inspiration for it.
Scroll down to find interesting
links, the poem and lyrics and a lot of other
goodies.
I highly recommend the CD,
Cash's autobiography, and a number of other items
listed below. They make great gifts, I can
vouch for that.
Joseph De
Matteo
Read the
review of Walk the Line
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