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Arts > Music > Rock, Folk
Woody Guthrie,
half-length portrait, facing front, playing guitar.
New York World Telegram and Sun Collection,
Prints and Photographs Division.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-120588.
Library of Congress.
http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c10000/3c13000/3c13200/3c13276v.jpg
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wwghtml/wwgtimeline.html
folk music
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/folk
American folk music
folk music revival
country music
country star
Nashville
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/arts/music/31rich.htm
Martin Carthy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/martin-carthy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/17/martin-carthy-interview-ed-vulliamy
Mumford & Sons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/mumford-and-sons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/24/pass-notes-mumford-sons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/may/30/mumford-and-sons-music-festivals
Laura Marling
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/laura-marling
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/01/laura-marling-interview-confidence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/05/laura-marling-mercury-prize-marcus-mumford
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/audio/2010/mar/31/music-weekly-laura-marling
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog+laura-marling
Taylor Swift
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/taylor_swift/index.html
George Strait
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/arts/music/01strait.html
Diana Jones
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/arts/music/31warr.html
Pete Seeger
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/pete_seeger/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/04/arts/AP-US-Pete-Seeger-Concert.html
John Rich
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/arts/music/31rich.html
Dolly Parton
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/21/dolly-parton-country-music
David Louis Fisher
1940-2010 > the Highwaymen early
1960s
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/arts/music/13fisher.html
Bob Dylan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/bobdylan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/bob-dylan/5887887/
Bob-Dylan-the-Hibbing-High-School-Class-Of-1959-reunion.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/artsandculture/4126624/
Bob-Dylans-Greenwich-Village-New-York.html
Joan Baez
Folk singer Joan Baez playing the guitar,
on the beach near her home.
Location: Carmel, CA, US
Date taken: 1962
Photographer: Ralph Crane
Life Images
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=1ab37ef9c81fbfcf
Joan Baez
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/b/joan_baez/index.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/06/folk.barackobama
Emmylou Harris
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/emmylou_harris/index.html
Merle Haggard
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/merle_haggard/index.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E3D6173BF931A1575AC0A961958260&ref=merlehaggard
Charles Everett Lilly
1924-2012
Everett Lilly (...) was largely credited,
along with his brother Burt and their band mates Don Stover and Tex Logan,
with introducing bluegrass music to New England
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/14/arts/music/everett-lilly-bluegrass-musician-dies-at-87.html
Joseph Aquilla Thompson
1918-2012
Joseph Thompson is credited
with helping to keep alive an African-American musical tradition
— the black string band —
that predates the blues and influenced country music and bluegrass.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/arts/music/joe-thompson-dies-at-93-fiddler-of-string-band-legacy.html
Richard Lawrence Kniss
1937-2012
self-taught musician who for more than 40 years
played stand-up bass behind Peter, Paul and Mary,
becoming a veritable fourth member of the folk-singing trio
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/arts/music/dick-kniss-bassist-for-peter-paul-and-mary-is-dead-at-74.html
Elizabeth Jane Haaby / Liz Anderson
1930-2011
Liz Anderson wrote breakthrough hits for Merle Haggard and
other country singers
and recorded songs of her own about faithless men and beleaguered women
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/arts/music/liz-anderson-who-wrote-hit-country-songs-dies-at-81.html
Johnnie Robert Wright
1914-2011
singer and bandleader who was among the first country
musicians
to use Latin rhythms and who managed the singing career of his wife, Kitty Wells
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/arts/music/johnnie-wright-country-singer-and-bandleader-dies-at-97.html
Wilma Leigh Leary
1921-2011
perennial favorite with the Grand Ole Opry
and a member, with her husband, Stoney, of a popular tradition-steeped country
singing duo
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/arts/music/wilma-lee-cooper-grand-ole-opry-singer-dies-at-90.html
Michael Waterson
1941-2011
founding member of the Watersons,
the self-taught singing group that was long considered the royal family of
British folk music
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/arts/music/mike-waterson-british-folk-singer-dies-at-70.html
Hazel Jane Dickens
1935-2011
clarion-voiced advocate for coal miners and working people
and a pioneer among women in bluegrass music
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/arts/music/hazel-dickens-bluegrass-singer-dies-at-75.html
Gilbert Lee Robbins
1931-2011
singer, guitarist and songwriter with the folk group the
Highwaymen
and a fixture on the folk-music scene
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/arts/music/10robbins.html
Ralph Eugene Mooney
1928-2011
Ralph Mooney played pedal steel guitar
on hit recordings by Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings
and was a writer of “Crazy Arms,” one of the most enduring shuffles in country
music
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/arts/music/ralph-mooney-master-of-the-steel-guitar-dies-at-82.html
Ferlin Husky 1925-2011
smooth-voiced singer whose 1956 hit “Gone”
became the first country single of the Nashville Sound era to cross over to the
pop Top 10
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/arts/music/ferlin-husky-country-singer-dies-at-85.html
Charlie Elzer Loudermilk
1927-2011
member of one of the pre-eminent brother acts in country music
and an inspiration to several generations of rock musicians
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/arts/music/27louvin.html
country music legend > Jimmy Dean
1928-2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/13/us/AP-US-Obit-Jimmy-Dean.html
folk trio > Peter, Paul and Mary > Mary Travers
1936-2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/arts/music/17travers.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/sep/17/mary-travers-peter-paul
Davey (Davy) Graham, guitarist
1940-2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/17/folk-blues-music
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/16/folk-legend-davey-graham-dies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/dec/16/davy-graham-video-tribute
John Martyn (Iain David McGeachy), musician
1948-2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jan/30/john-martyn-music
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jan/30/john-martyn-obituary
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5612290.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jan/29/john-martyn-dies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jan/29/john-martyn-remembered
Odetta Holmes Felious, singer and actor
1930-2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/arts/music/03odetta.html?ref=obituaries
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/04/odetta-film-folk-music-obituary
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/05/odetta-singer-civil-rights-activist
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/04/folk-jazz
Arthur Roy Traum
guitarist, singer-songwriter
and musical educationist 1943-2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jul/25/folk.jazz
Johnny Cash
1932-2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/28/johnny-cash-indie-1980s-resurrection
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2009/feb/06/johnny-cash-folsom-animation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2008/jul/09/photography?picture=335560377
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,12723,1041368,00.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1040832,00.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1777931,00.html
http://www.nme.com/news/johnny-cash/21835
June Carter Cash
1929-2003
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,957960,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4427314.stm
Jeff Buckley 1966-1997
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/jeff_buckley/index.html
Tim Buckley 1947-1975
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/04/magazine/the-lives-they-lived-jeff-buckley-his-father-s-son.html
folk-rock group > the Mamas and the Papas >
Denny Doherty 1960s
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2007-01-19-doherty-mamapapa_x.htm
Woody Guthrie
1912-1967
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/woody_guthrie/index.html?inline=nyt-per
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wwghtml/wwgtimeline.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wwghtml/wwgessay.html
Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk
Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wwghtml/wwghome.html
Country/Western singer Johnny Cash.
Location: Nashville, TN, US
Date taken: 1969
Photographer: Michael Rougier
Life Images
Music Review
Country Music Awards Attain New Levels of Inclusion
November 12, 2009
The New York Times
By JON CARAMANICA
It’s safe to say that this is the first year in which the most
important people at the Country Music Association Awards were an
African-American man and a teenage girl, but so it went Wednesday night at the
43rd edition of the awards, celebrating a year of increasingly porous borders in
Nashville.
Engagement is the only option, it was clear at this show, broadcast from the
Sommet Center in Nashville on ABC, and hosted by the country stars Brad Paisley
and Carrie Underwood for the second year. New faces abounded, dynasties ended,
and cross-pollination was the new normal.
The phenom Taylor Swift swept the four categories in which she was nominated,
including Entertainer of the Year, making her the first female artist to win
that award since 2000.
The show got questions of inclusion out of the way early: the first two
performances were by Ms. Swift — at 19, the youngest ever nominee for
Entertainer of the Year — and Darius Rucker. Mr. Rucker won New Artist of the
Year, the first African-American so honored, was nominated for Male Vocalist of
the year, a category no African-American had won (or been nominated in) since
Charley Pride in 1972.
In what was presumably a ploy to make him appear part of the country crowd, Mr.
Rucker spent half of his performance in the audience — almost without fail, his
was the only black face visible.
But Mr. Rucker fit in in every other way: he performed “Alright,” about the
humble pleasures of the simple, stable life. “Don’t need no concert in the
city/I got a stereo and ‘The Best of Patsy Cline’ ” — never mind that Mr. Rucker
was in fact singing at a concert in a city.
Ms. Swift’s relationship to the genre is more complicated and is likely to
become more vexing in the coming years. She’s a commodity bigger than country
itself, and it was happy to exploit her while she remains willing. She performed
twice on the show, singing “Forever & Always” and “Fifteen,” and she was
mentioned just before every commercial break: “Taylor Swift takes on the big
boys for Entertainer of the Year!”
She won that, as well as Album of the Year for “Fearless” (Big Machine), her
second album, Music Video of the Year (“Love Story”) and Female Vocalist of the
Year.
Ms. Swift’s antagonist Kanye West, who stormed her acceptance speech at the MTV
Video Music Awards in September, provided the butt of some jokes, but managed,
for this night, to stay away from Nashville, or at least this stage.
“Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Kanye,” Mr. Paisley, who won Male
Vocalist of the Year, sang during the opening monologue, then was joined by Ms.
Underwood: “Let ’em pick guitars and drive them ol’ trucks/ Cause cowboys have
manners/ They don’t interrupt.”
If Mr. West had shown up, he would have fit in, though. This year’s performances
boiled down to who could bring the most impressive plus-one: Vince Gill sang
with Daughtry on “Tennessee Line,” Kenny Chesney was joined by Dave Matthews on
“I’m Alive,” and for what was billed as their final C.M.A. performance, the
soon-to-be-split Brooks & Dunn were joined by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top on “Honky
Tonk Stomp.”
Jamey Johnson, whose “In Color” won Song of the Year, crept his way through
“Between Jennings and Jones,” a traditional ramble about outlaw country on which
he was joined by Kid Rock, the onetime white rapper who’s remade himself as a
Nashville bad boy.
This crammed-tight show featured nine awards (three others were presented
off-camera) and more than twice as many performances, including standout turns
by Mr. Paisley, Sugarland and Zac Brown Band and shaky moments by Ms. Swift, Tim
McGraw and Lady Antebellum.
The coming sea change in country could be seen in several categories, especially
ones that have long been associated with a single artist: each one has five
nominees, though often that has seemed like too many, with minor figures
routinely nominated to fill the extra slots, like decoys in a police lineup.
But not this year. Lady Antebellum won Vocal Group of the Year, breaking a
six-year stranglehold by Rascal Flatts. (It also won Single of the Year, for “I
Run to You.”) Sugarland won Vocal Duo of the Year for the third year in a row;
before that, Brooks & Dunn won 14 of the prior 15 years. Even though Sugarland
is the category’s new bully, frontwoman Jennifer Nettles was gracious in
victory, offering Brooks & Dunn the stage — they declined — and telling them,
“It’s an honor to be in your category.”
Or at least, what was their category. Turnover was this night’s theme, as
exemplified by Ms. Swift’s acceptance speech for Entertainer of the Year. “Every
single person in that category let me open up for them this year,” she said, of
the far older, far more established men she vanquished. “Thank you so much to
y’all. I love you.”
Country Music Awards
Attain New Levels of Inclusion, NYT, 12.11.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/arts/music/12country.html
Music
Protest From the Right Side of Country
March 31, 2009
The New York Times
By JON CARAMANICA
There’s no screaming on the first great song of the bailout
era. No audible rage. No tears. Instead, on “Shuttin’ Detroit Down,” the country
star John Rich, singing evenly, sounds perfectly levelheaded, as if he’d thought
through his position thoroughly and acquired the peace of the righteous:
I see all these big shots whining on my evening news
About how they’re losing billions and it’s up to me and you
To come running to
The rescue
“The song is not depressing,” Mr. Rich said last week, in an interview in the
rooftop bar of a hotel in Gramercy Park. “The song is defiant.”
And for contemporary Nashville, shockingly topical. Mr. Rich, 35, conceived and
wrote “Shuttin’ Detroit Down” in late January, in a fit of pique after watching
news accounts of the $1.2 million office remodeling by John Thain, the Merrill
Lynch chief executive. Within two weeks it had been recorded, mastered and
released to country radio stations, as well as added to his new album “Son of a
Preacher Man” (Warner Brothers Nashville), which had already been submitted to
the label.
It reflects not only Mr. Rich’s songwriting gifts — he collaborated on the
verses with the longtime country singer John Anderson — but also his acumen in
gauging and channeling the mood of the country, aggressively striking a note of
conservative populism rarely seen in any genre of pop since country music’s
response to Sept. 11. (The video, which features Mickey Rourke and Kris
Kristofferson, will be released shortly.)
But even though Mr. Rich’s subject matter is au courant, his tropes are familiar
country tugs of war: urban versus rural, modern versus traditional, white collar
versus blue. The most bracing moment on “Shuttin’ Detroit Down” comes not when
Mr. Rich points a finger at those “living it up on Wall Street in that New York
City town,” but when he reflects on the little guy: “Well that old man’s been
working in that plant most all his life/ Now his pension plan’s been cut in half
and he can’t afford to die,” his voice dropping a half-step on the last word to
indicate where the real locus of tragedy resides.
Mr. Rich sees the song as being in the us-versus-them tradition of “Okie From
Muskogee,” the 1969 semisatire of country life by Merle Haggard, with whom Mr.
Rich recently crossed paths.
“He put his hand on my shoulder, and he looked me dead in the eye,” Mr. Rich
recalled. “He said, ‘That new song you have out now, that reminds me a whole lot
of “Okie.” As a songwriter, that is officially the highest compliment I’ve ever
been paid.”
But in many ways “Detroit” has less to do with “Okie” and more to do with the
left-wing protest music of that era. That it comes from the other side of the
aisle seems a minor detail. “Shuttin’ Detroit Down” is skeptical of big business
as well as big government — “D.C.’s bailing out them bankers as the farmers
auction ground” — keeping a song that’s postpartisan, at least on the surface,
consistent with right-wing thinking.
This isn’t Mr. Rich’s first dalliance with Republican talking points. Last year
he stumped for Fred Thompson before throwing his support behind Senator John
McCain and recording a rally song, “Raising McCain,” a far less imaginative
slice of propaganda. (“He got shot down/in a Vietnam town/fighting for the red,
white and blue.” )
Now that Republicans are underdogs, it’s a particularly good time to be a
conservative agitator, and Mr. Rich is seizing the moment. His next single will
be “The Good Lord and the Man,” about his grandfather, whom he said had been
awarded six Purple Hearts in World War II:
When I see people on my TV taking shots at Uncle Sam,
I hope they always remember why they can
’Cause we’d all be speaking German, living under the flag of Japan,
If it wasn’t for the good Lord and the man.
“I mean it completely literally,” Mr. Rich said.
Still, these songs — “A couple of sledgehammers,” he called the two singles,
with evident glee — capture only one side of Mr. Rich’s personality. “Son of a
Preacher Man" is an eclectic, if often sober album, spanning vintage big-band
country comedy (“Drive Myself to Drink”), dramatic self-confrontation (“Another
You”) and shameless romance (“I Thought You’d Never Ask,” which Mr. Rich wrote
to propose to his future wife, Joan).
Mr. Rich has a lovely, crisp high tenor, though it’s deployed to better effect
anchoring his partner Big Kenny in Big & Rich, the duo that emerged in 2004 and
helped bring a dash of outlaw sensibility back to Nashville. (Mr. Rich had
earlier played in the successful country band Lonestar but was kicked out as the
group moved toward a more adult-contemporary sound.) Since then, Mr. Rich has
positioned himself as a reliable disruptor, culturally and politically.
And he makes for a charming sermonizer. Speaking of his disbelief at government
enabling of corporate arrogance on the Fox News’s “Glenn Beck Program” last
week, he quipped, "Why don’t you just come to my house and slap me while you’re
at it?"
That appearance was part of an album-release media offensive that included turns
on “Glenn Beck” and “Hannity,” where he answered one question with a recitation
of the first verse of “Detroit,” and gave Sean Hannity a T-shirt that read, “If
you don’t love America ... why don’t you get the hell out?”
But he also took part in an unlikely comic skit on “Late Night With Jimmy
Fallon” in which he gamely poked fun at rural pieties.
That last bit was the most telling, in that it implicitly asked which is the
real cliché: the redneck, or the big-city comedy writers who think rednecks are
all the same? Mr. Rich didn’t seem to mind toying with both sides.
Politics aside, Mr. Rich can be refreshingly undogmatic. As the host and
avuncular mentor on the CMT series “Gone Country,” he shepherds once-weres from
other music genres or entertainment careers in their quests to become country
singers. And on the most recent season of “Nashville Star,” a country-music
competition similar to “American Idol,” he was vocal about the need for
Nashville to embrace Hispanic singers who can connect with the growing Hispanic
population in the United States.
Mr. Rich, once the outsider scratching at the door, has now become something of
a gatekeeper, and his idea of border policing suggests dashes of progressivism
sprinkled throughout his conservative landscape.
“Everybody Wants to Be Me” is the most attitude-thick song on Mr. Rich’s new
album, all about the long climb to the top. “Everybody wants to be me,” he
charges, “but they don’t want to bruise, and they don’t want to bleed.” The
camera’s expectations can overwhelm, he warns: “They take my country-boy views,
make them big-city news and I just take it on the chin.”
Where “Shuttin’ Detroit Down” is calm and considered, this song is
un-self-consciously exuberant. As martyrs go, Mr. Rich is the happiest, most
complicit one around.
Protest From the
Right Side of Country, NYT, 31.3.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/arts/music/31rich.html
Obituary
Johnny Cash
A boy from the Mississippi delta,
he transcended country and
western music to become an American icon
Saturday 13 September 2003
02.08 BST
Guardian.co.uk
Adam Sweeting
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 02.08 BST
on Saturday 13
September 2003.
It was last updated at 02.08 BST on Saturday 13 September 2003.
Country music has grown from humble origins into one of the
largest sectors in the American entertainment industry, but none of its current
superstars will ever attain the mythic aura of Johnny Cash, who has died of
complications from diabetes aged 71.
During the 70s and 80s Cash found himself out of favour in
country music's hometown of Nashville. Yet he had, as his step-daughter Carlene
Carter put it, "built that town in a lot of ways." It took the hip hop/heavy
metal entrepreneur Rick Rubin to appreciate how much Cash had meant, and how
much he still had to offer. Rubin invited Cash to make an album on his American
record label. The result, 1994's American Recordings, featured just Cash, his
acoustic guitar and that great booming baritone voice, playing songs by Leonard
Cohen, Tom Waits and Kris Kristofferson alongside strong material of his own.
Forty years after he had begun his professional career with Sun Records in
Memphis, Cash had returned to renew his claim to being a great country singer
and an American legend.
He was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, and remembered, when he was three, the
family moving to Dyess Colony on the Mississippi delta in 1935, where his
father, Ray, worked on a federal land-reclamation scheme. "The entire family, my
parents, two brothers and two sisters spent the first night in the truck under a
tarpaulin," Cash recalled. "The last thing I remember before going to sleep was
my mother beating time on the old Sears-Roebuck guitar, singing What Would You
Give In Exchange For Your Soul." Cash's 1959 hit record, Five Feet High And
Rising, recalled the night the family had to be evacuated when the river
overflowed.
Living by the "Big River" as a child, Cash soaked up work songs, church music,
and country & western from radio station WMPS in Memphis, or the broadcasts from
Nashville's Grand Ole Opry on Friday and Saturday evenings. At night, he stayed
awake to listen to music drifting up from the Mexican border stations. Cash got
religion when he was 12, and the death of his brother Jack in an accident with a
circular saw intensified his faith to the point of fervour.
He graduated from Dyess High School in 1950, headed north to Detroit, and found
a job in a car-body factory in Pontiac, Michigan. However, he rapidly thought
better of it, and signed up for the United States Air Force. He was posted to
Landsberg, West Germany, and worked as a radio intercept officer, eavesdropping
on Soviet radio traffic. In Germany he began to cut his musical teeth, teaching
himself the guitar, trying his hand at songwriting, and playing in a band called
the Landsberg Barbarians. "We were terrible," he said later, "but that Lowenbrau
beer will make you feel like you're great. We'd take our instruments to these
honky-tonks and play until they threw us out or a fight started. I wrote Folsom
Prison Blues in Germany in 1953."
Back in the US he married Vivian Liberto, whom he had met during his basic
training in Texas, and the newlyweds moved to Memphis. At first, Cash struggled
to make a living as a household appliance salesman, but then his older brother
Roy, also living in Memphis, introduced him to the Tennessee Three - Luther
Perkins and Marshall Grant, plus AW "Red" Kernodle on steel guitar.
The foursome gained experience playing parties and church functions, while Cash
mounted a persistent campaign to persuade Sam Phillips (Obituary August 28
2003), who ran Sun Studios in Memphis, to grant them an audition. Phillips
finally succumbed and summoned the group to play for him in the spring of 1955.
It was all too much for an overawed Kernodle, who never turned up, but the
remaining three delivered a sparse, vibrant rendition of a brand new Cash song,
Hey Porter. The interplay between Grant's thumping bass, Perkins's jittery lead
guitar and Cash's choked strumming was, in its way, as revolutionary as anything
Elvis Presley (Obituary, August 17 1977) or Carl Perkins (Obituary, January 20
1998) would accomplish with Sun.
Phillips was duly impressed, dispatched Cash to write a hit single, and by the
summer Johnny Cash and the newly-named Tennessee Two had their first hit, Cry,
Cry, Cry coupled with Hey Porter on the B side. Classic songs were soon pouring
out of Cash. His next release was Folsom Prison Blues, then came I Walk The
Line, Big River, Home Of The Blues and Guess Things Happen That Way.
While at Sun, Cash also wrote You're My Baby for Roy Orbison (Obituary December
8 1988) and Get Rhythm for Elvis Presley. "The Elvis I knew was a kid full of
fun," said Cash. "He loved his work, loved his music, loved his guitar, loved
gospel music and loved his mother."
Sun's first album release was Johnny Cash With His Hot And Blue Guitar, but the
tight-fisted Phillips decided he wanted no further Cash albums, and also didn't
fancy increasing the rising star's royalty rate. Cash's response was to move to
Columbia Records in 1958, simultaneously transplanting his band, family and
manager to Los Angeles. His first Columbia album, 1959's The Fabulous Johnny
Cash, was also his first US album chart entry, reaching number 19, and hit
singles were not long in coming, in the shape of Don't Take Your Guns To Town, I
Got Stripes, Five Feet High And Rising and The Ballad Of Johnny Yuma. In January
1960, he played the first of his celebrated prison shows at San Quentin, where
one of the inmates yelling him on was Merle Haggard, locked up on a burglary
charge.
With growing success came mounting pressures and demands. Scheduled to play up
to 300 concerts a year, Cash found himself becoming increasingly dependent on
amphetamines to keep going, even though he knew they were affecting his writing
and his recorded work. The quantity of his output remained high, but the quality
grew erratic, with Ring Of Fire his only big hit of the early 1960s. The flip
side of Cash's gritty, carved-from-stone persona was a tendency to preachiness,
and this came to the fore in a string of long-winded "concept" albums such as
Ride This Train (1960), Blood, Sweat And Tears (1963) and True West (1965).
Whereas his original strength had been his ability to get to the point with the
minimum of fuss, now he was growing pontifical.
Not that all his work form this period was without significance. His 1964 album
Bitter Tears, subtitled Ballads Of The American Indian, included Cash's
memorable treatment of Pete LaFarge's Ballad Of Ira Hayes, and was the first of
many instances of his willingness to speak up for outcasts and underdogs.
His problems with drugs landed him in trouble through bizarre incidents such as
driving a tractor into the lake behind his new house in Hendersonville, near
Nashville, and inadvertently starting a forest fire which cost him an $85,000
fine. His pill-popping reached crisis point in 1965, when he was jailed for
three days after being arrested in El Paso, smuggling amphetamines into the US
across the Mexican border.
Perhaps inevitably, his addiction affected his family life (even though he had
sired four daughters, including Rosanne who would become a respected singer and
songwriter), and Vivian eventually divorced him in 1967.
Luckily for Cash, he had already met June Carter (Obituary May 17 2003), who had
co-written Ring Of Fire with Merle Kilgore. The Carter clan was one of the
legendary dynasties of country music, and in the 1940s, June and her sisters
Helen and Anita would perform regularly with their mother, as Mother Maybelle
and the Carter Sisters.
During the 1960s, as Cash became increasingly fascinated by the scope and
history of American popular music, he often included the Carter Family in his
live shows. Johnny and June scored a hit with their duet version of Jackson in
1967.
They married in 1968, after he had dramatically proposed to her onstage the
previous autumn. "The love that John and I share with our love for Christ is one
of the most precious gifts God could have given us," she would write later. She
devoted herself to the twin pillars in her life, God and Johnny Cash, and was
determined to make her husband end his amphetamine addiction.
His career began to take on a broader, clearer shape. His 1968 album, Johnny
Cash At Folsom Prison, was a huge success and is still widely regarded as one of
the finest country records ever made. In June 1969, The Johnny Cash Show began
on ABC-TV. Based in Nashville, the show pulled in artists from every conceivable
genre, highlighting the breadth of Cash's tastes. Among guests who appeared on
the 88 shows Cash recorded were Mahalia Jackson, the Who, Neil Young, Louis
Armstrong and Bob Dylan (Cash struck up a rapport with Dylan which led to them
duetting on Girl From The North Country, on Dylan's 1969 country album Nashville
Skyline, for which Cash also wrote sleeve notes).
Career highlights continued to accrue. Johnny Cash At San Quentin (1969) spawned
a monster hit single with the tongue-in-cheek A Boy Named Sue, and the
Cash/Carter duet on If I Were A Carpenter enjoyed further chart-success and
scored a Grammy award. In 1971, Cash recorded the Man In Black album, the title
song containing a somewhat melodramatic declaration of intent:
"I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, living in the hopeless,
hungry side of town
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime... "
Cash was growing into his persona as American icon and beacon of integrity, even
if there were those who found the Johnny and June act somewhat overloaded with
treacly religiosity. (The Man In Black album even featured an appearance by
celebrity evangelist Billy Graham.)
His commanding presence lent itself to screen appearances. Trivia buffs may
recall his minor role in an episode of the 60s Clint Eastwood/Eric Fleming TV
western series Rawhide, though he received greater acclaim for his appearance
with Kirk Douglas in A Gunfight (1972), and appeared in a string of TV movies
including The Pride Of Jesse Hallam (1980); Murder In Coweta County (1983); The
Baron And The Kid (1984); and The Last Days Of Frank And Jesse (1986). He
appeared in episodes of Columbo, and in 1993 popped up in the television series
Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman.
He had achieved an apparently unassailable status, but by Cash's own admission,
"around 1972 or 1973, the excitement went out of my recording career." He could
still make hits, like One Piece At A Time or Ghost Riders In The Sky, but while
he had been capable of making tosh such as The Holy Land (1970), he could still
recognise that the stuff being peddled as "country" music was too middle of the
road for a veteran of the hard-rockin' Sun years like himself.
Columbia's ending of their 28-year relationship with the singer in 1986 stands
as one of the greatest gaffes ever perpetrated by the record business, and it
rankled with Cash more than he liked to acknowledge. Still, he was rapidly
signed by Mercury, with whom he recorded a batch of convincing albums including
Johnny Cash Is Coming To Town (1987), Water From The Wells Of Home (1988) and
Boom Chicka Boom (1990), the latter kicking off with Cash's trademark
observation, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." Also during the 1980s, Cash teamed up
with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson to form the
successful recording and touring outfit, the Highwaymen.
In 1988, Cash underwent double heart bypass surgery in Nashville, a warning bell
which triggered a re-evaluation of his remarkable career by younger generations
of listeners. That year, the British Red Rhino label issued 'Til Things Are
Brighter, featuring young artists covering Cash songs to raise money for Aids
research, and he was greatly touched by it. In 1992, he was inducted into the
Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in New York, and that autumn Johnny and June
performed It Ain't Me Babe at the Madison Square Garden concert commemorating
Dylan's 30 years in the music business.
In 1993, Cash's gravelly baritone featured on The Wanderer, from U2's Zooropa
album ("I was thrilled to death, because I love that song," Cash enthused), and
in 1994 the American Recordings album amounted to a complete reappraisal of the
legend of Johnny Cash, and one which found a ready new audience. An appearance
at the Glastonbury Festival boosted his burgeoning new profile. A second album
on the American label, Unchained, was released in November 1996, and found Cash
mixing vintage country tunes by Jimmie Rodgers and the Louvin Brothers with
"alternative rock" songs from Soundgarden and Beck.
Three more albums for American followed, with 2002's The Man Comes Around in
particular earning rapturous critical acclaim for commanding reinventions of
Bridge Over Troubled Water, Desperado and Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus.
Given Cash's precarious health, it was a cruel irony that he was pre-deceased by
June last May, after she had undergone heart surgery. This wasn't long after
Cash had guested on his daughter Rosanne's album, Rules Of Travel, singing
lyrics which clearly signalled his own fragile mortality - "I cannot move
mountains now, I can no longer run" .
Johnny Cash was a country musician who was too big for country music, and his
work as artist, humanitarian, and patron of songs and songwriters will endure
indefinitely.
He had one son, John, with June and four daughters, Rosanne, Kathleen, Cindy and
Tara, with Vivian Liberto.
· Johnny Cash, musician, born February 26 1932; died September 12 2003
Johnny Cash, G,
13.9.2003,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/sep/13/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries
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