Pages tagged “Johnny Cash”

Available now, Shout! Factory has released a 4-DVD set of The Johnny Cash Christmas Specials 1976-1979. While '76 and '77 were released last year, the '78 and '79 specials are new and are available separately or as part of the box set. Included on the new set are Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman, amongst others.

Sufjan Stevens' pastor Vito Aiuto just made an album with his wife Monique under the moniker The Welcome Wagon. It's sweet, brimming with faith and the kind of chemistry that at least seems like it could only come from a husband and wife. So we thought we'd look at the best collaborations between married couples over the years. We're only judging music made together (sorry, Tim and Faith) while married (sorry Jack and Meg). Here are Paste's Top 10 Musical Husband and Wife Duos:

Last Wednesday night, a blue-collar hero went down in history. Toledo, Ohio’s own Joe Wurzelbacher—aka “Joe the Plumber”—was invoked no less than 26 times, making him more central to the third presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama than anything else, including taxes, education, the war, terrorism, the environment and energy independence.

Seeing as how a playlist about plumbers would’ve been pretty short, today’s Current Events megamix will focus simply on great songs about guys named Joe. Here’s to you, plumber man!

New set humanizes larger-than-life icon

In the documentary included with this new edition of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, daughter Rosanne shatters the mythology surrounding her dad, gently bringing him down to earth where he’s always belonged. “He was a real man with great faults, and great genius and beauty in him,” she says, “but he wasn’t this guy who could save you or anyone else.”

Has Johnny Cash’s spirit rested easier since the city of Starkville, Miss. posthumously pardoned him last Fall for a 1965 public intoxication arrest? Whatever the case may be, the inaugural Flower Pickin’ Festival—named for the the Man in Black’s insistence that he was merely admiring some purty plants and NOT drunkenly relieving himself upon them when police apprehended him (as the rumors goes)—was a hit, so it’s no surprise that this weekend’s second-annual event offers even more classic country and Cash family blessings.

On Oct. 21, Anchorless Records will release All Aboard: A Tribute to Johnny Cash. Profits from the album will go to the Syrentha Savio Endowment, a non-profit providing assistance to underprivileged breast-cancer patients.

Listening to the upcoming album by Lucinda Williams, Little Honey, I was thrilled to come across the voice of Elvis Costello on a song called "Jailhouse Tears." Country/rock duets have a pretty long history and even some commercial success (see Jon Bon Jovi with Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles). But recently, they've also gotten pretty damn cool. Here are the best country/rock duets of recent years (and a few don't even involve Emmylou Harris):

In an unlikely pairing, John Carter Cash (Johnny's son) and Snoop Dogg are producing Johnny Cash Remixed, which features interpretations of some of Cash's finest classics as a tribute.
Remixers have reworked songs licensed from Cash's first label, Sun Records, which will be released Oct. 14 and in vinyl deluxe form in September.

It’s been over four years since the passing of the Man in Black, which makes any evocation of Johnny Cash an exciting event. Unfortunately, an upcoming event that would have paid tribute to one of Cash’s most famous concerts has been cancelled.

A tribute concert scheduled for Sunday (Jan. 13) would have commemorated Cash’s legendary 1968 performance at Folsom State Prison’s canteen. The original concert spawned one of Cash’s most famous records (Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison) and prefigured many future musical appearances at correctional facilities, including Metallica’s performance at San Quentin.

Sunday’s concert, which was called off by officials at Folsom, would have featured Cash’s longtime drummer, W.S. “Fluke” Holland and was due to be streamed for Cash fans throughout the world. Still, 2008 is barely underway, so perhaps organizers can resolve their differences and commemorate the original performance later on this year.

Related links:
JohnnyCash.com
Paste: Johnny Cash – Unearthed review
YouTube: “Folsom Prison Blues” at San Quentin

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This summer, Shout! Factory acquired a goldmine. The company signed a deal with the Country Music Hall of Fame which allowed Shout! to package the Hall's vast archive of musical television performances into DVDs. On Nov. 13, Shout! will release its first offerings from the Hall of Fame's vaults: a pair of Johnny Cash Christmas specials recorded in 1976 and 1977.

The 1976 show features Johnny and June Carter Cash at their homes in Bon Aqua and Hendersonville, Tenn., alongside guests such as Tony Orlando, Roy Clark, Merle Travis, Barbara Mandrell and Billy Graham. The 1977 special, meanwhile, arrived in the wake of Elvis Presley's death. Performed at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry House, the '77 show includes a tribute to Presley features rock icons Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison.

Presumably, the specials feature the warmer side of the Man in Black, though it would be cool to see Cash tear into "Cocaine Blues" and start kicking over Christmas decorations. The track list, available here, tells a different story. Perhaps it's for the better that way.

Related links:
JohnnyCash.com
Paste: The Man Called Cash
YouTube: Cash Christmas '77: "This Train is Bound for Glory"

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Johnny Cash did the Starkville, Miss. police two favors after they arrested him in 1965 for public inebriation. Number one, he immortalized them in “Starkville City Jail,” tunefully laying out the defense he was simply “pickin’ flowers” at the time of the bust. Two, he gave the officers free tickets to his next in-town concert.

On the first weekend in November, Starkville will bring closure to the incident with an amiable gesture of its own by holding a “Pickin’ Flowers Festival,” intended to pardon and commemorate the Man in Black, who passed away four years ago last Wednesday. Headlined by Cash’s former son-in-law Marty Stuart and his band, the Fabulous Superlatives, the festival will also include a charity auction at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house Cash performed and partied at the night of his arrest.

“Cash lived a hard life through his drinking and drug abuse, but he learned from it and transcended,” first-time festival organizer Robbie Ward told Paste last month. “Before it was all over, he was showing people that it’s alright if you make mistakes in life. It’s just important to recognize your mistakes.”

A research writer for Mississippi State University, Ward has secured the blessing of Cash’s family and friends, including his former manager Lou Robin and bass player Marshall Grant, who plans to speak at the event about his book I Was There When it Happened: My Life With Johnny Cash.

For Saturday’s main event, government officials and a local minister will return to the spot Cash was arrested to issue symbolic pardons and a short sermon. The following morning, festival attendees are invited to a community church service spotlighting Cash’s favorite gospel music.

“Certainly, you can be redeemed with or without religion,” Ward said, adding that Cash just so happened to be a devoted Christian. “That’s really what the festival is all about, redemption on a number of levels. We all might need a little forgiveness ourselves.”

Click the links below for a full schedule of events.

Related links:
PardonJohnnyCash.com
JohnnyCash.com
Video: Johnny Cash tells the story of Starkville at San Quentin

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People may have heard about Johnny Cash’s concert in Ireland back in 1993, but no one has seen it captured on film. But that will change on Halloween as the monumental concert will be released on DVD titled Johnny Cash In Ireland – 1993.

The performance includes special guests June Carter Cash, John Carter Cash, Kris Kristofferson, The Carter Family, and Irish Star Sandy Kelly at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin for an Irish television production.

As the authorized biography of the Man in Black, Steve Turner’s The Man Called Cash initially raised red flags for me. The unprecedented access Turner was given to Cash family members and to the vast Cash archives raised the specter of a whitewash. Just what was it that needed to be “authorized,” and by whom?

In Johnny Cash’s case, quite a bit. And to Turner’s credit, he doesn’t play the authorized game too well. In a deftly woven biography integrating the many strands of Cash’s complex, contradictory life, Turner portrays a Cash who is by turns generous, selfish, fickle and devoted to his wife, June Carter Cash, for 35 years; a foul-mouthed, hot-tempered, repentant saint; an addict; and a man of great strength and conviction. And always—a giant of American music.

By now the story is familiar, dusted off and resurrected as many times as Cash himself came back from the abyss and returned to musical greatness. Born at the Great Depression’s peak, raised in poverty, Cash found his authentic voice in Memphis in the early ’50s and never looked back. He was part of the great Sun Records stable of artists that included the young Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, but he never fit tidily within the confines of rock ’n’ roll or rockabilly, and over the course of his 50-year career, he was equally at home as a seminal country artist; a rebel who identified with the outcast and downtrodden; a singer of folk protest songs; a television and movie star; and finally as an almost Job-like figure presiding over a disintegrating life with stark honesty and resolute faith.

Cash was, in short, as iconic a figure as American music has ever produced, and his life offers ample opportunity for mythmaking. Turner explodes a few of those myths—most notably the one that insists June turned Cash’s drug-addled life around—but also confirms a few others. Johnny was hell to live with at times—making June’s love for and commitment to him even more remarkable, and his drug addiction returned to haunt him (and her) long after country music’s first couple had made very public declarations of their Christian faith’s transforming power. But that same faith served as the bedrock foundation in Cash’s life, and as the source of hope for him at a time when everything he held dear—his health, his ability to make music, and finally June herself—was stripped away from him. Turner tells this story without sentimentality, but the circumstances create their own pathos, and the myth deepens.

Late in his life, Johnny Cash visited with U2 members Bono and Adam Clayton. He intoned a long and elaborate grace over supper, then opened his eyes, winked, and said, “Sure do miss the drugs, though.” Such was the enigma who was Johnny Cash, and Steve Turner captures the man in all his contradictory glory and weakness in this fine biography.

This definitive collection features Johnny Cash’s recordings for the Sun Records label from 1955-1958. These stark classics serve as a strong foundation for Cash’s undeniable legacy.

Born in Kingsland, Arkansas, John R. Cash joined the Air Force and spent his early years working odd jobs and honing his musical craft. On the wave of Elvis Presley’s popularity, the 23-year old Cash walked into Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio in Memphis, Tenn., and recorded the first batch of these 40 indelible compositions. Cash rotated many of them in his live repertoire throughout his prodigious career. Disc one contains “Cry Cry Cry,” “Hey! Porter,” “Get Rhythm,” “I Walk the Line,” “Give Me A Rose” (re-recorded for his last album, The Man Comes Around), “Big River,” “Luther Played the Boogie,” “Mean Eyed Cat” and “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Neither time nor space allots for the long list of talented musicians who have covered these songs. Bob Dylan speaks with enthusiasm of Cash’s days at Sun in his new book, Chronicles: “I always thought Sam Phillips created the most crucial, uplifting and powerful records ever made. ‘I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.’ Indeed. I must have recited those lines to myself a million times.”

Timeless classics on disc two include “Always Alone,” “Blue Train,” “Fool’s Hall of Fame,” “Leave That Junk Alone” and “New Mexico.” Sam Phillips refused to increase Cash’s royalties or allow him to record gospel songs, consequently spurring the future legend to depart Sun for Columbia Records.

The Legendary Sun Recordings provides a clear view of Johnny Cash’s musical vision, and is an important document of a country pioneer coming into his own as an artist.

Everything about Johnny Cash was larger than life, from his deep bass rumblings to his well-publicized sin and redemption high-wire act. He was as iconic a figure as American music ever produced and, given his recent death, it’s probably impossible to view him in a less than mythic light. So it should come as no surprise that Unearthed , the recently released 5-CD boxed set of outtakes and unissued songs from Rick Rubin’s American Recordings albums, is larger than life as well, offering more than could have reasonably been hoped for—64 songs that are not only new but that sound as vital as anything Johnny Cash ever recorded.

Those familiar with Cash’s collaborations over the past 10 years with rap-rock producer Rubin already know what to expect. Using an open-minded approach that borrowed as much from alternative rock as it did from traditional country fare, and employing no-frills production values, Rubin coaxed some of the finest performances Johnny Cash ever delivered, and he did so by simply setting Cash down in front of a microphone and letting him play the music he loved—without all the attendant countrypolitan clutter that marred his albums during the ’70s and ’80s. The four albums they made together—sometimes with just Johnny and his acoustic guitar, sometimes in the company of sympathetic backing musicians such as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers—were revelatory, and Johnny Cash put his own unique stamp on songs from Nick Cave and Nine Inch Nails just as surely as he owned the likes of “Ring of Fire” or “I Walk the Line.”

Unearthed features songs of similar quality. Not so much leftovers as alternate takes on the same idiosyncratic musical universe, the 64 new songs here only deepen the Cash mystique. Packaged with an elegant 100-page clothbound book that provides song-by-song commentary from Cash and Rubin, the first three discs (entitled Who’s Gonna Cry, Trouble in Mind, and Redemption Songs) offer unreleased outtakes from the four previous collaborations. The fourth disc, My Mother’s Hymn Book, is an all-new acoustic gospel album. There are delights everywhere—a ragged-but-beautifully-poignant duet with The Clash’s Joe Strummer on Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” scintillating covers of songs by Neil Young, Tom Waits, Steve Earle and Roy Orbison, re-recorded, stripped down versions of Cash classics such as “The Long Black Veil” and “Flesh and Blood,” and the entire fourth disc, with its simultaneous focus on the irrepressible hope of faith and the knowledge of Cash’s own impending death.

But mostly there’s that magnificent voice, that force of nature. A few critics groused about Cash’s diminished vocal abilities over the last couple American Recordings albums, but they largely missed the point. Cash’s voice wasn’t just diminished; it was ravaged. It was the sound of a man preparing to die, and it didn’t sound so much lived in any more as lived out—absolutely spent, as harrowing and soulful as Billie Holiday in her last recording sessions in the late ’50s. That’s the voice that hangs in the wind at the end of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt,” a frail and sorrowful thing, a ruined cathedral still towering in its magnificence. It’s the frayed but indomitable instrument that transforms “We’ll Meet Again” from the purest schmaltz into something that sounds like genuine grief and hope. And it’s what seizes Nick Cave’s astonishing “Mercy Seat” and batters down the gates of heaven. Saint and sinner, Johnny’s here. It’s what made him great until the very end.

So dock a few points for the unnecessary fifth disc, which contains previously released American Recordings material already owned by 90% of the people buying this boxed set. And dock a few more for a couple of the collaborations that fall flat, as in Johnny’s hesitant duet with Fiona Apple on Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son.” It doesn’t matter. What’s left is the voice, and Rick Rubin has unearthed a treasure trove of great recordings to remind us of its magnificence.

One of the most moving moments at the Johnny Cash Memorial Tribute concert held in November at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium was a quiet one. In a stunning montage set to a song sung by Cash and his eldest daughter Rosanne, the crowd was given a glimpse of the Cash family's private photo collection—unforgettable images spanning the legendary musician's career and life as husband, father and grandfather. Most of the photos had never been seen by the public before. The song providing the backdrop was "September When It Comes," from Rosanne's Rules Of Travel album. It was a moment that resonated with fans and family alike—so much that afterwards Rosanne's siblings suggested the homage be released as a video.

CMT, which aired the tribute concert, is now airing the resulting "September When It Comes" video. It can also be seen on Rosanne's website (www.roseannecash.com). The duet is a sparse, stunning and beautiful reflection on mortality that Rosanne penned with her husband and producer John Leventhal.

It's been a difficult year for the Cash family, as Rosanne writes on her website:

"Thank you for the tremendous outpouring of sympathy, love and respect for my father and my family. It has been deeply comforting. This has been a painful year for my extended family, to say the least... I know that deep relationships, like the bond between father and daughter, do not end with death. I know that parents keep teaching us even after they are gone."

Roseanne's Rules Of Travel was recently nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

I can think of two singers who have written songs in answer to the question, “Why do you wear black?” Morrissey’s famous phrase has become a truism of Goth culture: “I wear black on the outside / Because black is how I feel on the inside” (from the song “Unloveable”). Johnny Cash’s answer in “Man in Black” is far less saturnine:

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,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times.

Now honestly, I love The Smiths, and until news arrived that Johnny Cash had died, this column was slated to be about Morrissey’s lyrics (next time, folks). But could the contrast be starker between a literary fop finessing his own image and a hardened realist concerned with the plight of others? Might this contrast epitomize the difference between alternative music and country — the former so tortured, inward, and romantic, the latter so open, social and life-affirming?

I wear the black for those who never read
Or listened to the words that Jesus said
About the road to happiness through love and charity;
Why, you’d think He’s talking straight to you and me.

In the late 1960s, Cash became a born-again Christian to the consternation of his myriad fans and critics. They could have done without the Holy Land imagery at concerts, the repackaged gospel songs, the Billy Graham cameo on the 1971 album, A Man in Black. They wanted Cash, the genuine country article. But several factors had changed him profoundly: his recovery from addiction to amphetamines, the sudden deaths of his friend Roy Orbison’s two sons, and his marriage to June Carter. In the public view, he had undergone the classic American posture-change — from youthful bad-boy to repentant convert. In private, Cash apparently had undergone a true heart-change that gave him a new vision for his career.

Well, we’re doin’ mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin’ cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there oughta be a Man in Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold;
I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been—
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

Paradoxically, although his conversion to Christianity went against the grain of the anti-establishment 1960s, his increased sense of social burden and renewed stance against materialism supported the spirit of the age. Of course Cash was also a troubadour, a poet. With his pen he captured an era of late ’50s fin-tailed decadence — “streak of lightnin’ cars and fancy clothes” — as well as the social revolution of the ’60s, expressing solidarity with “the ones who are held back” and “the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold.” Later in the song, one hears an echo of Bob Dylan in the line, “things need changin’ everywhere you go.

Cash’s stardom began to fade in the mid-’70s. By the early ’90s, it had waned to the extent that no major label was interested in him, so he hooked up with hip-hop pioneer Rick Rubin and in 1994 released American Recordings. Three more American Recordings CDs would follow: Unchained (1996, backed by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers), Solitary Man (2000), and The Man Comes Around (2002). What’s interesting about the four albums is not so much their sound — gritty, mostly acoustic, with a pleasing basement-tapes vitality — but the motley roster of musical acts Cash partnered with on them: Tom Waits, Glenn Danzig, Beck, Soundgarden, Flea, Sheryl Crow and Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy), representing a spectrum of styles from pop to hardcore punk and college radio alternative.

Although Morrissey’s reason for wearing black apparently contrasts with Cash’s, at the end of his career Cash had as much in common with the likes of The Smiths as with his multitudes of country music offspring. The soaring strangeness of his cover of Will Oldham’s “I See a Darkness” from American Recordings III makes this clear:

And you know I have a drive
For life, I won’t let go,
But sometimes this opposition
Comes rising up in me;
This terrible imposition
Comes blacking through my mind.

A panegyric to clinical depression, to be sure. Here, as in Morrissey’s “Unloveable,” the black color is inside, and the only solution is love. The song ends:

Do you know how much I love you?
Cause I’m hoping some day soon
You’ll save me from this darkness.

I love Johnny Cash not merely because he was one of the fathers of country music, the original Man in Black, a cultural figurehead, a publicly penitent sinner, and one of the best songwriters America has produced — but because he, a bit like Walt Whitman, contained so many voices. In the end he proved, at least to me, that country and alternative — outwardness and inwardness — are two sides of the same aesthetic coin.

The Man in Black, Johnny Cash, died early today at Baptist Hospital in Nashville. He follows his wife June Carter Cash who passed away earlier this year. The 11-time Grammy winner and country giant was 71.

"I am deeply saddened by the loss of my children's grandfather and my very dear friend," said former son-in-law Rodney Crowell. "I loved big John with all my heart. The citizens of the world have lost one of their most enduring guiding lights. As a musical hero to millions, a trailblazing artist, humanitarian, spiritual leader, social commentator and most importantly, patriarch to one of the most varied and colorful extended families imaginable, Johnny Cash will, like Will Rogers, stand forever as a symbol of intelligence, creativity, compassion and common sense. I'm thinking Mt. Rushmore."

Singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson had the following to say about Cash in memorium:

"Johnny Cash has always seemed larger than life to me. He is a true American hero, beloved the world over as much for his kindness and compassion and championing of the underdog as for the power of his art. He’s been my inspiration, my faithful friend, my champion - a constant oasis of unconditional love and support. His fierce independence and free spirit, balanced with his love of family, children and his fellow man, will stand as a shining example of the best of what it means to be human. And he was damned funny, even in the darkest times.

“I love you, John
In the cold and Holy darkness
You were always shining brighter than a star
God bless you, John
For the love and joy you’ve given
And the living inspiration that you are”

SIRIUS satellite radio will air a special 1-hour tribute to Cash on The Roadhouse/35 today at 12 pm, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm ET. Legendary DJ Eddie Stubbs will host a special four-hour tribute show Saturday morning, Sept. 13 on 650 AM in Nashville or www.wsmonline.com.