Johnny Cash Songs
I grew up on Johnny Cash songs. I had my share of “The Ring of Fire,” being stuck in “Folsom Prison,” and would hear the low and guttural “I Walk the Line” on many an occasion or non-occasion. My Dad played Johnny Cash songs as they came out, on what were called 45’s, for those of you CD technology babies, vinyl discs just a little larger than CD’s, actually, on our turntable in the dining room. And joining Mom and Dad on Saturday nights, I would be fascinated by the man in black, joined by his wife (June Carter) with longest hair I had ever seen (before Crystal Gayle, who could step on her hair when she was standing) for a musical variety show Cash hosted.
That was 1969. Johnny Cash songs, accompanied by the Tennessee Three or done solo by the smoky grey ex-convict with the face of a hundred histories, topped the charts. When the man in black would make his dark and dusty way into (in 1970) pastels of “The Partridge Family,” the paisleys of “Laugh-in” (twice in 1972), and the bright lights of “Saturday Night Live” (82 and 85), “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” (93 and 94), and tens of other series and shows, playing himself or some gravelly, gutsy, gritty guy.
Then nobody said much about him, nobody played the now decades- old Johnny Cash songs. Then he died. In a matter of months, it seemed, intellectuals and poseurs, metropolitan and cosmopolitan, metrosexual and asexual, people of unusual backgrounds and foregrounds were latching onto the Cash craze, were going coo-coo for Johnny Cash songs, quotes, memorabilia, and more.
That was 2003-2004. Now, in 2006, a new film based on his early life and his prison stints is advertised. Joaquin Phoenix is Johnny Cash and Reece Witherspoon is June Carter. Since Cash had done time at Folsom, sang about Folsom (and other pens), and is played by Phoenix performing at Folsom, the movie, Walk the Line,” will play for today’s prisoners at Folsom and elsewhere.
So while I was a bit possessive about Johnny Cash’s songs and lyrics being spread out and bastardized by people who have never smoked a cigarette, slugged a shot, or taken a slug, I am less reticent knowing that the Man in Black will be honored by such great numbers of people who will have their own associations with and understandings of lyrics that go like this: “When I was just a baby, my mama told me, ‘Son,
Always be a good boy; don't ever play with guns.’ But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die….”
Though I am sure these same folks will have a different, much more limited response when he walks on stage and says, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”
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