by Steve Turner
The funeral was held five days later at the Rose-Neath Chapel in Bossier City, Louisiana. Tillman Franks's brother, Billy Franks, preached the sermon, The Plainsmen Quartet sang a gospel song, and Johnny Cash read from John 20—a passage chosen randomly by Billie Jean, by flipping open the Bible. "It was a glass-covered casket and Johnny stood beside it as if he was talking to a friend," remembers Tillman Franks. "He read the Bible with a catch of emotionalism in his voice. He was very quiet, but he never faltered."
None of Cash's friends fully realized the depth of his feelings for Billie Jean. They interpreted his desire to be with her at this traumatic time solely as the actions of a man who had promised to take care of his best friend's widow. "Johnny's marriage was unraveling and everybody knew it," says Johnny Western. "Billie Jean was very beautiful. She was breathtaking in her day and I'm sure that a lot of guys had romantic intentions toward her. Cash was the biggest thing in the world at the time and he was helping her. I think it was one of those situations where people assume something is going on, whereas there was nothing romantic on Johnny's part."
That said, his friends probably didn't know that immediately following Horton's death Cash escorted the widow to New York for a three-week shopping spree, staying at a hotel on Central Park and indulging her every whim. He told at least one person that he eventually intended to marry her. "He spent so much money that it was unreal," says Billie Jean. "He bought me everything he could think of. I'd never been to New York before, and he'd been so many times, so he wanted me to see everything. We were doing something all the time. Because I'd stopped eating when Johnny Horton died, he wanted to introduce me to different kinds of food to try to bring my appetite back."
Taking such an extended break meant canceling concerts, but according to Billie Jean he seemed unconcerned about getting back to work. "Johnny Cash had a habit of doing what he wanted to do," she explains. "How did he explain his absence to Vivian? Johnny didn't do any explaining. He knew that I needed him. I really did need him because losing Horton just about killed me. He was determined to put me back on my feet. By the time we left New York I was doing so much better, and he would call me several times a day to see how I was progressing. Johnny was such a caring person. You really had a friend when you had Johnny Cash."
The relationship continued along the lines established when her husband was alive. Cash essentially divided his time off the road between Encino and Shreveport. He saw to Billie Jean's finances and arranged for a portion of his royalties to be paid into her account, to tide her over until she received the royalties from Horton's final hit "North to Alaska." He also protected her privacy. If anyone wanted access to Billie Jean Horton now, they knew that they had to go through Johnny Cash.
More than forty years later Billie Jean remains discreet about the precise nature of the relationship. She starts by describing it as the obligation of someone who had promised to care for her in the event of her husband's death. Then she describes him as "my brother in spirit." Finally she admits to a love she believes would have developed further had it not been for his escalating drug consumption. In the weeks before his death, Horton was trying to help Cash go straight.
"I loved Johnny," she says. "I loved him for all of his life. We were so close, but the only thing that put the kibosh on it was the drugs. Had he not been on the pills, trust me, I would have married him because I cared that much about him, and I knew that he loved me. I had to hold back because I didn't know how to handle anyone on drugs or booze because Horton was so clean."
Another obstacle to any long-term relationship was Billie Jean's desire to pursue her own singing career. Cash wanted her waiting at home for him in Shreveport. "Cash did not like me on the road," she says. "He liked me to stay at home with him coming back and forth. That was his idea and, if I'd done that, would probably have led to marriage."
Her refusal to be tamed led to some explosive outbursts. Once, while both performing in Vancouver on the same night—she was part of a showcase at the Queen Elizabeth Theater while he and the Tennessee Two were playing at the Cave—they stayed at the Hotel Georgia and after an argument, Cash stormed down the hallway smashing the hotel's antique chandeliers. Not only did he have to pay for all the damage, but he and his entourage had to check out immediately.
So you gave up all between us
For a glamorous career
And with all your talent
You should be the big star of the year.
Then you'll be public property
So I release my claim to you
Go on and give 'em all you've got
Sing it pretty, Sue.
I can't take just part of you
And give the world a half
So smile for all the papers
And give 'em autographs.
Go on to all the cities
So your public can see you
But I'll watch on television
So sing it pretty, Sue.
("Sing It Pretty, Sue," 1961)
In April 1961, Cash began work on his second gospel album for Columbia. The Tennessee Two had expanded to become the Tennessee Three with the addition of drummer W. S. 'Fluke' Holland in August. Cash's faith had hit an all-time low, and even he noticed the irony in finally having the opportunity to give voice to his religious feelings. He didn't question the validity of his conversion or the basis of his theology, but he'd grown spiritually sluggish after so many years away from regular worship. And he knew that his behavior went against everything he'd been taught, both by his mother and his church. He'd felt challenged the year before when he'd met Pat Boone at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Cash had been impressed by Boone's "clear-eyed" and "clean-cut" appearance that contrasted so markedly with his own hollowed cheeks and dilated pupils. He knew that Boone's freshness reflected the steadfastness of his faith.
"I was a little ashamed of myself at the time because of the hypocrisy of it all," he said in 1973. "There I was singing the praises of the Lord and singing about the beauty and the peace you find in Him, and I was stoned and miserable. I was climbing the walls."1
His first arrest came in November 1961. At 3:30 in the morning, City Police Inspector W. J. Donoho and two traffic officers stopped Cash and Glenn Douglas Tubb (author of "Home of the Blues,") outside a club near Nashville's Printers Alley. Apparently Johnny was kicking down the door of a club he thought was refusing him entry, only to find that it was in fact closed. Both men spent four hours in jail, and, after paying a five-dollar bond, were released. On the police blotter Johnny Cash listed himself as an actor. The next day's story in the Nashville Banner was headlined "Johnny Cash Arrested Here on Drunk Charge."
By late 1961, Canadian Saul Holiff, who had started out in the clothing and restaurant businesses, had taken over the managing of Cash's career. In 1959, Bob Neal sold his 50 percent share in Cash's management to Stew Carnall, who acted as his sole manager until July 1961 when Cash realized that no one was managing Johnny Cash Enterprises when he was on tour. The things that had made Carnall a charming sophisticate—his love of gambling, good food, fast cars, and fine wine—made him an inefficient manager. "I think things changed for Johnny Cash," says Lorrie Collins Carnall. "He was having a lot of problems. I'm sure that some of it was Stew's fault too. He loved to party and have a good time. He was a player at the horses. In fact, he talked Johnny into buying a horse that they named Walk the Line, but that's just about all this horse did. He walked. He didn't run."
The end for Carnall came when Cash embarked on a Canadian tour promoted by Saul Holiff. "Stew was a great playboy and a lot of fun to be around, but he just wasn't taking care of business," says Johnny Western. "We were in Ontario and Johnny had been trying to get him all day on the phone, but Stew was on the racetrack. He had important business to handle, and he just wasn't around. When Cash finally got through to him and realized where he'd been, he fired him. Marshall suggested that Saul should take over. He said that he'd done more for him on these Ca
nadian dates than Stew had done for him in years. Cash took a good, hard look at that before deciding to hire him."
A sophisticated Canadian, Holiff was the antithesis of a country music manager. He wasn't even a country fan—his music of choice being jazz—but he'd heard "Five Feet High and Rising," Cash's hit song about the 1937 flood at Dyess, on a jukebox and liked it enough to book a few gigs for Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. "I'd promoted people like the Everly Brothers, Paul Anka, and Bill Haley, but I really wasn't familiar with Johnny Cash at all," he admits. "In fact, I wasn't familiar with much of anything in country music. I had to become familiar in a hurry when things played out the way they did."
Being an outsider to both the U.S. and to country music affected the way Holiff managed Cash. He marketed him to a broader, more international audience and took him beyond the narrow confines of the country genre. Holiff coined the phrase "America's foremost singing storyteller" to describe Johnny Cash. He first used it in souvenir programs and later in industry advertisements. "He didn't know he was a singing storyteller until I told him," says Holiff. "I wasn't anxious to play up the 'country' label especially. Labeling was a serious thing. If you were lumped into a certain category it meant restricted airplay. I thought that 'singing storyteller' was nebulous enough."
Cash had always had broad musical interests. His repertoire included black gospel, the blues, traditional folk music, spirituals, work chants, mountain music, eighteenth-century hymns, and Irish ballads. He listened to the Louvin Brothers, the Golden Gate Quartet, and the Carter Family. He shopped at the Home of the Blues on Beale Street, where he bought records by people like Pink Anderson, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters. He impressed those who knew him with his encyclopedic knowledge of early American music and unique ability to sing something from memory on almost any subject put to him.
When in New York, Cash would visit the folk clubs and record stores of Greenwich Village to keep up with the rising urban folk scene. He befriended up-and- coming musicians such as Joan Baez, Richard Farina, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Judy Collins, and Phil Ochs and was even paying attention to the more traditional material of the Kingston Trio who, since 1958, had been recording a mixture of ballads, country songs, spirituals, and folk. It was on their 1959 album The Kingston Trio at Large that he first heard "Remember the Alamo" and on 1963's Sunny Side that he spotted "Jackson." In sponging up these influences he was displaying an openness that was uncommon in Nashville but which would contribute to his eventual longevity.
"He really got into that folk stuff," says Merle Kilgore. "He'd go out and buy all the folk albums that didn't have national distribution, and he'd go back to his hotel room and listen to them. If he found something he really liked, he'd play it over and over again. He'd dissect the song to see what made it work. He'd listen to Odetta, for example, and he'd point out which songs had English roots and which songs had Irish roots. He loved doing that. He had a Leadbelly album and he'd put that on and tell me how Leadbelly got the bones of the song from someone else. Then he'd do the same with Blind Lemon Jefferson. He really studied his craft."
Songs that told the story of the anonymous builders of the nation really interested Cash. He loved material by or about the pioneers and cowboys, slaves and prisoners, farmers and laborers. As he later said, "I love the traditional songs. I like being challenged to do an old railroad ballad that nobody's heard in forty years. I like to keep them alive—gospel, spirituals, Southern blues, cowboy songs like "Oh Bury Me Not." Songs with tragedy and murder are a very strong part of our musical heritage. All the songs I loved as a boy I still love. They come from the same man, the same breath, the same well."
Two records that deeply influenced him in this respect were Merle Travis's Folk Songs of the Hills (1947) and the documentary recording Blues in the Mississippi Night (1959). On both albums the pain of hard labor and the injustices meted out to workers were explored in songs linked by the spoken word. Travis had recorded eight songs that he'd learned growing up that had been composed by anonymous coal miners and passed through the generations. Possibly influenced by recordings of the poet Carl Sandburg, Travis gave a lively spoken introduction to each song, setting it in its context.
In 1947, Alan Lomax, the renowned musicologist, recorded Blues in the Mississippi Night in New York City. It consisted of three anonymous musicians discussing the social conditions that gave rise to the blues, occasionally breaking into songs that illustrated their stories. "Blues is kind of a revenge," says one of them. "You know you wanta say something, you wanta signify like—that's the blues. We all have had a hard time in life, and things we couldn't do or say, so we sing it." They talk about slavery, levee camps, chain gangs, cruel bosses, and racism. In the sleeve notes, Lomax wrote that the recording showed that "people who are virtually illiterate and unschooled can view a complex social problem as a whole; they can analyze it and think about it logically; and can present their views, coherently and powerfully, and with great 'literary' skill."
At the time of the recording, Lomax concealed the identities of the musicians because they feared that they would be hunted down for some of the criticisms they made of their white bosses in Mississippi and Arkansas. Not until 1990, when a CD version of the album was released by Rounder Records, were the names of the by-then-legendary blues musicians Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim, and Sonny Boy Williamson revealed.
Cash's interest in documentary and work songs was most obvious on his albums Ride This Train and Blood, Sweat and Tears. Ride This Train, which used the device of a train journey to link songs about lumberjacks, prisoners, and miners, paid tribute to Merle Travis's style of narration. Blood, Sweat and Tears, a concept album about the pains of heavy labor and the brutality of employers, used a song he'd first heard on Folk Songs from the Hills ("Nine Pound Hammer") and one from Blues in the Mississippi Night ("Another Man Done Gone").
Travis moved from Kentucky to California after the war to act in cowboy films and play in Western swing bands. Cash met him on November 15, 1958, when performing on Town Hall Party. Cash was so eager to replicate Travis's sound on Ride This Train that, while Travis was sick with an ulcer, Johnny Western borrowed Travis's guitar to play on "Loading Coal" and "Boss Jack."
Holiff worked hard to change the public's perception of Johnny Cash, wanting him to be seen not only as the most popular country singer of his day but as a great American artist as well. Part of this plan involved concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. "The only reason we did them was because they were prestigious venues and that it was unprecedented for an artist like Johnny to appear there," says Holiff. "On the afternoon before the New York concert we had a private reception for him on the top floor of the Time-Life Building. I had fillets of buffalo flown in from Wyoming for appetizers. I thought that these things would redirect people's thinking about him and his stature. They would combine to give him an allure. In fact, it worked."
The Carnegie Hall concert itself, though, was a disaster. Cash had taken so much amphetamine that his throat was dried out and he could barely sing. He dressed in a railroader's cap and jacket that had once belonged to Jimmie Rodgers and everyone involved with the show knew he was flying high. "Columbia was going to record the concert for an album, but they didn't even turn on the machine," says Johnny Western. "He'd been whispering during rehearsals but that's as bad as talking or singing in terms of trying to save your voice because the air is still passing over your vocal chords. He was a sad case, but there was a full house and the people still loved him. He was Johnny Cash and he'd showed up!"
In the fall of 1961, with their fourth child, Tara, only a few weeks old, the Cashes moved a few miles north of Ventura to a new home at 8994 Nye Road in Casitas Springs. Worried about the effect of the Los Angeles smog, they wanted to live where the air was cleaner. Cash bought fifteen acres of land halfway up a steep and virtually barren hill and had his friend Walter "Curly" Lewis, a local contractor, build a five bedroom ranch house. To most people it seemed an o
dd choice of location. Over sixty miles from Los Angeles International Airport with no surrounding community, it was worryingly isolated for a mother with four young children.
"It was horrible," remembers Rosanne. "I don't know what they were thinking. Dad was on the road all the time, and he moved us up to the top of this mountain in this really poor township. We had the most money and the biggest house in the whole area, and we were perched up there all alone, and it was strange."
But Cash liked the isolation and the arid climate. Going through a desert phase, he loved nothing more than to drive his car out into the lonely spaces and sit there with his own thoughts. He'd already moved his parents from Memphis to nearby Ojai, where he bought them a trailer park to look after. The fan club would be run out of an office in Ventura. Saul Holiff, who'd just bought a home in the province of Ontario, Canada, would live at the house when he was in California.
Cash even returned to church for a brief period, after Curly Lewis introduced him to Floyd Gressett, a Texan-born preacher who presided over the nondenominational Avenue Community Church in Ventura, and worked with inmates in some of California's most notorious prisons. Gressett shared an interest in the same outdoor pursuits. He had a retreat cabin in the Cuyama Valley, ninety miles north of Ventura, and the two men began hunting and fishing together. Sometimes Cash would go to the cabin alone for several days to write songs. He called Gressett "Chief and Gressett called him "Slick."
After about six months of sporadic church attendance, Cash sent Gressett a note to say that he wanted to be more committed to his faith. "Once I told you that I would join your church when the time is right," he wrote. "Now is the time. Since music is my specialty, you can expect me to have songs played when I am here. . . . Concerning a guitar in the church, near the end of the Psalms there is a chapter saying 'Praise the Lord with all stringed instruments and a loud noise' or something to that effect. . . . My 'name' doesn't have any bearing. My heart is a pauper like all men. Only I as a 'soldier' will be judged."