Johnny Cash: The Life

by Robert Hilburn

  IV

  After spending most of January and early February on the road in the Midwest, Cash was still raving about that San Quentin audience when he went into the studio with Law on February 15 and 16 to record more tracks for his concept album, which he planned to call Ride This Train. Law was eager to get the album done as quickly as possible because Columbia execs were now avid for more concept albums in the wake of Marty Robbins’s Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. That set of cowboy songs, built around the huge pop-country hit “El Paso,” was already in the Top 10 on the pop charts.

  Cash was nervous when he first heard about Robbins’s album because he thought it might look like he was trying to copy him with his own concept package. Once he heard Gunfighter, however, he was relieved. The songs on the album were similar in style to his, but there was no deeper concept involved. Robbins’s album felt to Cash like a random group of songs, not the kind of cohesive work he was aiming to put together.

  As on Travis’s Folk Songs, Cash had intended to introduce each song with a little piece of narration, but he soon came up with a far more ambitious plan. In the narration, he brought the listener along on an imaginary train ride across the country, stopping at various spots outlined in the songs—from coal mining territory in Kentucky (for Merle Travis’s “Loading Coal”) to lumberjack country in Oregon (Leon Payne’s “Lumberjack”) to the swamps of Louisiana (Cash’s own “Dorraine of Ponchartrain”).

  Though the songs wouldn’t seem to have much in common when considered individually, the narration brought them together in a way that enabled Cash to address various elements he saw in the American character. The brilliance of the album was in that narration, where he celebrated the land, its people, its history, and, crucially, its diversity. There is no musical backing during the narrative segments, just the occasional sound of a locomotive and its sometimes triumphant, sometimes lonely whistle.

  Cash recorded the narration after all the album’s songs had been recorded. Listening to it now, we might think that Cash is tipping his hat to the Hank Snow hit “I’ve Been Everywhere” when he rattles off city names and Native American tribes at auctioneer speed, but this session was recorded two years before Snow’s hit was released.

  In the songs that followed, Cash sang about the “heart and muscle” of the country. The album was a bold step toward defining the theme of underdogs and working-class heroes that would characterize his music for nearly fifty years. In “Loading Coal,” Cash sang about a boy seeing how hard his father works every day in the mines and anticipating his turn to take his father’s place. In “When Papa Played the Dobro,” Cash relayed once again his belief in the power of music to lift one’s spirits. “Boss Jack” dealt with slave workers on a cotton plantation and their dreams of freedom.

  Throwing out his trademark boom-chicka-boom sound, Cash instead tailored the arrangements to reflect the spirit and historical tone of the songs. Johnny Western, who played guitar on the sessions, marveled at what he described as Cash’s “creative explosion.”

  “Most of the singers in Nashville ask themselves, ‘Will this song be a hit?’” Western says. “John wanted to sell records too, but the question he asked himself was ‘Do I really want to do this song?’ That’s what made him unique. He’d come across a song and he’d go, ‘People ought to know about this.’ For whatever reason, he had this mission to share things with his audience.

  “Johnny wasn’t willing to compromise on anything when he was making that album. He even did a version of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem ‘The Ballad of the Harp Weaver’ because he felt it was such an inspirational story. The problem is the track ran five or six or seven minutes, which meant no one was going to ever play it on the radio. But John didn’t care. He wanted his fans to hear the song.”

  Ultimately, “Harp Weaver” didn’t make it onto Ride This Train because Cash couldn’t find a way to tie it in with the other songs in the collection, but he performed it often in concert, and it was a huge favorite.

  It took Cash just two days in the studio to record the concept project, and then he returned to the studio the following day to record Now, There Was a Song!—the collection of country favorites he had conceived with Carnall. The problem was that Cash had exhausted all his inspiration on the Ride This Train project. The new rhythm tracks were timid, and Cash didn’t connect with the songs vocally. No one was ever going to think of, say, Cash’s version of “My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You” over Ray Price’s earlier hit rendition.

  To Cash’s mind, the Song album was just for fun; the album that mattered was Ride This Train. More than anything else he had done, Ride This Train made Cash feel as if he had forged a connection with Jimmie Rodgers and the rest of his greatest musical heroes. He felt authentic. It was the most ambitious album country music had ever seen from a star of his stature.

  “Johnny was in great spirits on those sessions,” Western says. “He was straight as a string. Some of my best memories of John are from that time, which is why it broke my heart in later sessions when his voice started to go because of all the drugs.”

  Chapter 10

  Billie Jean and the Marriage Proposal

  I

  CASH TOOK ADVANTAGE OF FREE time at home early in 1960 to take another ride through Ventura County, which he had been eager to do ever since the visit with Carnall. This time he wanted to see a 9,200-square-foot strip mall that his friend, actor and recording artist Sheb Wooley, owned in the quiet little community of Oak View, next door to the upscale resort town of Ojai. It was named the Purple People Mall after Wooley’s 1958 pop hit “The Purple People Eater.” During the drive, Cash noticed a small trailer park for sale on the highway that led from Oak View to Ojai. He liked the idea of owning a business, but more important, he saw the park as a way to lure his parents out west. After getting assurances that his parents would manage the park for him, Cash bought the Mountain View Trailer Court, which he renamed the Johnny Cash Trailer Rancho. He offered free albums to the first fifteen people who signed up for space.

  When it came time to release another single, Cash and Law both agreed that “Seasons in My Heart,” from the forthcoming Now, There Was a Song! sessions, made sense, but Cash caught Law by surprise with his choice for the other side of the record: “Smiling Bill McCall.”

  Marshall Grant had never heard the song before Cash played it in the studio. The bassist knew Cash loved to fool around with novelty songs and parodies to entertain himself on the road, but this one was just stupid. The song was a rambling account of a singer whose deep, sexy voice on the radio made men envious and women swoon, but who lived in fear of someone finding out that he was really four feet tall and bald. Though the song was fictional, some folks in Nashville would later think Cash was making fun of Hank Snow, who was five foot four and wore some of the worst toupees in the history of show business. But Cash would never make fun of one of his musical heroes.

  In the song, he was poking fun at a man actually named Bill McCall, the head of Four Star Records in Los Angeles, who was accused by many musicians, including Patsy Cline, of exploiting them. The song was Cash’s way of sticking it to the exec. As usual, Law went along with Cash, and the record was released in March. “Seasons” gained attention mostly on country radio stations, but to Law’s amazement, pop DJs started picking up on “McCall.”

  Smelling one of those offbeat hits that every so often capture the radio audience’s interest, Columbia put a tongue-in-cheek full-page ad in Billboard to promote the record. Despite the early signals, however, “McCall” failed to make the Top 100 on the pop charts. “Seasons” stalled at number ten on the country charts, followed by “McCall” at number thirteen. Cash brushed off the disappointing results; he had done what he wanted.

  Law was totally supportive of both Ride This Train and Now, There Was a Song! but he didn’t hear another potential single in either album. That meant it could be a long time before Cash had another hit on the radio. He gently encouraged Cash to co
me up with something they might release as a single.

  By the time Cash returned to the road on March 4 in Winnipeg, he had a song idea, albeit a slim one—a story about a guy longing to get home to the girl of his dreams in Saskatoon, somewhat the reverse of “Ballad of a Teenage Queen.” He figured he needed to get back on the pop charts, and “The Girl in Saskatoon,” which he co-wrote with Horton, was certainly closer to a teen pop song than anything he had recorded since leaving Sun. Eager to get Cash back into the studio, Law went to Los Angeles in mid-May to record. Cash was in Los Angeles to guest on the Tennessee Ernie Ford TV show, which aired on May 12. Normally Ford’s show, which came on opposite Frank Sinatra’s, did well in the ratings, but Cash’s appearance happened to come the night Sinatra welcomed Elvis Presley home from the Army.

  In the studio with Law to record “Saskatoon” on May 10, he brought another song that was apparently left over from his Ride This Train period. “Locomotive Man” tapped into the folk and blues tradition of boasting about a woman in every port—or in this case at every train stop. Cash’s voice wasn’t in good shape, though, and Law felt they’d have to get together again in Nashville to redo both songs. Without “Saskatoon” ready, they were left short of a single, so Cash and Law again sorted through tracks they had already recorded. They settled on a song from the upcoming Now, There Was a Song! album, an old Hank Thompson hit titled “Honky-Tonk Girl,” and another non-Cash composition, “Second Honeymoon.” Those were slim pickings, and the single did even worse than “Bill McCall.” His next two, “Going to Memphis” in September and “Saskatoon” in December, wouldn’t make the country charts at all—a first for a new Cash single. Columbia’s golden boy was floundering. Back in New York, executives grew increasingly concerned.

  To Cash’s everlasting regret, Five Minutes to Live, which he finally began filming in Hollywood in June, was low-budget even by low-budget standards—under $100,000 for everything, from cast to crew to film costs. Cash’s contract called for just two weeks’ work at $700 a week, less than he’d make in one night on the concert trail. Though Cash had no training or real experience as an actor, Bill Karn, the director, took the same approach with Cash as Law: “Whatever you want to do is fine with me, Johnny.” Just released from jail, Cash’s character gets involved in a bank heist with a hard-boiled criminal played by Vic Tayback (best known later on for his role as the diner owner in the TV series Alice). The Tayback character demands that the bank vice president cash a phony $70,000 check within five minutes or else Cash will kill the banker’s wife. Terrorizing the wife, Cash tried to project the menace and tension of all the bad guys he’d seen in the movies, but his acting is over the top.

  Before filming was finished, Cash got word that the picture was being shut down because the production company had run out of money. That might have been a blessing, considering how badly it was shaping up, but Cash was so thoroughly wedded to the idea of a Hollywood career that he agreed to put up some $20,000 of his own money to get the film back on track. But filming didn’t resume until September because it took time to clear everyone’s schedule. When the movie was finally wrapped, Cash looked eagerly to hitting the road again, including a few dates in Canada that November.

  He was greeted in Canada by Saul Holiff, who had booked him a few times by now and was looking for a way to become permanently attached to a man he saw as a rising star. To impress Cash, Holiff handed him a list of the dates, the promotion he had done for each, and how ticket sales were doing in each city. Cash, who was becoming increasingly frustrated by all the time Carnall was spending partying and playing the horses, indeed took notice. It would be nice, he thought, to have someone with this guy’s determination and drive watching out for him.

  Holiff had operated a men’s clothing store and a restaurant before he turned to putting on music shows. “He was all about marketing,” says Holiff’s son Jonathan. “He lived and breathed advertising and slogans. He loved puns to the point where, as a child, it would make me cringe because he would pun [on] everything.”

  The slogan for his clothing store: “If your clothes aren’t becoming to you, you should be coming to us.”

  The puns and slogans shouldn’t mislead anyone into thinking Holiff was a hack. He was a serious and sophisticated man who was given to nicely tailored clothes and fine wines. But he wasn’t afraid of hard work or of taking chances. After making money in the clothing business, Holiff opened Sol’s Square Boy, the first drive-in restaurant in London, Ontario, to feature electronic ordering at your car window. It served square rather than round hamburgers, and that led to the slogan “Four extra bites for your money.” He started putting on concerts in town as a way to boost business at the restaurant. He’d book someone—Bill Haley and His Comets, the Everly Brothers, the Ink Spots—and require them under the contract to swing by the drive-in after the show to sign autographs.

  Holiff didn’t know anything about pop music; he was a jazz and classical fan. To keep up with what was hot in pop, he went to a local record store every week to find out what the kids were listening to, and then he’d book that act. That’s how he had originally heard of Cash. When Holilff realized he could make more money promoting shows than he could with the restaurant and clothing businesses, he began producing concerts all around the region. All the while, though, he was looking for a singer with whom he could team up and make a splash in the United States—and to Holiff’s mind they would be a team. He saw himself as Colonel Tom Parker and eventually decided that Cash could be his Elvis Presley. Years later, in fact, he was able to finagle a Kentucky colonelcy so he wouldn’t be outranked by Parker. His goal, simply put, was to make a million dollars. In the words of Jonathan Holiff, his father “had a big ego and he loved to dress in fine clothes. Whatever John got, Saul got the same thing, whether it was a [hotel] room or a limousine with a chauffeur.”

  By the time of this 1960 tour, Holiff had checked into every aspect of Cash’s career, from his itineraries to his weekly position on the charts, and one thing struck him: How come this talented, charismatic recording artist was still toiling on the country music circuit? Why were he and the people around him thinking so small? Holiff broached the subject gently, telling Cash he was a folksinger like Burl Ives and Harry Belafonte, and he ought to be playing more sophisticated venues, such as Carnegie Hall in New York and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Cash listened intently; those prestigious rooms sounded good to him. Holiff also wondered why Cash didn’t add a drummer to his group to get a bigger sound. At the end of the tour, they agreed to keep in touch.

  There had been talk of adding a drummer to the Tennessee Two ever since the Sun days, but Cash kept putting it off; he didn’t want to go through the trouble of breaking in a new band member, and none of them wanted to spend the extra money. But Holiff’s suggestion made Cash reconsider. After all, he was already using a drummer on some of his recordings, and it made sense to have the live show sound as close as possible to the records. He even began to think about adding some backup singers, but Grant convinced him that, too, was an unnecessary expense.

  Cash finally decided to move ahead when he was booked in to the world-famous Steel Pier amusement park in Atlantic City for six days in mid-August. He had seen newsreel footage of the Pier, which proudly billed itself as the “Nation’s Showplace,” thanks to such flamboyant attractions as a horse that dove into a pool of water and a high-wire motorcyclist. Besides the circus-like attractions, the park included four theaters that could seat up to twelve thousand people. When Cash brought up the issue of a drummer again, Grant suggested W. S. “Fluke” Holland, a big teddy bear of a man, whom they both knew from Carl Perkins’s band. Everyone got along with him, which was important when you consider all the hours they’d be spending together on the road. Grant also knew that Holland was available because he had left Perkins’s band in 1959 as Carl’s mounting drinking problems caused him to lose interest in touring. The drummer was just about to go back to his old job at an air-co
nditioning company when Grant called with an offer to play the Steel Pier.

  Holland agreed, and everything went well. Holland pretty much knew the songs, and he just followed Grant’s lead on the bass strings when he got lost. The four bonded quickly. Holland, too, was a born prankster. When Cash and Grant heard that Fabian, the pretty-boy singer from Philadelphia who was being promoted as the new Elvis, was going to follow them at the Steel Pier, the group decided to leave him a present. They got a couple of cartons of eggs, broke them open, and poured the contents all over the lighting rigs backstage, which meant there’d be a foul odor in the theater as soon as the lights were turned on for Fabian’s show. That sealed the deal with Holland. On those early shows, Cash, out of loyalty to Perkins and Grant, introduced the threesome as the Tennessee Two Plus One. In time, however, they became the Tennessee Three.

  II

  Whereas he once tried desperately to keep his addiction private, Cash was now walking around with so many amphetamines in his pockets that they would sometimes spill out onto the floor. Gordon Terry, who’d given him his first pill three years earlier, did a double take one morning in the Midwest when he saw Cash take a handful out of his pocket and offer them to another musician.

  Cash was feeling pressure from many areas. His film was a fiasco, surely shaking any lingering belief he had that movies were ever going to play a significant role in his career. As proud as he was of Ride This Train, he couldn’t ignore the fact that he wasn’t turning out hit singles. Though he didn’t know it at the time, Columbia executives had brought up Cash’s sales slump with Law and asked if anything was wrong. Law did his best to cover for Cash, saying there was some good stuff on the way.

  On a personal level, Cash’s relationship with Vivian was edging toward a crisis point, and he added to his torment by falling in love with women who were off-limits. First it had been Lorrie Collins. And now, he was slowly admitting to himself, he was thinking more and more about his best friend’s wife.