Now, the Columbia ad in a Billboard magazine salute to Cash conveyed a much different image.
“This man’s place in American music has never really been occupied before,” the ad copy declared.
No musician has ever reached so deeply into the American heart, and no musician has ever reached so many Americans. Last year alone, he sold more than six million records, more than anyone else has ever sold in a single year. And this year he is keeping up with that incredible pace.…
He has consistently stood up for the underdog—for the American Indian, the prisoner, the poor, the young, the individualist, the forgotten. And so doing he has struck a chord in all of us, a chord lost in the tumult and cynicism of the times. To hear Johnny Cash singing is to hear the song of freedom—a song imprisoned in our hearts. He sings for the prisoner in us all.
In an accompanying essay, Billboard’s respected editor Paul Ackerman called Cash a “great original.”
“He is at once an underground hero and a favorite of the great mass of adult record buyers,” wrote Ackerman. “His song material and style of performance cut across practically all key categories and appeal to all markets….He is the epitome of the music man who embraces realism and draws for his inspiration upon the inexhaustible accounts of his own and his fellow man’s experience. The nation and its history are his reference books. The people are his audience.”
Save for a word here and a hyperbole there, the characterizations were true. Cash was striking a unique chord with an inclusive but independent vision.
Rather than try to move toward mainstream pop in order to build an audience, Cash built the TV series—the sometimes hapless guests aside—around the songs and messages that he had been expressing ever since his Sun Records days. The signature Ride This Train album may have been largely ignored when it was released, but the songs and spirit of that album about the country’s frontier heritage were now being heard and embraced in living rooms across America. To the millions actually seeing Cash for the first time, he came across as someone who reflected the country’s roots and cherished values.
The timing of the TV show was crucial.
If Holiff had been lucky enough to talk CBS into a TV show even three years earlier, the Cash that America would have seen would have been a drug addict whose behavior was out of control most nights. In the ABC series, Cash was a man reborn. John Carter’s birth assisted in that process in two ways. It presented Cash to the world as a family man, and it contributed greatly to his finally staying off drugs.
“That boy changed John’s life,” Grant said. “Over the years, John told many stories about ‘quitting’ drugs and his subsequent ‘recovery.’…But the truth of the matter is that, except for a few clean and sober periods, Johnny Cash was never truly free of drugs from the late 1950s until the day his son was born.”
II
When taping resumed for the TV show’s second season, Cash was in a much stronger position than during the early episodes. Now that the program was a hit, ABC and Screen Gems had to keep the star at least reasonably happy. To that end, Stan Jacobson was named co-producer, which meant that Cash would have more say over choosing the guests. And sure enough, the second season, which ran on Wednesday nights from January 21 to May 13, relied much more heavily on Cash’s country favorites, including Merle Haggard, Marty Robbins, and Loretta Lynn. Even the non-country guests, such as Ray Charles, Neil Diamond, and Tony Joe White, seemed more compatible. The bulk of the music, in fact, came from members of Cash’s own troupe, including Perkins, the Statler Brothers, and Carter Family members. Most nights, too, the shows ended with a gospel song or an inspirational number.
Cash had long woven messages into his music, but he later credited Billy Graham with making him even more comfortable in that role. Over the next year or so, Cash introduced three songs that would go a long way in defining his public image. He sang the first one, “What Is Truth,” on March 18, just two weeks after John Carter’s birth. Cash had heard Merle Travis grumbling one day on the TV show’s set about how he couldn’t understand some of this new rock music, and as he often did, Cash tried to put himself in the place of the underdog, this time youth.
The country was still caught up in a severe generation gap, divided over everything from hair length to Vietnam. Still haunted by the wounded men he’d met on his trip to the Far East, Cash thought about the world his own son would someday encounter. As he sang the song on the show, he came as close to the role of a preacher as he had ever done. It was a less confrontational take on Dylan’s defense of youth in “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”
The old man turned off the radio,
said, “Where did all of the old songs go?
Kids sure play funny music these days,
they play it in the strangest ways.”
Said, “It looks to me like they’ve all gone wild,
it was peaceful back when I was a child.”
Well, man, could it be that the girls and the boys
Are tryin’ to be heard above your noise?
And the lonely voice of youth cries,
“What is truth?”
A little boy of three sittin’ on the floor
looks up and says, “Daddy, what is war?”
“Son, that’s when people fight and die.”
A little boy of three says, “Daddy, why?”
Young man of seventeen in Sunday school
bein’ taught the Golden Rule.
And by the time another year has gone around,
it may be his turn to lay his life down.
Can you blame the voice of youth for askin’,
“What is truth?”
Young man sittin’ on the witness stand,
The man with the Book says, “Raise your hand.”
“Repeat after me, I solemnly swear.”
The man looked down at his long hair.
And although the young man solemnly swore,
nobody seems to hear anymore.
And it didn’t really matter if the truth was there,
it was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair.
And the lonely voice of youth cries,
“What is truth?”
The young girl dancin’ to the latest beat
has found new ways to move her feet.
A young man speaking in the city square
is trying to tell somebody that he cares.
Yeah, the ones that you’re callin’ wild
are going to be the leaders in a little while.
This old world wakened to a new born day.
And I solemnly swear that it’ll be that way.
You better help that voice of youth
Find what is truth?
And the lonely voice of youth cries,
“What is truth?”
Committed to the song, Cash showcased it again four weeks later. By then, Columbia had rushed it out as a single. The Hello, I’m Johnny Cash album had done well, though nothing close in sales to the prison albums, largely because it didn’t produce a blockbuster single. Still, Cash regained enough pop airplay with “What Is Truth” to return to the Top 20 on the pop charts. Even more important, the song’s TV exposure added immensely to Cash’s growing role as a meaningful artist—though not everyone was pleased.
Whispers were being heard among country music circles in Nashville that all this success was going to his head. Just who did he think he was with this holier-than-thou attitude? Was he hosting a TV show or Sunday school? Instead of simply singing a gospel song at the end of the show, Cash twice devoted the “Ride This Train” segment to spiritual songs during March. Even network reps would soon begin to worry. They were starting to get feedback from affiliates that there was too much religion in the show.
President Richard M. Nixon didn’t know much about country music, but he listened when Billy Graham spoke highly of Cash and his positive impact on the nation’s youth. He invited Cash to perform some of his songs at the White House on
April 17, 1970. Cash immediately passed the news along to his father, still anxious for the old man’s approval.
Cash’s decision to go to the White House was widely criticized by many of the young, liberal fans who had flocked to him after the Folsom album and his embrace of Dylan on the TV show. They despised Nixon, chiefly over the war in Vietnam, and they were disillusioned that their new hero was, to their minds, aiding and abetting the enemy on Pennsylvania Avenue. To Cash, his decision to go wasn’t political. When he endorsed people, it was based more on friendship than on issues. He had never even voted. Cash would have been just as thrilled to get the invitation from a Democrat. It was the office of the presidency that he respected. He didn’t weigh the impact of the move on what it would do to his image. Still, he didn’t sacrifice his principles in the process, either. Along with the invitation, Cash received a list of songs the president would like to hear, and he sidestepped the list.
One song was “Okie from Muskogee,” the hugely popular country hit by Merle Haggard which took a lighthearted slap at hippies and young protesters. Another was “Welfare Cadillac,” a novelty country hit at the time. Written and recorded by Guy Drake, the song attacked a popular conservative target of the day: welfare fraud. The lyrics spoke about a man who used his welfare money to buy a Cadillac and then laughed at those who paid taxes.
When the president’s request became public in mid-March, Herman Yeatman, the Tennessee welfare commissioner, wrote to Nixon protesting the idea of anyone singing “Welfare Cadillac” at the White House. He called the song an inaccurate depiction of welfare recipients. Sharing Yeatman’s view, but not wanting to embarrass the president, Cash announced in response to press inquiries that he wasn’t going to perform “Welfare Cadillac” because he didn’t know the song and didn’t have time to rehearse it. Don Reid of the Statler Brothers says the sole reason Cash refused to sing it was that he felt the song made fun of poor people. Cash wanted his performance to be inspiring, not political.
There were some 250 people, including many members of the country music industry, in the East Room of the White House when Nixon stepped to the microphone to introduce the evening’s featured guest. Referring good-naturedly to the flap over “Welfare Cadillac,” the president told the audience he had learned that no one tells Johnny Cash what to sing. “I understand he owns a Cadillac, but he won’t sing about Cadillacs,” he quipped.
When the laughter eased, the president addressed the role Cash was quickly assuming in pop culture.
“He was born in Arkansas and he now lives in Tennessee, but he belongs to America,” Nixon said. “It’s called country music and western music, but the truth is it’s American music. It speaks in story about America in a way that speaks to all of us, north, east, west, and south.”
Dispensing with the normal “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” greeting, a deeply humbled Cash simply said “Thank you” to the president before launching into one of the songs Nixon had requested, “A Boy Named Sue.” In view of his new son, he changed the song’s final line to “And if I ever have a boy, I’m going to name him…John Carter Cash.”
Dressed in the black frock coat and ruffled shirt that had become his signature attire on the TV show, he brought June onstage for “Darling Companion” and slipped in a medley of “I Walk the Line” and “Ring of Fire” later in the set. Mostly, Cash tailored the one-hour show with the same sensitivity and artistry he applied to the prison concerts. He felt as honored being invited to the White House as he had meeting Billy Graham, and he wanted to use the evening once again to testify to what he felt was important about music and himself.
“I was at such a high point in my career and there was so much to be thankful for—John Carter, June, the way God was coming back into my life,” he told me. “I had been on television hundreds of times, but the White House was something different. I was thinking, ‘If I die tomorrow, I want this show to define my goal as a songwriter and entertainer.’”
To the White House gathering he said, somewhat nervously, “I want to tell you a little bit about ourselves, about our background, where we came from, maybe why we’re here. We hope to show you a little bit of the soul of the South.” Cash then took the guests, including some Tennessee legislators and scores of Washington officials, back to Dyess with “Five Feet High and Rising” and “Pickin’ Time” to explain his roots. Then, rather than trace his career through Sun Records and his hits, he spoke to his feelings about the country and its heritage—feelings that had led to many of the concept albums.
“This is the prettiest country in the world and I’ve been to a bunch of them and there ain’t nothing like it anywhere,” he said in a speech worthy of the best of Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger. “With all these people we got in us from everywhere. Put them all together and get them to singing these songs and talking about all the things that had happened and the things that…It’s even more beautiful.” He then played a song that reflected that folklore tradition, “Wreck of the Old 97.”
Warmed up, Cash mentioned how Billy Graham had told him that the country “needed some songs, some religious songs that said something to the people of today, especially the young people.” He said the comments were a great inspiration to him and made him realize the huge platform he had in network TV.
After singing “Jesus Was a Carpenter,” he introduced “What Is Truth” by saying he wanted to warn young people about the dangers of drugs, and that he realized he would be more effective if he could show young people he was on their side. “I wrote a poem for the youth of America,” he said. “It was a twelve-verse poem, and we took four verses out and made a recording of it. It’s on their side, which was the way I was feeling at the time. Maybe I was trying to be a kid again.”
The lines about the injustices of war seemed pointed in the White House setting, but Cash softened the mood by saying respectfully that he hoped the president could bring the boys home as soon as possible. The applause was loud and long; once again Cash was being seen as “one of us.” Cash devoted the rest of the set list to gospel tunes, ending with “The Old Account,” a statement of joy at having one’s sins washed away. It was another memorable example of Cash rising to the occasion with openness and heart.
Afterward, Nixon and his wife, Pat, gave John and June a two-hour tour of the White House, even encouraging Cash to lie down on the Lincoln bed. Nixon had offered to let John Carter stay in the Lincoln Bedroom during the performance, but the youngster remained at the hotel.
The president gladly obliged when Cash asked him to pose for a photograph with his seventy-two-year-old father. Marshall Grant later said that, for the first time, Ray Cash, a man not prone to show his emotions, actually looked proud of his son. Cash would write in his year-end letter that the White House performance was his “best concert to date. God surely with me.”
The second defining song of the new season was Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.” Its message of loneliness and redemption seemed taken right from Cash’s life, but Kristofferson didn’t have the singer in mind when he wrote the song. “That was probably the most autobiographical song I’d written at the time,” Kristofferson says. “I was thinking about losing my family and living in a condemned building in Nashville.”
When he finished writing the song, Kristofferson’s first choice to record it was Cash, but another successful Nashville recording artist, Ray Stevens, heard a demo tape of the song and was so moved by it that he gave him permission to record the song in late 1969. Cash finally began to think about recording the song after he heard Stevens’s version. Still, he didn’t commit to it for several more weeks.
“It didn’t hit me until one day when I was at home and out by the lake and I realized how far I had come from the days when I felt like the man in the song…so empty and alone,” he said. “All of a sudden the lines of the song started running through my head and I realized I could identify with every one of them. I was so caught up in the song I didn’t even want to wait to
go into the studio and record it. I wanted to do it as soon as possible on the TV show because Bob and I had been talking about taking some songs from the show and putting them into an album.”
Here are the lyrics:
Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An’ I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An’ stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.
I’d smoked my brain the night before,
On cigarettes and songs I’d been pickin’.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid,
Cussin’ at a can that he was kicking.
Then I crossed the empty street,
’n caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken.
And it took me back to somethin’,
That I’d lost somehow, somewhere along the way.
On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
’Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.
In the park I saw a daddy,
With a laughin’ little girl who he was swingin’.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to the song they were singin’.
Then I headed back for home,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’.
Johnny Cash: The Life Page 42