Johnny Cash: The Life

by Robert Hilburn

  Oddly, the group didn’t consider following the album with a tour. “No one thought of the Highwayman album as anything more than a one-time thing,” Lou Robin says. “Everyone had his own band and his own tour lined up months in advance. Which musicians would they use? What songs would they do? The idea of dropping everything else and touring just seemed too complicated.”

  Blackburn’s hope that all those Highwayman buyers would pick up Cash’s next album wasn’t realized. In the fall, Rainbow, the LP Cash had started with Moman before The Highwaymen project, came and went without a trace. There were a few strong songs in it, including Kris Kristofferson’s “Here Comes That Rainbow” and John Fogerty’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” but the arrangements and vocals were strangely pedestrian. To judge from the tone of the liner notes, Cash had been skeptical all along about any Highwaymen coattails.

  “I don’t think about sales and promotion when I record a song,” he wrote. “I don’t record songs to do family or friends a favor. I don’t record a song because I publish it. I record a song because I love it and let it become part of me. And even a blind pig gets a grain of corn once in a while. So who know, maybe it’ll sell hundreds.”

  Still, Blackburn continued to believe in Cash, and he okayed a re-teaming of Cash and Jennings with Moman, tucking the sessions in between tours. Cash also agreed to be the subject of a celebrity roast to raise money for the Jewish National Fund in Memphis. The roasters included Jennings, Blackburn, Sam Phillips, and Moman.

  During that fall of 1985, Moman got involved in a campaign in Memphis to salute the city’s rich musical heritage. As part of the project he proposed an album toasting the city’s Sun Records history. He quickly enlisted Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis to perform on the album Class of ’55.

  “When J.R., Jerry, Carl, Roy, and Chips walked into a press conference at the Peabody Hotel, the place exploded,” Marty Stuart recalls. “There was five minutes of applause, hollering, and tears. Sam Phillips and Cowboy [Jack Clement] were also there. It was wonderful to see all those characters back on Union Avenue. If the music on the record matched the electricity surrounding the event, it would have been a second coming.”

  The music didn’t come close to matching it except when the foursome was joined by guests John Fogerty, the Judds, and Rick Nelson on a rollicking seven-minute version of Fogerty’s “Big Train (from Memphis),” a salute to Elvis Presley that appeared on Fogerty’s Centerfield album earlier that year. Most of the remaining songs were marginal, and the singing was lazy.

  Moman couldn’t find a label that was interested in releasing the album. Finally Mercury got involved because one of Johnny Cash’s biggest fans in the music business, Steve Popovich, had recently taken over as head of Nashville operations for Mercury Records, a division of PolyGram.

  “I’m not embarrassed to say I was in awe of John since the first time I saw him in concert,” said Popovich, whose father was a Pennsylvania coal miner. “He had such charisma onstage and I believed what he was saying in the songs like ‘Man in Black.’ He stood up for people like my dad and everyone else from that coal mining town.”

  When Popovich, who’d worked with Cash at Columbia, learned that Moman had this new album, he wanted to be involved. Popovich felt it would go a long way toward putting his stamp on Mercury. He was thrilled when he brought the four artists onstage at Nashville’s annual Fun Fair music showcase and “the place went wild.”

  Unfortunately, Moman failed to obtain permission from Columbia to use Cash on the album. “Chips had gotten money to make the album from Federal Express, whose headquarters are in Memphis,” says Lou Robin. “When Rick [Blackburn] heard about it, he was furious. He demanded Chips pay him $100,000 to keep John’s voice on the record—and Chips had to come up with the money.”

  It was probably the easiest money Columbia ever made off Cash during the 1980s.

  II

  Cash continued to work on his book, but he was having trouble with the climactic scene on the Damascus road when Jesus, following a bolt of blinding light from the heavens, spoke to Paul, who then underwent his conversion. Cash had trouble relating to the “heaven-and-earth connection” Paul experienced—as symbolized by the blinding light. He finally found his answer at Christmas, just two days after his father died from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

  Ray Cash, at eighty-eight, had been ill for much of 1985. His eyesight was failing, and he spent most of the time in bed. On occasion, family members would gather around his bed and sing some of Carrie’s favorite hymns.

  It was an especially difficult time for John. He still harbored resentment over the way his father had treated him when he was growing up in Dyess and how Ray had continued to withhold his approval. At the same time, he felt guilty for not being able to brush these feelings aside and care more about the man. When he wrote his second autobiography a decade later, Cash still had ambivalent feelings. There were times when he couldn’t relate to his father, but there were other times when he felt they were kindred spirits.

  “In some ways my father is an enigma to me,” he wrote. “His presence in my memory is awesome, yet it’s fleeting, something I can turn my back on and even, sometimes, laugh about. On stage the other night, I decided to do ‘These Hands’ and said, ‘I’ll dedicate this song to my mother and father, who worked so hard to put me through school and encouraged me to go out and sing.’

  “Right then I felt my father’s presence beside me protesting, ‘I didn’t encourage you!’ He was right, of course—his attitude had always been, ‘You won’t amount to a hill of beans. Forget about that guitar’—and I almost laughed out loud right there in front of everybody.”

  In the most telling revelation, Cash admitted that he no longer thought much about his father, didn’t even visit his grave, though he would drive past the cemetery almost every day he was home. At the same time, he called Ray Cash “the most interesting specter in my memories, looming around in there saying, ‘Figure me out, son.’”

  At the funeral parlor on Christmas Day, Cash was touched to see his father “so handsome in that fine blue suit and burgundy tie.” After months of suffering, Cash told himself, his father at last was at peace. He then dropped his mother off at her house, where scores of family and friends were waiting, and he headed home to change into more comfortable clothes.

  When he opened his closet door, he saw a box of fireworks he had bought months earlier. Knowing how much his father loved fireworks, he had planned to set them off on his parents’ front lawn Christmas night so his father could see them from the window. He took the box back to his parents’ house and stood in the yard, setting off the wide array of skyrockets, Roman candles, and sparklers. Afterward, he went inside the house and kissed his mother good night.

  Cash was drained. Back home, he went straight to bed and soon found himself dreaming of his father. As he later described the dream, Cash was back on his parents’ lawn when a long, bright silver car came over the hill and stopped about fifty feet in front of him. When the left rear door opened, Ray Cash stepped out and walked toward his son. His father reached out his hand, and a “long row of light streamed up from the ground” between them. “The stream of light between us widened, grew in brilliance and became an unbreachable gulf.”

  Then suddenly both the light and his father were gone.

  Cash got up and paced the floor for hours, thinking about the light in the dream and slowly visualized more clearly Saint Paul’s experience on the Damascus road. Almost immediately, he resumed work on the novel. When he finished it, he wrote on the first page of the manuscript:

  This book is dedicated to my father, Ray Cash

  1897–1985, veteran of World War II

  Discharge: Honorable. Conduct: Good.

  Mark Stielper, a Maryland businessman and lifelong fan, had crossed paths with Cash in the early 1980s and he enjoyed numerous conversations with John about Saint Paul. Stielper, who had once considered entering th
e priesthood, not only shared Cash’s fascination with biblical history, but he developed an encyclopedic knowledge and abiding passion about John’s life and career.

  “We bonded over [Saint] Peter and [Saint] Paul,” remembers Stielper. “I don’t think we spoke a word about his music for a long time. I later went on an educational archaeological dig to Rome. When I returned and met up with him at Cinnamon Hill, he told me that one of his greatest unfulfilled dreams was going on a dig in Jerusalem.”

  Though twenty-five years younger than Cash, the tall, soft-spoken, but opinionated Stielper evolved quickly into a valued confidant who was independent enough—he wasn’t on the payroll—to speak frankly when he felt the need. As years went by, he came to be seen within the Cash camp as the family historian, building a massive library of Cash’s correspondence and personal effects. He also developed a strong rapport with John Carter Cash and others in the singer’s inner circle.

  When the book was finished, Cash was “very satisfied,” Stielper says. “It was almost like writing an autobiography; that’s how much he identified with Paul. The book wasn’t written in a vacuum. Of course, this was also a time of great unhappiness and drama in his life, particularly with his ill health and the realization that, commercially, he wasn’t going to scale those late-1960s heights again.”

  Cash’s pace was hectic in the early months of 1986. He spent much of January in Arizona and Mexico filming Stagecoach. On February 25, Jimmy Webb’s “Highwayman” won a Grammy for best country song, though The Highwaymen themselves lost in the country group vocal category to the Judds’ “Why Not Me.” He did have something to cheer about, however: Rosanne won in the female country vocal category for her recording of “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me.”

  To promote the publication of Man in White, Cash attended a booksellers convention, but it didn’t stir interest. Sales were minimal. Like Dylan, Cash didn’t like dwelling on the past. As soon as the book was done, he was ready to move on. “After he was finished with the promoting and the tours and the book conventions,” Stielper says, “I never heard him mention Man in White again.”

  Around this time, three of Cash’s albums hit the stores: Heroes, the collection with Jennings; Class of ’55; and Believe in Him, the gospel album he made with Stuart in 1982. Original plans to release Believe on Priority Records ended when the label folded a week before the album was to have hit the stores in 1984. It took two years for Robin to find it a new home on the Christian music label Word.

  The three albums were an uneven bunch. Class of ’55 was a mess. Moman helped Cash and Jennings find a strong common ground in Heroes that reflected the wistful nature of the two road warriors looking back over the glory days. The title song, written by Jennifer Kimball and Tim Kimmel, was intended as a salute to the cowboy movie stars Cash and Jennings watched as children (one of those stars, whip-wielding Lash LaRue, even appeared with them on the back cover). But a listener couldn’t help but imagine the song also applying to the old country music heroes, especially when Cash sang, “Heroes, so good to know / So hard to find, sad when they go.”

  The most engaging of the albums was the long-delayed Believe in Him. In the sessions, Stuart surrounded Cash with the energy and spirit of the Sun Records days. In fact, their version of “Belshazzar” was far more colorful than the one he had recorded on Sun. The duet with Jessi Colter on the traditional spiritual “The Old Rugged Cross” was another standout. Cash’s own songs, including “One of These Days I’m Going to Sit Down and Talk to Paul,” were also stirring.

  Good or bad, the albums were all commercial disappointments. Believe in Him didn’t chart at all. Five weeks after the albums hit the stores, things got even worse.

  III

  Robert K. Oermann, the respected country music columnist for the Nashville Tennessean, often dropped in on Music Row power brokers for informal talks to keep up with the latest developments in the business. During a visit with Rick Blackburn on July 14, Oermann was surprised when the label head spoke frankly about the difficult time he had gone through in reshaping the roster to meet what he felt were changing tastes in country music. Discussing longtime Columbia artists whose contracts weren’t likely to be renewed, he mentioned Cash. Later in the conversation, he called the roster reduction “the hardest decision I’ve had to make in my life.”

  When Oermann got back to the newspaper office, he kept thinking about what was obviously an important story. Because the Cash comment had been off the record, Oermann phoned Blackburn’s office, hoping to get permission to print the scoop. But Blackburn was on his way to California on business and couldn’t be reached. Oermann then phoned Lou Robin, who confirmed that Cash’s contract with Columbia had run out.

  The Tennessean ran the story on July 16 under the headline “‘Man in Black’ without a Label.” It read in part:

  “Johnny Cash is without a country music record label.

  “The Country Music Hall of Fame member who is arguably the most legendary star in country music has been with Columbia Records since 1958, but sources at the company say his contract will not be renewed.

  “Columbia/Epic/CBS Nashville head Rick Blackburn would say only that, ‘This is the hardest decision that I’ve ever had to make in my life.’

  “Others on Music Row say that Cash’s contract was allowed to expire…because Cash has not had a solo Top 10 hit since 1981’s ‘The Baron.’

  “‘We don’t know where we’ll be going,’ said Cash’s manager Lou Robin yesterday during a telephone conversation. ‘Other people are talking to us. There’s a lot of places, where they’re interested in somebody like Johnny Cash.’”

  The news was the talk of the industry, prompting a wave of anti-Blackburn sentiment. How could Columbia drop the man who, in effect, had been synonymous with the label for three decades—the man who had made the company millions? Dwight Yoakam, one of country’s most promising newcomers at the time, led the charge: “The man’s been there 30 fuckin’ years making them money….He built the building.”

  No one was hit harder by the article than Blackburn, who was angry, and Cash, who was humiliated.

  When Oermann finally reached both parties, Blackburn accused the reporter of having “ambushed” him, and Cash was upset that Blackburn had made the decision public before telling him.

  Oermann wrote a column on July 21 in which he apologized to both Blackburn and Cash for not having handled the story differently. The headline read “Reporter’s Aim Was in Wrong Direction.” While stressing that the report was accurate, Oermann said he regretted using the off-the-record Blackburn quote and for not holding the exclusive an extra day to make sure he had comments from both men.

  “Rick and Johnny were/are friends,” he wrote, “and in my haste I hurt that friendship with a story. Now comes the ironic part: Rick Blackburn has always talked straight to me. He’s never hidden from me or any other press person. And on Music Row he’s a guy who stands out with a lot of personal integrity. I think the story made him look like he might not have those qualities. Fortunately, reporters get another day to set the record straight. And today’s that day for me.

  “I am sorry for the way the story was written, sorry for the damage to the friendship between Rick and Johnny. I can’t be sorry for reporting news. That’s my job. I certainly wish Johnny Cash well on what is bound to be an exciting new chapter in his illustrious recording career. He will doubtless find continued success, more hits and lots of publicity at his new label. During his musical career, he’s been a model of ethics, of honesty.”

  Unknown to Oermann, Blackburn had still hoped to re-sign Cash; he knew as well as anyone what Cash meant to the label, but he had heard through the grapevine that Cash had been offered $1 million to sign with Mercury.

  “I got the impression that anything less than $1 million would be insulting, and I knew there was no way we could approach that figure,” Blackburn said years later. “But I hadn’t given up. I was planning to meet with John as soon as
he got back to Nashville. If we still couldn’t work anything out, I’d at least let John make the announcement, which would have been easier on him. But once that story ran, there was no turning back.”

  As soon as Oermann’s article appeared, Popovich—whose boss, Dick Asher, was also a former Columbia executive and a Cash fan—went to Cash’s office at the House of Cash to meet with his old friend. “He was down, almost in shock, and I wanted to help rebuild his ego and self-pride,” Popovich said. “We talked about working together during the old days at Columbia and I told him I wanted to work with him again. I said, ‘Unlike new acts, you are already pre-sold to millions of people around the world. That makes you a dangerous artist with the right song and right producer.’”

  There was no $1 million offer, nothing even close. The Mercury deal was such a modest one that it would have been unthinkable during Cash’s glory years at Columbia, but Robin and Cash weren’t in a position to demand more. In fact, they felt fortunate to find anyone to sign him. During the search for a new label, Cash went around to one major company and actually auditioned as he had for Sam Phillips long ago. He played guitar and sang some of his new songs. The label head never even got back to him.

  Five weeks after Oermann’s Columbia bombshell, the Tennessean reported the move to Mercury.

  “I feel great,” Cash told Oermann in his usual upbeat way of talking about his latest recording. “I’m so happy. This did wonders for my little ego.” Cash added that he’d spent the night before at his farm in Bon Aqua, thinking about the move. “Then Thursday morning I went to CBS [Columbia] and told the folks there of my decision. We had a big hug and a few tears.” Then he walked across the street to pose for photos with Popovich, who had gained a reputation as an artist-friendly executive for his work at CBS with such figures as Cash, Bruce Springsteen, and Cheap Trick. He was best known for his development of Meat Loaf while founder and president of Cleveland International Records.