I think I was a teenager when I first really paid attention to Johnny Cash. I was in high school at the time and driving my first car. It was 1968, and Cash had just released his At Folsom Prison live album. I think my friend Rick Fraley had the first copy I remember, and we played the album over and over on his 8-track player while cruising the back roads and highways of Southern Ohio.
Of course, “Folsom Prison Blues” soon became a huge hit. It seemed all of us good old hillbilly boys bought the tape and would listen to the entire recording while singing songs like "Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog,” “I Got Stripes,” and “Cocaine Blues” at the top of our lungs. It sounded great even though we were basically rock-and-rollers listening to Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Steppenwolf, CCR, and others. I guess those were the days when “freedom was just another word for nothing left to lose” … if you know what I mean.
Anyhow, Cash was cool in 68. He had credibility in our world. And, there was just something special about him. We knew his “Man In Black” background – it was enticing, but, to us, Cash had something special about him from the get-go. He seemed to be one of us, a rural person and a counterculture advocate – both a fearless defender of the underdog and an honest country musician. At the time, rare qualities, indeed. If you don't believe that, just listen to Haggard's 1969 "I'm Proud To Be An Okie From Muskogee." He could never live that down.
My Entry Today
I love Johnny Cash. Legend, icon, musical ambassador – I can defend all of these lofty titles for Cash with fact after fact and proof after proof, but the recordings of Johnny Cash known as the American Recordings – four Rick Rubin-produced “American” albums released from 1994 to just prior to Cash’s death in 2003 – emphasize the mythic side of Cash's persona and musical career.
If you are a music fan who only knows Cash's most popular repertoire, please read this entry and give American Recordings a listen. You may rest assured the reward is worth your time. (And, if you are like me and feel emotionally drained by watching the video of Cash doing the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt” from the second studio album, don't judge the entire set of recordings by this one song recorded near the end of Cash's life. So many deal with other themes.)
The Story Is Timeless
For decades, the Man In Black was distinguished by his outlaw persona, his hell-raising origins, and the addictive Tennessee two-step recordings perfected in the mid-50s while on Sun Records. He first made his mark as a rockabilly singer out of Memphis, Tennessee. Later, people would know Cash as a member of the famed “Million Dollar Quartet – along with Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and Carl Perkins.
In 1958, Cash left Sun and owner/producer Sam Phillips to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records. His career blossomed with a string of hit songs like "Folsom Prison Blues,” "I Walk the Line,” "Ring of Fire,” and "A Boy Named Sue.” Johnny Cash quickly established himself as a titanic figure in American popular culture while selling millions upon millions of records for Columbia.
From June 1969 to March 1971, Cash even starred in his own television show, The Johnny Cash Show, on the ABC network. The successful show featured Cash and guests and mainstream performers like Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young, Louis Armstrong, Neil Diamond, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition, James Taylor, Ray Charles, and Roger Miller. It was a musical delight.
Cash’s 1970s were shaped by channels of regret, redemption, and inner searching. His popularity and number of hit songs began to decline.
In 1980, Cash became the Country Music Hall of Fame's youngest living inductee at age 48, but during the 1980s, his records failed to make a major impact on the country charts – the decade became his least creative. Recording with the Highwaymen, touring with his wife and family in the Johnny Cash Show, and recording novelty numbers like “Chicken in Black.” Waylon Jennings told Cash he looked "like a buffoon" in the music video for the self-parody song (which was showcased during Cash's 1984 Christmas TV special), and Cash subsequently demanded that Columbia withdraw the music video from broadcast and recall the single from stores – interrupting its bona fide chart success – and termed the venture "a fiasco."
Having fallen afoul of his long-term record company Columbia, the label dropped Cash from his recording contract. Cash felt as if the company had stopped promoting him, and Columbia reportedly felt his music “no longer sold” – an opinion that would prove to be a huge mistake.
Dropping a cornerstone figure like Cash caused a huge firestorm with the industry and the fans – the fallout became the classic case of not “what you have done for me” but “what are you going to do for me.” Dropping Cash after 26 years, Columbia viewed this move as business … with regret.
Then, Cash had a short and unsuccessful stint with Mercury Records from 1987 to 1991. No longer sought-after by major labels, Cash was headed to the “has been” heap.
Then came 1994 – the year that Cash found Rick Rubin, the original producer of the Beastie Boys and the co-founder, with Russell Simmons, of Def Jam Records. Rubin offered Cash a contract. Can you imagine the switch from firm country roots like the Carter family to a producer widely known for hip hop and hard rock?
Capitalizing on Cash’s label-lessness, artistic recuperation, and the growing interest in country and Americana among younger, rock-oriented fans, Rubin signed Cash to Def American in 1993 and recorded the singer performing a set of contemporary, rock-sourced songs, self-written numbers, and old standards, stripped of the extra clutter.
And, under Rubin’s influence, Cash delivered a stripped-down sound with his acoustic guitar and “his resonant, lower-than-low, stark naked, lived-in voice” that connected him more strongly than ever to the mythical history of his homeland.
(Tony Tost. “Johnny Cash’s American Recordings.” Late Voice. https://latevoice.com/reviews/johnny-cashs-american-recordings/. Tiny Mix Tapes. July 01, 2011.)
Historical Note:
Cash was never forgotten, even by younger hipsters, remaining a point of reference for punk and post-punk bands in the US and UK alike. In 1988, a bunch of indie musicians in the UK put out a tribute album to the man in black, which some have credited with kickstarting his resurrection as elder icon of cool.
Cash didn’t only contribute to myths; he often took ownership of them. So too with the material he elected to cover. While not always successful, his renditions of contemporary songs were often a revelation, a reinvention of the song’s potentiality perhaps not realized by its writer or other performers. This was a gift Cash had always displayed, but it became ever more noticeable in his later years, as he attached the weight of his experience to the words of others.
Cash’s late voice was a voice out of time, but also a voice of time, of age and experience. In this he can be said to fit the template of late style, as theorized by Theodor Adorno and Edward Said. For these critics, late style is a manifestation of an artist’s being out-of-joint with contemporary mores, a moment epitomized by a simultaneous reflection on one’s body of work and a provocation brought about by a new approach.
(Tony Tost. “Johnny Cash’s American Recordings.” Late Voice. https://latevoice.com/reviews/johnny-cashs-american-recordings/. Tiny Mix Tapes. July 01, 2011.)
The American Recordings proved to be enormously successful with critics, with country traditionalists, and with hipster newcomers to country music.
Cash's image was front and center at the time of the release and vital to its success. He was someone who did things on his own terms, remained fiercely devoted to his songs, and unwilling to compromise to commercial interests; and now he “had shrugged his shoulders and acted as if he didn’t give a fuck,” a gesture that defined him for a new generation of fans in much the same way his Folsom Prison set personified him earlier on.
The stand-alone, not compromising, re-energized Man in Black mastered recordings written by himself and others like legendary songwriters Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Loudon Wainwright III and others. The no-frills production was viscerally intimate, true to the legend of Cash and entirely contemporary – in brief, a critical sensation and a commercial success. Johnny Cash had “stuck it in the face” of Columbia and those who felt he could no longer make compelling music.
Tony Tost – American poet, critic and screenwriter – shares this review …
“Cash and Rubin would go on to make additional albums in their American Recordings series, some of them literally recorded from the singer’s deathbed; all of the albums have their moments, even some of the death-fetishizing later editions, but none are as faultless as this first volume, which finds Cash still on’ry, authoritative, and in robust voice.
“He opens the album with 'Delia’s Gone,' a traditional murder ballad that’s been recorded ad nauseam but has rarely sounded as hardscrabble or as unsparing as it does here. Cash takes a transformative approach to songs by iconoclasts like Leonard Cohen ('Bird on a Wire') and Tom Waits ('Down There by the Train'), sanding away artier edges into straight-laced cowboy poetry.
“By no means is this black-and-white recording devoid of liveliness or humor, either; the straight-man reading of Loudon Wainwright’s 'The Man Who Couldn’t Cry' is a deadpan masterpiece, and there’s obvious relish in how Cash takes the contours of 'Tennessee Stud.'
“ American Recordings is an album that’s very much intentional in its own myth-making: A number of songs look back on wasted youth and hard living, surveying the past with equal parts rue and self-assurance. The pinnacle is 'The Beast in Me,' a moment of sobering introspection penned for Cash by his one-time son-in-law, Nick Lowe; a song that peels back the tall tales and finds behind them a man of endlessly relatable regret and contrition.”
(Tony Tost. “Johnny Cash’s American Recordings.” Late Voice. https://latevoice.com/reviews/johnny-cashs-american-recordings/. Tiny Mix Tapes. July 01, 2011.)
When his second Rubin-produced album, Unchained, won a Grammy for Best Country Album in 1998, American Recordings placed a full-page ad in Billboard magazine featuring a 1970 photo of Cash brandishing his middle finger under the sarcastic line of copy, “American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support.”
(“Columbia Records drops country legend Johnny Cash after 26 years.” History.com. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/columbia-records-drops-country-legend-johnny-cash-after-26-years.)
Of course, this defiant gesture only added to the Cash legend as it rightly should. At the end of his life, Johnny Cash had beaten the odds and had arguably produced the finest music of his career.
American Recordings received nearly universal acclaim from critics. Q magazine deemed it the year's most sincere and ambitious record, while New Musical Express found it "uplifting and life affirming because the message is taught through adversity, ill luck and fighting for survival.”
David Browne, writing in Entertainment Weekly, said Cash remained a captivating singer throughout the austerely arranged country ballads and bizarre reflections, calling the record "his most relaxed and folkiest album in three decades.”
In a rave review in Rolling Stone, Anthony DeCurtis hailed it as one of Cash's greatest albums because of his self-possessed, "biblically intense" take on traditional folk songs and Rubin's no-frills production: "American Recordings is at once monumental and viscerally intimate, fiercely true to the legend of Johnny Cash and entirely contemporary."
The praise and honors went on and on.
At the end of 1994, American Recordings was voted the seventh best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics nationwide. In other year-end lists, it was ranked 36th by Select, 23rd by NME, 19th by Rockdelux, 17th by Les Inrockuptibles, 15th by The Face, 5th by the Los Angeles Times, 4th by Mojo, and 2nd by OOR. At the 1995 Grammy Awards, it won Cash a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Rolling Stone later placed the record at number 366 on the magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and Country Music Television (CMT) ranked it number 27 on the network's list of the top 40 greatest country albums in its 2006 list.
Conclusion
Johnny Cash is a legend who transcends categorization and genres. His life and his music have made him an icon for so many reasons. He has nurtured and defended artists on the fringes of what was acceptable in country music even while serving as the country music establishment's most visible symbol.
In total, he wrote over 1,000 songs and released dozens of albums. And, he immersed himself in issues such as the struggle of Native people, civil rights, and prison reform. His dedication to his artistry is undenied. His storied contributions ring of truth and righteousness.
That gravelly, low and raw voice was full of style and emotion – it stands, especially in American Recordings as the mythic symbol of the man himself. Once you listen to these great interpretations, go back through his standard catalog and everything seems to take on new meaning for the listener. Not many artists maintain this uncompromising stature. Cash is alone at the top. Without hearing American Recordings, one misses the soul of the man.
I'll end this entry with Tony Tost's story of the Cash voice. I believe it is a fitting conclusion to this post about his American Recordings and their significance to American music. But, don't just read these words. Please listen to the recordings. You can hear it all yourself.
And, in the style of the storyteller, Tost writes of the voice …
“It's snarl, however full of bombast and sanctimony it might have been, also had a lazy cruelness to it, a sense of malignant power held in reserve. It was like an ink drawn from some prior place. Cash would always imply that his voice did not come from his own earthly person but from a spectral elsewhere, outside of him, coming on like the Holy Ghost, selecting him and then commencing its ravishing. There was no way he could have prepared himself for its arrival.
“He had been working when he received it, simply doing his chores, adding his blood and sweat to the family engine, keeping on keeping on. 'When I was 17,' he wrote, 'I had been cutting wood all day with my father and I came in and I was singing a gospel song, “Everybody’s gonna have a wonderful time up there, Glory hallelujah.’”
“This was what life was like for Cash, work and song entwined, just the toilsome rituals of another day. When he opened his mouth this time, however, a deep, otherworldly sound burst through. His voice broke into something new, or, to take his own perspective, a different voice broke into him. Things changed. Scratching the lower registers of his new voice, enjoying its strange thick texture, he became for a moment unrecognizable to those who thought they knew and loved him, including his adoring mother Carrie. 'I was singing as I walked in the back door,' Cash later wrote, 'and she wheeled around from the stove in shock and said, ‘Who was that?' It seems she thought the sound might be her own father, returned from the beyond.
“Cash decided that he should learn to master this new voice. He went to a local singing teacher, hoping to refine The Gift, but after the first lesson his teacher told him that his voice should not be polished or tamed. Not only was it bigger than he was, it seemed as if his voice had its own ideas about itself, distinct from professional norms. 'Don’t ever take voice lessons again,' the teacher told Cash. 'Don’t let me or anyone change how you sing.'
“In Cash’s version of the story, the voice precedes the man and, in its way, becomes the prophet of his very thoughts. Cash had to expand himself after the voice arrived, burrowing deeper and reaching further, simply to match it. The Gift was always there, driving Cash to bring it proper material. Simply looking inward was not enough. Cash found himself attracted to historical as well as spiritual songs, recurring coordinates of his search for truths that, like his voice, originated from somewhere beyond him, either higher or lower than the topology to which he had been born …
“For Cash to feel or understand a truth, he had to voice it. Instances of this are everywhere. Cash became an advocate for prison reform after the prison albums, as the American Indian ballads that led to Bitter Tears sharpened his sense of political justice. In his first autobiography, "Man in Black," Cash wrote about being present at the personal spiritual testimonies documented in Kris Kristofferson’s 'Why Me'–written in response to his own 'The Gospel Road" project and Kristofferson’s experiences at Cash’s church–and Larry Gatlin’s “Help Me,' which was debuted at that same Tennessee church Cash and his family attended.
“When Cash ended up covering these songs in his 'American' series, it revealed his voice not only wrapping itself in each song’s pleading devotion but also returning and attending to the moments that produced them, pivots in Cash’s own spiritual development, consecrating them.”
(Excerpted from "Johnny Cash's American Recordings" by Tony Tost (Continuum, 2011). “'Don’t ever take voice lessons again,. the teacher told Cash. 'Don’t let me or anyone change how you sing.'” https://www.salon.com/2018/03/17/the-day-johnny-cashs-deep-otherworldly-voice-showed-up-unannounced/. Salon. March 17, 2018.)
No comments:
Post a Comment