The Swan Song of Johnny Cash
1932-2003
by J. Daniel Janzen
The annals of country music are full of weak, foolish men who stray from the path of righteousness
and pay the price. Infidelity brings only heartbreak, pride goeth before destruction and murder
leads forever to the gallows.
Johnny Cash played the part of one such man in a 1974 episode of "Columbo" entitled "Swan Song." Cash
is Tommy Brown, an ex-convict turned gospel crusader in partnership with his pious wife Edna.
Unknown to the couple's adoring followers, Brown has more on his mind than raising money for
the Lost Souls Tabernacle; he'd rather enjoy the more earthly perks of his fame, but Edna keeps
him in line by threatening to reveal his seduction of their no-longer-innocent protégé
Maryann. Pushed to the limit, Brown murders both women in a staged small plane crash. The perfect
crime — but for the seemingly harmless L.A.P.D. lieutenant who keeps coming around with
just one more question.
The role came naturally to the Man in Black. He was well acquainted with the
temptations that could drive a man to desperate action, and with the self-destructive
shame that infused his character's hit song (and his own): "On a Sunday morning
sidewalk, I'm wishing Lord that I was stoned/ 'Cause there's something 'bout
a Sunday that makes a body feel alone" ("Sunday Morning
Coming Down"). No wonder Tommy Brown felt alone. He had turned away from his
wife and his god, and in spite of ample groupies and
hangers-on, the only person whose company he truly seemed to enjoy was that of
the lawman trying to hang him.
In spite of the romantic darkness of his persona, the only sentences Cash ever served were a
few nights here and there for possession of amphetamines, and one for picking flowers in Starkville,
Miss. The prison he knew best was the one inside, where the downtrodden are tormented by the
unfairness of the world and the consequences of their own failure. Everyone knows the line "I shot
a man in Reno just to watch him die," but the line that follows is the one that matters: "When I
hear that whistle blowin', I hang my head and cry" ("Folsom Prison Blues"). In the sound of a
passing train, the lifer hears his own possibilities fading into the distance, and contemplates the
utter desolation of his future.
Though some consider Folsom Prison Blues a precursor of gangsta rap, nothing
could be further from the truth. In fact, it's just one of Cash's many portrayals
of the ways one can feel low, from the lovelorn "So Doggone Lonesome" to the
miner's lament "Dark as the Dungeon." It wasn't a
love of crime that brought Cash to perform at Folsom and San Quentin but the
solidarity he felt with the inmates. The son of a cotton-picking hobo, Cash
knew that but for the grace of God, it might have been him behind bars.
That grace lay at the heart of all of Cash's best work. His faith wasn't a means
to enrichment, as it was for Tommy Brown, or a fashion statement like a diamond-encrusted
crucifix, but a lifeline. On the day his young voice broke and his immortal
tenor emerged, Cash's mother came out to him in the field where she'd heard
the boy singing and told him reverently that this was a gift from God, and
that they must cherish and nurture it as such. Indeed, it was his voice that
pulled Cash from the hardscrabble existence that seemed his lot; his earliest
recordings for Sun Records brought almost instant stardom.
Even this might not have been enough to save his life were it not for the partner
who joined him in the struggle. Early in his career, the competing demands
of fame and family had driven him to rely heavily on speed, and photographs
from this period show a frighteningly gaunt figure with haunted eyes. With
Cash's self-destruction increasingly likely, God seemed to smile on him once
again. Though he had met fellow country legend June Carter years earlier, it
was only in 1968 that their friendship took a romantic turn. In the liner notes
of the Love anthology,
she described the meeting of souls: "I knew from first looking at him that
his hurt was as great as mine, and from the depths of my despair, I stepped
up to feel the fire and there is no way to be in that kind of hell, no way
to extinguish a flame that burns, burns, burns..." (Though credited to Johnny,
it is widely known June first came up with "Ring of Fire.")
It was only natural that the greatest country singer of all time should find happiness with a
woman whose family had originated the genre as we know it. As a boy, Cash had listened to the
Carter Family
on the Grand Ole Opry. As the Nashville establishment began to prune country music of its
folk elements with slick, middle-of-the-road anthems of conservative politics and subservient women,
the Cash Family began its own crusade for the true spirit of country.
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Cash's musical vision ranged widely enough to include collaborations with
everyone from Bob Dylan to Beck, and it earned him membership in both the
Country Music Hall of Fame and its Rock and Roll equivalent. Through it all,
in every note and every word, he held fast to the values he'd started out
with: love, faith and the dignity of the human spirit.
Thirty years later, with his wife and children surrounding him onstage, Johnny
Cash was still tending the flame. When country radio dropped him and his peers
in favor of a more "modern" sound,
he moved on to American Recordings, where he made history again with a series
of records produced by Rick Rubin, featuring covers of songs by Soundgarden,
Tom Petty and Nine Inch Nails alongside classics like "Mean-Eyed Cat," "Delia's
Gone" and "Meet Me in Heaven." When one of these albums
won a Grammy, he showed his feelings with characteristic honesty in an
ad
in Billboard Magazine.
We had been warned that his days were growing fewer. In recent years, he was stricken with a
disease that rendered him mute, a particularly cruel stroke of fate. He recovered, and even recorded
again, but the illness had taken its toll; for the first time, he looked old, sounded weak.
Then, when June died in May of this year, the prospect of Johnny's death seemed less tragic,
and more in the natural order of things. Like swans, noble souls like Johnny and June mate for life.
When one takes flight, the other will soon follow.
Once again, June has welcomed Johnny home to the Lord.
E-mail J. Daniel Janzen at jdaniel at flakmag dot com.
