The Gospel of Johnny Cash

 It was Jan.13, 1968, and the stage was being set up, right in front of death row at Folsom State Prison. Johnny Cash is setting up for his live recording. This was his last-ditch, Hail Mary to keep a once iconic career alive that was slowly becoming a slave to drugs and victim to the fading temperance of being “popular”. Was this it? What did he see in the prisoners that led him to play and record this make or break project there? Was it himself? His song, “Man in Black” subtly speaks to his potential motivations. 

“I'd love to wear a rainbow every day

And tell the world that everything's okay

But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back

'Til things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black”

Johnny had this uncanny ability to embody the suffering of the world in a way that heals your own suffering. He saw himself in the prisoners to the point where there was a myth that he himself did time in the prison. 

His prison obsessions started in 1953 when he was serving in the military, inspired by the 1951 film, “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison”. This would eventually birth one of the most infamous country song lyrics of all time: “But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.”

 Johnny’s reflection on writing “Folsom Prison Blues”- “I sat with my pen in my hand, trying to think up the worst reason a person could have for killing another person, and that’s what came to mind.” In my interpretation I hear, “How can I most truthfully and deeply convey the potential of experience in the human soul?” 

He used his voice to tell the world about the pain of those who couldn’t speak up, who were overlooked and forgotten. 

In a modern world of false lip service to advocacy and change, Cash is one of the best examples of how to use your perspective to make a difference. His easy-going, soft strumming acoustic guitar and 3 piece band put you at ease like a slow evening drive, with the windows down, watching the sunset. Just as you ease back to settle into the moment, a lyric hits your heart like the subtle weight of an x-ray mat on your chest when you go to the doctor. 

“He didn’t just do a greatest-hits show that day; he designed every song for that audience and their emotional needs.” - Hillman on the Folsom Prison Blues Recording 

Cash articulates the painful, universal truths through storytelling in a way that everyone can relate to yet makes you think like you’re the only one thinking about it. 

In some ways, how he recognized the prisoner, the convict, and the drug addict, was his recognition of those parts within himself. To me, this is where you see his Christian spiritual influence in his acknowledgment of his broken, sinful parts and the need for them to be saved. As he writes in “I Came to Believe”, 

“Nothing worked out when I handled it all on my own

And each time I failed, it made me feel twice as alone

Then I cried, "Lord there must be a surer and easier way

For it just cannot be that a man should lose hope every day"

He so deeply walks the line into the darkness, teaches us how to see in the dark, and then becomes light. Later he would go on record in the largest death row facility in the United States, San Quintin Prison. He sang, “There will be peace in the valley”, speaking to the transformation of finding light in the darkness.

He was so deeply associated with all that wasn’t right in the world, that he used his last song slot on the album setlist to sing a song written by then- inmate, Glenn Sherley. Sherley was in the front row, unaware that his song was going to be played. With a rhyme and no reason to do so, Johnny exhibits how to honor the voiceless and those forgotten by society as unworthy. 

It was April 17, 1970, and Apollo 13 had just landed. A simple, good ole boy from Tennessee was asked to play a show for the leader of the free world, Richard Nixon. A dream come true, yet, he couldn’t help but grapple with the fact that he was being used as “a pawn in his game” as his buddy Bob Dylan says. It’s a major point in the election cycle and Nixon needs the red, white republican people to cement his re-election. 

Who better than to get country and southern icon, Johnny Cash? He gets asked to play 3 very apparently conservative tunes and refuses two. But that’s not even the biggest shock. It’s one of the other songs he chose in place of the two requested that will stand the test of time.

Cash comes out to play the first two songs, and ends with the song, “What is Truth?”: a subversive way of honoring the President’s invite while also letting him know what needed to be heard, like Pilate posing the same question to Jesus when he was on trial and getting more of an answer from what wasn’t said. Cash is saying without saying that the current powers that be need to consider those they are trying to silence because their questions are the future of the country. 

It was 1994 and Cash is having a second career heartbeat in covering “Hurt” by Trevor Renza and several other emotionally dark covers. Cash never shied away from his problems or the world’s suffering. He always laid it barren like Abraham did his son Isaac; Like in his bone-chilling song debut, written by his then-son-in-law, Nick Lowe, “The Beast In Me”.

Amidst his personal demons, Johnny was always true to himself even at the cost of fame and a righteous reputation. He often wrote about losing his brother, his relationship with his dad, his first marriage, his relationship with drugs and alcohol, and his relationship with June. Through these experiences, he covered a vast array of topics that sang a common song of love, death, pain, heartache, and the human journey. 

He painted these stories about the everyday man that made you feel like you were sitting on your grandma’s lap, listening to a bedtime story. Sometimes the story kept you up at night, sometimes it brought you peace. Sometimes it sparked your imagination to dream deeply. Whatever it does, it always brings you into a moment. 

Johnny articulates the painful, universal truths through storytelling in a way that everyone can relate to yet makes you think like you’re the only one thinking about it. 

“He was honest about it and said it over and over and over. He would never try to hide anything that he was so truthful about with his portfolio. Those really awful painful things. The hard parts of his history are all part of what makes him who he was.” - daughter Rosanne Cash 

At the ripe age of 71 years old, just a few months before his death, he recorded his last song, “Like the 309”: an ode to his coffin taking a train ride on the “309”  by the grim reaper to either heaven or hell. While his last recording was meant to keep himself alive, his heart was so full of heartbreak and suffering that not even his music could bear it. One of the most heart-wrenching yet beautiful aspects of it is that he essentially died of a broken heart after his wife, June passed. 

 I’d like to think he ended up in heaven but I sure am thankful he’s helped me go through my own hell, only to find heaven. God bless you, Mr. Cash.