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Johnny Cash, RIP

N

nan0bug

Banned
I just thought I'd make a post to pay respects to Johnny Cash, the Man In Black, who passed away a year ago today.

Johnny Cash was more than a country singer. He singlehandedly changed the musical spectrum for all who came after him. Bruce Springsteen said it best when he described Johnny:

"[Cash] took the social consciousness of folk music, the gravity and humor of country music and the rebellion of rock 'n' roll, and told all us young guys that not only was it all right to tear up those lines and boundaries, but it was important."

I could go on and on about Johnny but I wouldn't be able to do it as well as others who are far more talented with words than I, so I will just let them do it for me.

In the world of popular music, one generally becomes a ?legend? only in death?as if death accomplishes for a musician all that he was unable to do for himself in life. Legends are often made in the manner of their death?in a helicopter crash, say, or collapsed on the bathroom floor. But Johnny Cash?s death at seventy-one on September 12 was decidedly un-legend-like: silent, slow, and unspectacular. Yet ?legend? seems, if anything, not big enough a word to describe Johnny Cash.

We all knew the end was coming, particularly after June Carter, to everyone?s shock, beat him to it. But the impact of the news was not thereby diminished. On that Friday we lost possibly America?s most singular individual. I don?t think that it?s too much of a stretch to say that in Johnny?s death a little bit of what is best about America died, too.

The only word that seems to suffice here is magnanimity. The OED defines it poetically: ?In Aristotle?s sense of megalopsuchia . . . loftiness of thought or purpose, grandeur of designs, nobly ambitious spirit. Now rare.? That was Johnny Cash: great-souled, rare. Everything about him was as big and black and broad as the Arkansas delta, from his physical stature and persona to ?that? voice.

Yet his life cannot be reduced to a metaphor. It was more than just one of noble ambition or grandeur of design; Johnny?s virtues were just as hard-fought as his vices. In life Johnny Cash struggled for and against the God whose grip on him was so frustratingly and thankfully relentless that it was able to absorb all that fierce rage and all those addictions. Johnny could sing about murder and God in the same song and with the same voice because to do otherwise would have been dishonest. At the same time, he let that despair, agony, and rejection stand on their own?he lent them integrity. There was no serious salvation unless there was first some serious sin. Cash echoed St. Paul: ?It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.? But there is at least one thing that Cash never was, and that is a moralist. He did not chalk doubt up to a misunderstanding. Rather, Cash showed that doubt is itself proper to faith. A God who could not stomach the darkest moments of His creation was not worth our worship, much less a song.
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[Cash] lived, sang, and played truthfully. There was in him no hint of fraud. At a time when he could have resurrected his career by riding the coattails of others? popularity (as is the trend today), Johnny did the reverse. On 1994?s American Recordings (on the cover he stands in a field wearing a long black preacher?s coat, alone except for two dogs), he did not simply return to the ?old? Johnny Cash and commodify himself for a younger audience. Rather, he signed with a punk label and sang about his familiar subjects, but this time with no musical accompaniment beyond his own acoustic guitar. All kinds of audiences ate it up because they recognized that in a world full of fakes, Cash was authentic.
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Johnny, heres to you buddy. You are missed.
 
I just watched the movie Ladykillers last evening. Amongst the bonus materials was a bit on Danny Ferrington who made some guitars for Johnny Cash. Among the guitars, one was featured that had a lot of scratches on the back of it - from Johnny's large belt buckle that he wore. Danny Ferrington is pretty interesting.

Anyway, Johnny Cash is definately missed. I remember approximately a year ago, I attended a Bruce Springsteen concert a few days after Johnny died. The E St. Band played "I Walk The Line" as a tribute. Pretty moving.

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R.I.P.
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A local singer by the name of John Eccleston wrote a song "The day Johnny Cash Died"

I wasn't a Cash fan, but the song was an excellent tribute to him..
 
It's kind of sad how about half of the population here on ATOT wouldn't know who Cash even was if he didn't do that NIN cover. Now everyone's like "oh so sad he's gone".
 
Originally posted by: RagingBITCH
It's kind of sad how about half of the population here on ATOT wouldn't know who Cash even was if he didn't do that NIN cover. Now everyone's like "oh so sad he's gone".
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Sad but true.

I've been a fan ever since I was a youngster. Although most people call me Jay, my first name is Jamie, which made for some interesting times in elementary school. You can imagine the impact 'A Boy Named Sue' had on me the first time I heard it 🙂
 
If you don't have it yet, pick up "Cash Unearthed." I thought it was some badly named "best of" collection that was just a compilation of stuff played as it was on his other albums. It appeared in local stores soon after his death, so I figured it was just the record company trying to milk his name for a bit more money. Damn, was I wrong.

This one's for you, Johnny. :beer:
 
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