by Steve Turner
There were precedents in country music. In "Blue Yodel # 1 , " sometimes known as " 'T' For Texas," Jimmie Rodgers had written: "I'm gonna buy me a shotgun / Just as long as I am tall / I'm gonna shoot poor Thelma / Just to see her jump and fall." But in light of Cash's background and the demons that dogged him, it's not difficult to see a connection between the imagined brutality and the real violence he had seen. His father had forced him to watch puppies drown. His uncle had apparently shown him the body of a lynch victim. His brother Jack's body had lain in their house for two days while neighbors came calling. The idea that people got pleasure from watching the dead or the dying was not foreign to him.
Although no one knew it at the time, the melody of "Folsom Prison Blues" and much of its imagery had been lifted from part of a song on a 1953 album by composer Gordon Jenkins. Cash likely heard the album, Seven Dreams, when he was in Germany, perhaps played by one of his more sophisticated urban friends. In the second dream of the album, singer Beverly Mahr (Jenkins's wife) sings about how she wants to leave Crescent City:
If I owned that lonesome whistle
If that railroad train was mine
I'll bet I'd find a man a little farther down the line
Far from Crescent City is where I'd like to stay
And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away.1
Cash's version differed very little:
Well, if they freed me from this prison
If that railroad train was mine
I'd bet I'd move on over a little farther down the line
Far from Folsom Prison that's where I want to stay
And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away.
Jenkins either didn't hear "Folsom Prison Blues" at the time or heard it and decided not to act. But thirteen years later when it was recorded live for the best-selling Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison album, Jenkins filed a lawsuit. The claim was eventually settled out of court.
On December 3, Cash made his first appearance on the Louisiana Hayride—a live radio show with an audience, which KWKH broadcast every Saturday night from the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana. Having started in April 1948, it became known as a stepping stone to the Grand Ole Opry. Louisiana Hayride had launched the careers of several country stars whom Cash admired, including Faron Young, Webb Pierce, and Hank Williams.
Cash gave his all that day in two separate performances, both of which drew encores. Leaving the stage, sweat pouring off his face, he experienced, for the first time, the sheer intoxication of performing. He finally tasted that rare combination of the audience energy, the thrill of being in the spotlight, the recognition of his peers, and the congenial backstage atmosphere where he mixed easily with stars, agents, and attractive women.
The next morning, traveling back to Memphis, Cash saw people driving to church and felt a twinge of conscience knowing that, if he wasn't to be seduced by stardom, he should maintain his church connection. When he first returned from Germany, he'd accompany Vivian to a Catholic mass at 9:00 a.m. each Sunday and later, alone, attended a Baptist service at 10:30, but work began to interfere. The best paid concerts took place on Saturday nights, which meant they traveled Sunday mornings.
Ted Freeman came to see him on the Louisiana Hayride tour, but because of a mix-up they didn't meet. In his Christmas letter, Cash apologized for not catching Ted in Shreveport and included a copy of an advertisement they'd paid three hundred and ten dollars to run in Billboard, hoping to generate more national attention:
I was on the Big D [Jamboree] in Dallas two weeks ago. I went over as good as I did the night you were at the [Louisiana] Hayride. They wanted me permanent on the Big D with one week a month on the Ozark Jubilee but they'd already made the deal to put me on the Hayride permanent. I told them, didn't I? But they didn't listen. I said, "Wait." But they didn't wait.
I've got a year contract with the Hayride with nights off for guest spots on the Big D, the Jubilee and the Opry I hope. I think I can take the top spot on the Hayride away from E. Presley. I got five encores Saturday night and he didn't get any. That's counting both times I was on Saturday.
Say, I'm fixin' to buy me a big Martin [guitar], nearly new with a heavy leather case both for $90. That's a right nice deal and see if it is. That's durn good for a newcomer like me. Right? I hope it's so.
Cash must have given up his job at the Home Equipment Company in January 1956 when he received his first full royalty check from Sun. With the six thousand dollars, he outearned his brother Roy's annual salary as a field service representative for the Chrysler Corporation, making more than his father had ever earned in a year. As he approached his twenty-fourth birthday, Johnny Cash was indeed doing "durn good" for a newcomer.
5
Amphetamine Blues
THE PURCHASE OF Elvis Presley's recording contract by RCA in November 1955 brought national and then international attention to the music scene in Memphis. Until then the emerging young musicians had largely remained a Southern secret—the singles put out by Sun hit the charts below the Mason-Dixon Line as Sun artists stuck to touring Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Elvis had no network TV coverage until January 1956, and it would be another year before Cash made his television debut on the Jackie Gleason Show.
Both Elvis and Carl Perkins burst onto the national scene in early 1956. Carl's
"Blue Suede Shoes," released January 1, was the fourth-best-selling single in March. Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel," released by RCA on January 27, reached the number one spot in April. A new generation of mainstream, white teenagers had caught on to the music previously considered rural, regional, or racial. Until "Heartbreak Hotel," the industry considered Elvis a country artist, so his singles registered only on the country charts. Carl's "Blue Suede Shoes" broke all the norms and became the first song to simultaneously hit the pop, country, and R&B charts.
If Carl had looked like Elvis, he would probably have become the king of rock-'n'- roll. Unfortunately he was losing his hair fast at the age of twenty-three. Just as "Blue Suede Shoes" climbed the charts, a car crash on the way to a recording of the Ed Sullivan Show put Carl out of action for six months. Twelve days after the accident, while recuperating in bed, he saw Elvis announce on the Milton Berle Show that "Blue Suede Shoes" would be his next single. "Elvis had the looks on me," he told journalist Michael Lydon in 1968. "The girls were going for him for more reasons than music. Elvis was hitting them with sideburns, flashy clothes, and no ring on that finger. I had three kids. There was no way of keeping Elvis from being the man in that music."
Johnny Cash wasn't far behind. "Folsom Prison Blues" had been a huge country hit, and on April 2, 1956, he recorded four tracks for potential follow-up, including "I Walk the Line." Phillips thought the song was too slow and asked him to record a faster version for comparison. While driving back from a show later that month, Cash heard his new single played for the first time on Eddie Hill's late-night show on WSM. Upset to discover that Sam had pressed the fast version rather than the slow ballad that he'd wanted, he returned to Memphis to plead his case with Phillips. Though he politely promised to "think about" switching the versions, Phillips had no intention of distributing the ballad.
Phillips instinctively knew what would sell. "I Walk the Line" was the first Johnny Cash single to reach the pop charts, selling more than two million copies in the process. With his first big check, Cash moved out of the duplex on Tutwiler to a two-bedroom house at 4492 Sandy Cove in the more upscale Berclair district of Memphis. He also upgraded his car. He gave his 1954 Portsmouth to Vivian's father and bought a maroon Lincoln with only eleven thousand miles on the speedometer from country singer Ferlin Huskey. Vacations, until then, meant visiting his parents in Dyess. He now ventured farther from home—trips to New Orleans and Mexico with Vivian and to the coast of Florida for deep-sea fishing.
Cash's success and the publicity that accompanied it not only affected him and Vivian but his family back in Dyess. S
uddenly they too were in the spotlight, and people began to treat them differently. "We couldn't believe what was happening," says Tommy Cash, who was sixteen at the time and still in high school. "It changed all of our lives. Instead of being the Cash family from Arkansas, we were Johnny Cash's family. Instead of people asking me how my basketball was going, or asking daddy how much cotton he was picking this summer, it was, 'How's Johnny? When's his new record coming out?' It was a total switch."
Back on April 2, Cash also recorded "Get Rhythm." Inspired by a conversation while having his shoes polished at the Memphis bus station, Cash wrote this song about a shoe-shine boy with Elvis in mind. However, he always managed to strike a false note when he wrote rock-'n'-roll. The words of "I Walk the Line" had conviction. The words to songs like "Rock & Roll Ruby" (later cut by Warren Smith) and "You're My Baby" (which he gave to fellow Sun artist Roy Orbison) were merely exercises in generic writing. As he said in his 1978 song "I Will Rock and Roll with You":
I didn't ever play much rock and roll
Cause I got so much country in my soul.
On July 7, 1956 he achieved one of his life's ambitions by appearing on the Grand Ole Opry —country music's best known and most prestigious showcase. He wore a white jacket with blue trim (made by his mother), a black shirt, black trousers (with a white stripe on the outside seams), and white shoes. Thirty-one-year- old country star Carl Smith introduced "the brightest rising star" of country music, not only to the thirty-eight hundred people in the crowd at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, but to the tens of thousands in the radio audience beyond.
Journalist Ben A. Green witnessed the one-song debut (a prelude to being invited to join the Opry), reported in the Nashville Banner:
He had a quiver in his voice, but it wasn't stage fright. The haunting words of "I Walk the Line" began to swell through the building. And a veritable tornado of applause rolled back. The boy had struck home, where the heart is, with his song that is Number 2 in the nation today. As his words filtered into the farthermost corners, many in the crowd were on their feet, cheering and clapping. They too had taken a new member into the family.1
Speaking after the show, Cash said that he was "grateful, happy, and humble" to have been invited to the show. "It's the ambition of every hillbilly singer to reach the Opry in his lifetime."
The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle—who'd joined the Opry in 1950—appeared that night as well. Maybelle Carter, then forty-seven, started her career as an original member of the Carter Family, whose 1927 recordings for the Victor label jump-started the country music explosion. The Carter Family, who were from southwestern Virginia, hadn't created a new form of music—they merely performed (and therefore helped preserve) the ballads, hymns, and mountain songs that had been handed down from parents to children for generations. As a great collector with a knack for embellishment, A. P. Carter, (married to Maybelle's cousin Sara), helped the Carter Family preserve, on record, a rich heritage of American song.
When A. P. and Sara retired, Maybelle carried on with her three daughters, Helen, June, and Anita. They performed a mixture of novelty numbers, gospel, and the old songs associated with the Carter Family, including "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" "Wildwood Flower," and "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?" June and Anita, both with long, dark hair and fetching smiles, set hearts aflutter in the Opry. In July 1952, June married Carl Smith—then one of the most successful recording artists in country music—but within six months the marriage faced problems as Smith took extended and unexplained trips away from home. By September 1955, when June had their first child, Rebecca Carlene, the couple had already separated. Both Hank Williams and Elvis were smitten with Anita, who is described by a male contemporary as having been "the quintessential Southern belle."
Like any man of his age, Cash was delighted to meet June backstage after the show. She had apparently heard about him from Elvis, whom she knew very well. They exchanged small talk, and Cash promised to bring her copies of "Folsom Prison Blues" and "I Walk the Line" when he returned to the Opry on July 28 for his first show as a member. She later wrote that even then he "seemed like a special person." As the story goes, Cash jokingly told June that one day he would marry her. In a photograph of the meeting, June, in a low-cut dress, is sitting on a chair in front of a radiator while Cash squats at her feet, holding on to a circular pillar.
On July 24 he wrote to Ted Freeman to tell him about the Opry and the success of "I Walk the Line":
I have been on the Grand Ole Opry. I was on the P. A. show three weeks ago. Didn't you hear me? I'll be there this Saturday, so dig. No, I don't care [about] Hogjaw Hawkins stealing my sound [a reference to "It Would Be A Doggone Lie" by Hawkshaw Hawkins]. I'm always proud when someone tries to imitate. I've just come off a week tour in Florida with Hawkshaw, Jean Sheppard and Jim Reeves. Hawkshaw says he's sorry he put that record out because everybody knows he's imitating me. But ole Hogjaw is a fine feller and I like him. [Hawkshaw Hawkins later died in the 1963 plane crash that also killed Patsy Cline.]
Friend, if you ain't heard my record you don't listen to the radio because last week it was the #2 [record] played by disc jockeys and this week it's #3. It's also #3 best seller and #2 on the juke boxes. Ole Ray Price got #1 in all three charts this week. "Crazy Arms" is fine. I'm picking Sunday up at Roy Acuff's Dunbar Cave in Tennessee. In October I'm making a tour with Faron Young in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. I don't know how close we'll come to your house but I'll let you know.
Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two had a busy touring year in 1955, made more difficult because of their commitment to the Louisiana Hayride. Almost every Saturday night they had to be in Shreveport, Louisiana—a seven-hundred-mile round trip from Memphis. In his first two years of touring Cash clocked over one hundred thousand miles of road travel.
At the Hayride, Cash befriended Johnny Horton, another regular on the show. Like Cash, Horton had a keen intellect and loved outdoor pursuits. Before turning professional he'd studied at the University of Seattle and had worked as a fisherman in Alaska. He was such an expert at casting with a rod and reel that the Fred Abergast Company paid him to do demonstrations. His favorite trick, one that greatly impressed Cash, was to attach a sugar lump to his line and cast it into a cup of coffee fifteen yards away.
Although by 1956 Horton had only had one hit, "Honky Tonk Man," he considerably raised his profile by marrying Billie Jean, the extraordinarily beautiful dark-haired widow of Hank Williams. Hank, divorced by his wife Audrey in May 1952, had taken up with the then nineteen-year-old Billie Jean Jones Eshlimar. Already married and separated once, she was dating country star Faron Young when Hank met her backstage at the Opry. Though she'd come to see Young's debut, Hank reportedly told her, "If you ain't married, ole Hank's gonna marry you. You're about the purtiest thing I ever saw." On October 19, 1952, he did just that, in a lavish public ceremony onstage at the New Orleans Municipal Auditorium. Three months later Hank was dead and she was the widow of a legend.
In September 1953, Billie Jean married Horton, guaranteeing him the spotlight. "She had Johnny Horton wrapped around her finger," says Marshall Grant. "She was a gorgeous, gorgeous woman who knew how to dress the part. Johnny Horton was a very plain, straightforward type of guy and you could say that they were mismatched. What held the marriage together, I have no earthly idea. Absolutely none."
Horton believed in the powers of the supernatural. Although raised in a fundamentalist Christian home in Tyler, Texas, Horton's curiosity about the paranormal had led him to investigate hypnosis, mind reading, dream analysis, automatic writing, and spiritualism. Some people dismissed him as a charlatan, while others were frightened by his claims to be able to predict events, move objects though mind control, and see spirits. Horton's favorite party trick while on the road was hypnotizing band members and coaxing them into uncharacteristic behaviors. He once put Cash into a trance and urged him to explore childhood memories. When he came to, he had the words of a new song.<
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Horton had been drawn into spiritualism by J. Bernard Ricks, a local postal worker who came to the Hayride offering to enhance the creativity of the performers by unleashing spiritual power. Merle Kilgore, a songwriter (he wrote Webb Pierce's 1954 hit "More and More") and neighbor of Horton's, believes that Horton influenced Cash in this area. "He called me one day when Johnny Horton was out of town and came over to see me and my wife," he says. "We went into my music room that had album covers on the walls and he said it felt so relaxed. My wife brought him coffee and he said, If you don't mind I'm going to close my eyes and meditate.' Then we heard this tremendous POP! The ceiling had split. My wife and I just looked up and he said, 'Oh. I'm sorry. I've just ruined your new music room.' I said, 'How did you do that?' He joked, 'Just meditating. I got the power too strong.'"
The national success of "I Walk the Line" increased the demand for Cash to play concerts outside the South, so he found himself traveling to Colorado and Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Minnesota. In December 1956 he toured California and in April 1957 took a twenty-four-day tour of Canada—his first time onstage outside the U.S., except for shows in Landsberg, Germany. In the smaller venues, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two appeared alone, but on the concert tours they played with many of the top names in country entertainment—legends like George Jones, Jim Reeves, Faron Young, Patsy Cline, and Ray Price.
Cash's manager Bob Neal ran a Memphis-based agency called Stars Incorporated, which represented many Sun artists. Although he'd lost Elvis to Colonel Tom Parker in 1957, he still counted Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Sonny James, and Warren Smith among his clients. If a tour promoter wanted to book Johnny Cash or Carl Perkins, Neal could put together an attractive package by including other artists on his books.
