Johnny Cash: The Life

by Robert Hilburn

  The success of “Guess Things Happen” meant money in Phillips’s pocket, but it also caused Sam to fret again about Cash’s leaving the label. He sent Cash an angry letter demanding that the singer record twenty more songs to fulfill the sixty-five-song requirement of his contract. When Cash flatly refused, Phillips threatened to sue. Carnall and Neal told Cash not to worry—that Phillips would never sue him over the contract provisions because he wouldn’t want anyone to go through his business records in case Cash challenged his royalty statements.

  Seeing he was getting nowhere, Phillips asked Clement to use his friendship with Cash to get the singer into the studio. Cash again refused, but Clement asked him to reconsider, saying he was afraid that Phillips would fire him if he couldn’t come up with the additional recordings, which Phillips wanted for future singles or albums. Clement was as big a storyteller as Cash, so he may have made up the threat, but it worked. “I pretty quickly realized that Jack was one of us,” Cash said, meaning a “worker” at Sun rather than the boss. “He was just doing his job, and I saw right away that he was really good at it.”

  Cash agreed to go into the studio, but he told Clement that he’d have to get everything he needed in one day. That was as much as he was willing to do for Phillips. The result was a mad scramble on May 15 when they got together at nine a.m. for the first of three three-hour sessions, the Tennessee Two again supplemented by drummer James Van Eaton and pianist Jimmy Wilson. Cash kicked things off with two of his own songs, including a ballad titled “You’re the Nearest Thing to Heaven,” which Cash co-wrote with Hoyt Johnson and Jimmy Atkins.

  None of the four songs they laid down at the two p.m. session were noteworthy. Searching around for something to record at the five p.m. session, Cash noticed a Hank Williams songbook in the studio. “Let’s do some of these,” he told Clement, and they recorded five songs, including one that Williams had written for his second wife, the future Billie Jean Horton. Cash knew about the song because Billie Jean had told him about the day Williams sang “I Could Never Be Ashamed of You” to her while driving from Nashville to Shreveport.

  Despite the busy day, Cash and Clement finished with only twelve songs, so Clement asked Cash to come back to the studio again. Sensing Cash’s fondness for “Nearest Thing,” Clement said he’d talk Phillips into releasing it as a single if Cash would cut another song for the back side of the record. Clement even had a couple of songs in mind, both written by Charlie Rich, a marvelous singer, songwriter, and pianist who would become a major pop and country star after joining Epic Records in the late 1960s. The song Clement especially liked was “The Ways of a Woman in Love,” a tale of romantic infatuation with a sing-along feel that was reminiscent of “Ballad of a Teenage Queen,” though far less syrupy lyrically. In the end, Clement was able to get Cash to record eight more songs, which pleased Phillips.

  Billboard predicted a big future for “Guess Things Happen That Way” and gave it a coveted spotlight position in its pop section. But the publication gave it less favorable attention than a new Jerry Lee Lewis recording, “High School Confidential.” In addition, Sun Records’ half-page ad in the same issue featured only the Lewis record. Imagine the surprise, then, when “Guess Things Happen” climbed higher on the pop charts. The reasons weren’t strictly musical.

  While Cash went on the road again in West Texas, Lewis headed to England on what was billed as the biggest tour ever by an American rock ’n’ roller. But the trip turned into a nightmare as soon as Lewis’s plane landed at London’s Heathrow Airport on May 22. A reporter for the Daily Mail noticed a young girl traveling with the twenty-three-year-old Lewis. Looking for quotes for his story, the reporter asked her if she was related to the singer. The girl, Myra Gale Lewis, replied proudly, “I’m Myra, Jerry’s wife.”

  When the reporter asked Lewis how old Myra was, he answered “fifteen,” adding two years to her real age to avoid raising eyebrows. But reporters still sensed a scandal in the making. By the end of the day, the press learned that Myra was Jerry Lee’s first cousin and the couple had been married several months before Lewis’s divorce from his second wife was finalized. The headlines caused a backlash even among Lewis fans. Instead of sellouts, Lewis found himself performing to half-empty houses, his onetime fans booing him ferociously.

  The tour was canceled after a few dates, and Lewis returned to the States, only to learn that the scandal had caused DJs around the country to boycott his records. “High School Confidential” stalled at number twenty-one on the pop charts, which was higher than Lewis would ever climb again in the pop world. Cash was again Sun Records’ number-one attraction.

  II

  The lure of Hollywood was strong for Cash. Stew Carnall kept telling him about the good times they could have there, and Neal was still dangling the prospect of a TV and movie career in front of him. California also appealed to Cash because it would distance him even further from the country music scene in Nashville. He didn’t want to be identified with what he saw was the provincial thinking there, and he liked to think of himself as an outsider—someone like the characters played by Marlon Brando in The Wild One and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, two films that Cash loved. Even onstage, Cash tried to stand apart. He didn’t indulge in the rhinestone suits and “aw-shucks” demeanor of so many country stars. He wasn’t overtly rebellious like Elvis or Jerry Lee, but in his mind he saw himself standing alongside Brando and Dean rather than Roy Acuff and Webb Pierce. When he wore black shirts and pants, because he liked the way they looked and they didn’t show dirt, some of the other entertainers took a look at his colorless appearance and nicknamed him “The Undertaker.”

  Marshall and Luther were both against the move west because it didn’t make sense logistically. Living near the center of the country made driving around the States and Canada a lot easier than trying to route everything through the West Coast. Plus, they’d be far from Columbia’s recording studios in Nashville. When Cash mentioned the complaints to Carnall, his friend just smiled and said, “Johnny, that’s what airplanes are for.”

  Vivian, who had already moved to one new city for Johnny, dreaded the prospect of having to relocate again, especially to a city even farther from her folks in San Antonio. The timing was also bad because the couple’s third child was due in late July. But Vivian wanted to be supportive, so she said it was Johnny’s decision. Marshall and Luther similarly put their fate in his hands. And his decision was: go.

  Before heading west, Cash went into the studio in Nashville with Law for his first Columbia session on July 24, a week before the new contract took effect. Cash had held most of his new songs back from Sun so that he wouldn’t start off at Columbia empty-handed.

  For all his talk about wanting to do things his way, however, Cash unveiled no bold blueprint. As at Sun, he was simply a gifted young man who swung back and forth between commercial and creative impulses—only no longer with someone like Phillips, at least early in their relationship, around to help point out the good and the bad. He soon found that working with Don Law was going to be far different from going into the studio with Phillips and Clement.

  According to Grant, “even though they respected what John wanted to do, there was always the feeling at Sun that Sam and Jack made the final decision about the recordings.” At Columbia, Law didn’t even screen the songs ahead of time. Law had promised Cash full creative control, and he wanted to stay as far away as possible from the decision-making process to ensure that Cash didn’t feel confined.

  When W. S. Holland later joined Cash as his drummer, he noticed the difference right away. “John would come in with a song and John would play it and Don would say, ‘Oh, that’s good,’” says Holland, who played on Carl Perkins’s records at Sun. “I don’t remember Don ever telling anybody what to do the way Sam had done.”

  There was, however, some forward movement. Now free to record gospel music, Cash went into the session with two spiritual-minded tunes, his own “It Was Jesus” and I
ra Stanphill’s “Suppertime,” which Cash first heard in a recording by Jimmie Davis. The other four songs recorded that day were all secular Cash originals. Of them, Law was most impressed by “What Do I Care,” a modest love song that would become one side of Cash’s first Columbia single. It wasn’t, however, a great Cash song—not even close to the convincing, personal vein of “I Walk the Line” or “Come In Stranger.” The only other song from the session that Law would put on the first Columbia album was “Suppertime,” whose old-time country feel was accentuated by the steel guitar styling of Don Helms, who had been a member of Hank Williams’s band.

  Needing enough material for an album and two singles, Cash and Law went back in the studio on August 8, when they recorded not only a song for the other side of the single, the sprightly “All Over Again,” but also four songs that would appear on Cash’s first Columbia album. The most notable of the tunes was “Run Softly, Blue River,” a Cash song with some of the same imagery and lilt of “Big River.” The other key song that Law earmarked for the album was a reworking of the old folk song “Frankie and Johnny” (retitled in this case “Frankie’s Man Johnny”).

  The third session, on August 13, was even more promising as Cash brought in three songs, each of which would remain part of his concert repertoire for years. The first was “I Still Miss Someone,” a sweet love song with the simple but devotional feel of “I Walk the Line.” Surprisingly, the song was mostly written by Cash’s nephew Roy Jr., who was by then a student at Memphis State University. Roy wrote it in class as a poem, and then put a melody to it while strumming a guitar his uncle had given him. Cash helped him rework the lyrics, and the two shared credit on the song, which begins:

  At my door the leaves are falling,

  the cold, wild wind will come

  Sweethearts walk by together,

  and I still miss someone.

  The other songs in that session reflected Cash’s fondness for storytelling, one drawing upon his love of the Old West, the other his own Dyess memories. The narrative of “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” wasn’t original; it could have been drawn from any of a number of western movies Cash saw as a boy. and it fit into the tradition of such earlier country hits as “Streets of Laredo” and “High Noon.” Still, Cash’s vocal authority brought a freshness and appeal to the story of a young man who ignores his mother’s warnings and ends up dead on a saloon floor after a gunfight. “Pickin’ Time” has a more personal edge, a sentimental tale of a family on the farm thanking God for their blessings.

  At the end of the three sessions, Cash and Law were both pleased. Law felt that “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” was the best song, but “All Over Again” and “What Do I Care” were safer commercial choices. He put them back-to-back on the first single, which they rushed out in September even though both Sun releases—“Guess Things Happen That Way” and “The Ways of a Woman in Love”—were both still in the Top 10 in the country field.

  Columbia celebrated with a Billboard ad that proclaimed the “First Columbia Smash from Johnny Cash,” replacing all the “S’s” with “$’s.” The ad also noted, “Johnny, who’s been on the charts for over a year now, records exclusively on high-fidelity records by Columbia.”

  Cash was feeling good about his decision to go to Columbia. When he performed that month at the label’s national sales convention in Estes Park, Colorado, he received an enthusiastic standing ovation and a warm welcome from Goddard Lieberson, the debonair president of the label. Though his background was mostly in classical and Broadway cast albums, Lieberson was a big supporter who saw Cash more as a folksinger than a country singer.

  To underscore the point, he later gave Cash some folk and blues recordings, including folklorist Alan Lomax’s 1947 Blues in the Mississippi Night. That album was tailor-made for Cash: a series of songs by Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim, and Sonny Boy Williams that spoke about brutal racism in the South—including levee camps and prison farms—with such candor that the musicians were given false names in the liner notes to protect themselves and their families. Cash listened to it endlessly for months.

  Back in Memphis, Phillips was not rolling over for Columbia. He put out his own trade ad, which was, in effect, an open letter to record store owners and DJs that declared, “Sun has patiently recorded Johnny Cash with always potent material, first in the country category and gradually manipulating his material and approach to songs to gain him a fantastic following in the pop field, yet not losing his earthy country feel. However, Johnny Cash has signed with Columbia Records as of Aug. 1, 1958. Upon learning that he was anticipating this move, we spent the next five months producing some of the finest sides for future Sun releases on Cash that we have ever had the pleasures of cutting. Please believe us when we say you are in for some tremendous releases on Cash on SUN for at least the next two years.”

  The ad was signed “Appreciatively, Sam C. Phillips.”

  To follow through, Sun released four of the Hank Williams songs that Cash recorded that May 15 evening with Clement in a mini-album (or EP) titled Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams. By October, it was the third-best-selling pop EP in the country, trailing only volumes one and two of Elvis Presley’s King Creole. Aggressively, Phillips came back less than two months later with another EP, this one titled Country Boy, again drawing from material recorded with Clement in May. Thanks to his large backlog of Cash recordings, Phillips was able to keep releasing new Cash singles well into 1961.

  But Columbia had reason to celebrate as well. “All Over Again” went to number four on the country chart and number thirty-eight on the pop. With the album due to ship in December, Cash felt relieved. Some music critics over the years have suggested that Cash and Law weren’t all that pleased with the album because it had been recorded so quickly, but most country acts in the 1950s worked that fast. Few groups would even spend much time rehearsing the material; they’d often just slap the arrangements together during the session.

  In fact, Cash felt he had passed the first test in a move toward creative control. The album, The Fabulous Johnny Cash, contained three songs with spiritual themes. He also looked forward to the second single, “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”/“I Still Miss Someone.”

  As long as Columbia and Sun were taking out ads in Billboard, Carnall and Neal decided to take one out as well. In a play on the popular TV show Have Gun—Will Travel, Carnall came up with a line that they featured at the top of the ad: “Have Guitar Will Pick.” The purpose of the ad was to announce that Cash Enterprises was now based in the center of Hollywood in a strip of business offices on Sunset Boulevard named “Crossroads of the World.”

  The move was happening. Around September 1, following the wrap of his first recording sessions with Law in Nashville, Cash said good-bye to Memphis. He, Vivian, Rosanne, Kathy, and month-old Cindy moved across the country and into a house on Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Studio City, just blocks from Republic and Universal studios. And within days, as Vivian was trying to get the place in order, Cash was back on the road.

  III

  On September 18, Cash headlined the West Texas Fair in Abilene, where he performed two evening shows before a total of 10,700 fans. Reporting on the event, the Abilene Reporter-News noted the next day that Cash played mostly his hits. Then near the end of the story was a throwaway line that probably caught the eye of more than a few members of the Cash entourage: “Between the two shows, Johnny Cash and Lorrie Collins managed to tour the carnival as well as sign hundreds of autographs.”

  There had been growing concern among some of Cash’s inner circle that the twenty-six-year-old Cash and the now sixteen-year-old Collins were spending a lot of time together. But no one knew quite what to make of it—or do about it. At a time when Jerry Lee Lewis’s downfall was on everyone’s mind, the biggest fear was the potential for scandal. Yet that was a huge leap—from occasional hand-holding to Jerry Lee Lewis. Certainly, they told themselves, Johnny had too much at stake to go any further.

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nbsp; But Cash remained smitten with Lorrie, and he needed to talk to someone about his feelings. Marshall was too judgmental, and Cash didn’t feel comfortable confiding in Carnall or Neal. He chose Johnny Western, a singer-songwriter who co-wrote the theme song for Have Gun—Will Travel. A featured performer for years with Gene Autry, Western was a good-natured guy who loved country and folk music. Cash had brought him on tour to emcee the show and sing a few songs. He trusted Western enough to open up to him about Lorrie during a drive in the desert outside Los Angeles.

  “There was something different to Johnny about this little Oklahoma girl,” Western says. “She had the figure, fresh face—beautiful, very photogenic onstage—and John told me how crazy he was about her. I just knew it was a total disaster for him, and I came up with the metaphor of the cowboy in the movies who has to ride away into the sunset. I told him he’s got to ride away and that if he doesn’t, he’s going to lose everything—his family, his career. He said, ‘You’re right. I know you’re right. But damn, I’m just crazy about her. I feel like a schoolboy around her.’”

  As signs of the relationship grew, there was increasing alarm in the Cash camp, but Western resisted any further efforts to caution him. Thanks to the income from touring and the two record labels, Johnny was feeling on top of the world. After struggling to make ends meet on $50 a week in 1954, he was on track just four years later to make a quarter of a million dollars.

  When Johnny Carson told Cash he was selling his Encino house to move to New York, Cash bought it on the spot for $75,000. Encino was a trophy-house suburb of Los Angeles, just minutes from Hollywood and a favorite of film stars, notably John Wayne and Clark Gable. The house, at 4259 Hayvenhurst Avenue, was just up the street from where Michael Jackson’s family would later make their home. Cash also used his new wealth to indulge himself by buying everything that had ever interested him—from Civil War artifacts to vintage guns—and he began combing antique stores and junkyards on the road as one way to combat the boredom of touring. Typical of his excessive nature, Cash—who had enjoyed firing guns ever since his Dyess days—wouldn’t buy just a couple of guns; he’d purchase a half dozen or more at a time.