Johnny Cash: The Life

by Robert Hilburn

  Cash took the chicks home, where he raised them in his backyard. They were a big hit with the girls, though there was one problem. A couple of them turned out to be roosters, which meant they welcomed the break of day with loud crowing. The neighbors weren’t happy. Cash and Carnall loved it all the more.

  Carnall had grown up near the Santa Anita racetrack, and he loved playing the horses almost as much as he loved being around show business—maybe more. He combined his passions that spring, telling a publicist buddy while at Hollywood Park, a rival track across town from Santa Anita, that Cash had written a song for Silky Sullivan, one of the most popular racehorses of the 1950s in Southern California because of his colorful racing style.

  Silky would start off slowly, falling twenty, thirty, even forty lengths behind. Just when it appeared he had no chance, he’d suddenly take off—as if the big red horse had rocket boosters attached—and seemingly fly down the track, often catching the leader at the wire. It made for thrilling watching—and betting. The publicist told Carnall that if he’d bring Cash to the track, he’d have a photographer take his picture with the horse and invite some newspaper reporters to attend.

  Carnall returned to the track a few days later with Cash to pose with Silky Sullivan for the photographer. As Cash stood next to the horse at Stall 50 in the track stables, the photographer asked him to sing to the horse. Surprising everyone, Cash nodded and started singing “Guess Things Happen That Way”—not the Silky Sullivan song. When he finished, one of the reporters asked, “What about the Silky Sullivan song?” Sheepishly, Cash said he didn’t remember the words.

  While it’s not clear whether he had really written a song about the horse before Carnall told him about the publicity opportunity or not until afterward, Cash did write something called “The Ballad of Silky Sullivan,” which included the line “Silky came up for the kill / passed ’em all like standing still.”

  III

  By summer, Grant and Perkins had had enough of California and the extra traveling it required and moved back to Memphis. As loath as he was to admit it, Grant welcomed the distance from Cash. He hated to see what the pills were doing to his friend.

  Soon after returning to Memphis, Grant and Perkins drove 2,200 miles to Calgary, Alberta, where they were scheduled to play two days at the world-famous Calgary Stampede. When they got to their hotel the morning of the first concert, they were surprised to find that Cash, who was supposed to have flown in from Los Angeles the night before, hadn’t checked in. Marshall spent two hours tracking down Carnall on the phone. When he finally reached him, Carnall calmly informed him that Cash wasn’t going to perform for the twelve thousand fans at the Stampede. Grant and Perkins had no choice but to drive the 2,200 miles back to Memphis.

  That summer was a turning point in Cash’s drug use. As his guilt about his marriage and the pressures of his career both mounted, he was now approaching fifteen or more pills some days, and he was having trouble getting enough prescriptions to cover that number. Grant in time came to believe that one of the reasons Cash remained in Los Angeles was that it was easier to get pills there than in Memphis or Nashville. But his main supply came from Mexico. After hearing you could get all the drugs you wanted on the black market there, Cash took advantage of a June 20 appearance in El Paso to go across the border into Juárez and buy a couple of hundred pills. He found the experience so easy that he would sometimes fly to El Paso even when he didn’t have a show.

  Back in Los Angeles, Don Law had good news. When Columbia signed Cash in 1958, it had been a one-year contract with four one-year options. In other words, Columbia could drop him after the first year. Instead, the record company was so pleased with Cash’s sales that it gave him a new contract on July 1 that extended the deal until Decembr 31, 1963, and provided a $10,000 bonus.

  The effect of Cash’s growing pill use, meanwhile, had become obvious to anyone who bought a ticket to his show with the Tennessee Two at the Town Hall Party on August 8. As shown in the Bear Family DVD, not only had Cash lost considerable weight since his November appearance, but also he had an almost glassy stare onstage and was consumed now by nervous energy. At the same time, he was reaching out aggressively to the audience with his gestures and comments, as well as doing an over-the-top parody of Elvis Presley singing “Heartbreak Hotel.” During the number, he pretended to throw his back out while burlesquing Elvis’s famous hip twists. He also feverishly combed his hair into Elvis’s ducktail. It may have been amusing to the casual observer, but in the stark lens of the camera and in hindsight, it looks as though Cash was quickly spiraling out of control.

  His career, though, was moving at increasing speed. The producers of a new TV series, The Rebel, asked him to sing the theme song and even signed him to appear on the show. Cash was elated, because the show’s theme appealed to both his fascination with the Civil War era and his fondness for anyone championing the rights of the underdog. In The Rebel, the show’s main character, Johnny Yuma, was a disillusioned Civil War veteran roaming through the West, lending a helping hand to settlers battling oppressive forces. Cash also signed for a small nonsinging role in the hit series Wagon Train.

  The week after the Town Hall Party appearance, Cash was off to Nashville to record the Rebel song, which Columbia would release as part of a four-song mini-album to coincide with the start of the TV series, and another song that would be released as a holiday single, Katherine K. Davis’s “Little Drummer Boy.”

  On the day after the “Drummer Boy” session, Cash appeared at the Terre Haute Fair in Indiana, and then played additional fair dates in Illinois, New York, and Tennessee before what seemed like an otherwise insignificant date in London, Ontario. But that’s where he met Saul Holiff, a young, ambitious concert promoter who was impressed by Cash’s charisma and made a note to book him for more shows in the region.

  Cash always tried to boost Vivian’s spirits by bringing home presents for her and the kids, from stuffed animals to fancy dresses and expensive jewelry. But he had a big surprise for her on their fifth anniversary. Columbia wanted him to go to Europe for a couple of promotional appearances in late September—a music festival in Frankfurt and a TV show in London—and he wanted Vivian to come along, to give them the honeymoon they’d never had.

  One of the highlights of the tour was a visit to Landsberg, where Cash gave her a tour of the old Air Force base and introduced her to a few people he had known there. She was charmed when some seemed to remember how much he’d talked about her. He even showed her his favorite fishing spot and a tree on which he had carved their initials. To make the trip all the more memorable, he bought her a new diamond. Cash may have felt a huge void in his relationship with Vivian, but he still loved her, and the visit to Landsberg reminded him of all the loving and passionate letters they wrote each other.

  Back in the States, Cash headed to Huntsville, Texas, to appear at the annual prison rodeo on October 4, 1969. The rodeo, originally conceived as entertainment for inmates and prison employees, dated from the 1930s and had been featuring country stars—along with the bull-riding and cow-milking contests—since Eddy Arnold performed there in 1951. Besides Cash, James Arness of Gunsmoke would be part of the day’s entertainment lineup. Cash approached the afternoon as just another date on the concert trail until he stepped onstage and felt the waves of emotion from the inmates in the audience as he and the Tennessee Two launched into “Folsom Prison Blues.” The reaction gave Cash chills—the cheers, the whistling, and the gratitude in the inmates’ eyes.

  To make the day even more unforgettable, a thunderstorm hit during Cash’s set, and the rain caused a power failure onstage. The prisoners had been told to remain in their seats during the show, but hundreds came down to the edge of the stage so they could hear Cash, now playing and singing without amplification. When he finished “Folsom,” they asked him to sing it again. “We all got soaking wet, but we had a great time,” Cash recalled. He had never felt that much affection from an audience, even on
his best nights at the Opry and the Louisiana Hayride. After the show, he asked Carnall to book him at another prison. Within days, Carnall had a 1960 New Year’s Day date at San Quentin State Prison in California.

  Around the same time, Columbia released Songs of Our Soil, and the label’s promotion department did all it could to connect the album to the folk boom in pop. The Billboard review fell right into line, describing the release as a collection of folk ballads and predicting it would be a big seller. The forecast didn’t prove accurate. Songs of Our Soil failed to make the pop charts.

  Columbia had high hopes for “The Little Drummer Boy” as a holiday season hit. The label took out four half-page ads in the October 12 issue of Billboard touting a new single from Cash with the words “Johnny Cash Sings the Most Stirring and Inspirational Song of Our Time.” Despite the push, the single was not a big seller. But Cash barely seemed to notice. He was moving at a disorienting speed on several different fronts.

  Before heading back to California, Cash again spent time with Horton, whose high-spirited, almost cartoonish rendition of “The Battle of New Orleans,” a historical narrative written and recorded in 1957 by Jimmie Driftwood, spent six weeks at number one on the pop charts—a bigger hit than any of Cash’s records. But Horton couldn’t have cared less. He just wanted to go fishing.

  Cash had had a great time on the European trip, but he worried that Vivian’s resentment would eventually resurface. As much as he loved her, that anxiety made it difficult for him to unwind at home. When in L.A., he felt more comfortable with Johnny Western or Merle Travis or Stew Carnall.

  Western was like Horton in many ways, a great storyteller who had a soothing aura of wisdom and who never seemed to pass judgment on Cash’s erratic behavior. Cash once borrowed Western’s brand-new Cadillac, only to phone him the next morning to say he’d lost the car. The last thing Cash could remember about the previous night was taking it to the Farmers Market shopping center just south of Hollywood. Western raced over to the center and found his car, the doors unlocked and the keys in plain sight on the seat.

  As for Travis, Cash looked on him as a mentor and spent dozens of hours at his house talking to him about Folk Songs of the Hills. It was during this time that Cash started slowly patching together his own concept album, in which he wanted to tell about life in the Old West.

  For Carnall’s part, his marriage to Lorrie Collins hadn’t uprooted his relationship with Cash. The booking agent appealed to Cash’s rebellious side, and his entertaining antics helped Cash forget the tensions engulfing him—strains that had grown to include even making music. Law was pressuring Cash to record another album quickly, but he was working on the concept album, and that was going to take a lot more time. He was also having trouble once again finding new song ideas. During a lunch stop on the road one time, Carnall told Cash to relax. He pointed out that most Nashville singers didn’t write their own material; they depended on others for their songs. He took Cash over to the café’s jukebox and said, “Take a look at the songs on there and pick some that you like and record them.” Cash loved the idea. He could feel some of the pressure already melting away.

  One reason for the men’s mutual attraction was their love of the outrageous. When Carnall mentioned one day in 1958 that he had offers for Cash to do New Year’s Eve shows in three different cities in California, Cash said, “Let’s do them all.” Carnall thought it was a great idea. He booked the shows in San Diego, Los Angeles (at Town Hall Party), and Northern California and chartered a plane to hop up the coast.

  Given the close ties between Cash and Carnall, it was only natural that Bob Neal began to feel left out. Neal had gotten Johnny some TV roles, but television wasn’t what Cash wanted. He wanted the big screen. The writing was on the wall when all Neal could deliver was a part in a film that was so low budget it’s a wonder that Cash even took the role. While Elvis was making movies for MGM, Paramount, and 20th Century–Fox, Cash’s film would be released by unheralded Sutton Pictures. Neal was also tired of California. So he quit as Cash’s manager, effective November 1. In just four years, the former DJ had let two superstars slip through his hands.

  Cash eventually went ahead with the Sutton film. Titled Five Minutes to Live, it aimed for the taut, hard-edged “film noir” genre. Cash was cast in the lead role of a crazed thug in the story about a bank robbery gone wrong. The director was Bill Karn, whose credits included some TV crime shows and a C-budget film, Ma Barker’s Killer Brood. The high note for trivia fans, however, is that the banker’s young son was played by Ron Howard, the future actor and director.

  Initially, Cash and Carnall must have had second thoughts about the project. At any rate, the film, due to begin filming in December, got pushed back into the new year because of money problems.

  With time on their hands after the postponement, Cash and Carnall decided to drive up to Ventura County, about forty-five miles north of Los Angeles. It was a peaceful, laid-back area where Carnall had gone to prep school. As he drove Cash along the back roads and through quaint small towns, the area spoke to Cash, who was homesick for country living. Since he had just bought the big house in Encino, he wasn’t thinking so much of moving to Ventura County himself, but he thought it might be an ideal spot for his parents. Maybe he could find a way to talk them into moving out west. Maybe he could even entice his brother Roy to join them. Cash seemed to be looking to family as a way to reduce the tension that was starting to consume him. Having relatives so close might also make it easier for Vivian when he was away on the road.

  Once Carnall helped him understand that it was acceptable to do a collection of other people’s songs, Cash went to work on that idea, and it felt like a vacation after all the time and energy he was putting into the larger concept album. He actually used two numbers that he spotted on the jukebox that day—Ray Price’s “My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You” and George Jones’s “Just One Day”—but most were from records he loved from hearing on the radio, including Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and Bob Wills’s “Time Changes Everything.”

  The album, which would be called Now, There Was a Song! was clearly secondary to the Old West project. Cash wanted that album to be a loving portrait of a region of America that he treasured, a theme that grew out of the admiration he had for the unheralded working people in small towns like Dyess. Specifically, he wanted the songs to address the “voices that weren’t commonly heard at the time—voices that were ignored or even suppressed in the entertainment media, not to mention the political and education establishments.” Meticulously Cash drafted a list of songs for the album and, crucially, a narrative that would run between the songs and put them into a dramatic context.

  Cash was still working his way through the album’s content in December when he went to Nashville to record another Johnny Yuma song for the Rebel TV series. He used the remaining time in the three-hour session to record three songs he was considering for the concept album, including “Going to Memphis,” a tale of a convict on a chain gang. Even without any narrative attached, the traditional song—to which Cash added some of his own lyrics—impressed Law, and they agreed to get together again after the first of the year to do some more work on the album.

  The only person more excited than Johnny Cash about his 1960 New Year’s Day concert at San Quentin was a twenty-two-year-old convict named Merle Ronald Haggard. After a rebellious youth and years of reform school, Haggard was arrested in 1957 during an attempted burglary one night at a Bakersfield café during which he and his buddy were so drunk, they didn’t realize the place was still open while they were trying to break in the back door. He then aggravated the situation by fleeing the jail, though he maintains he was encouraged by guards to think he was free to go. Because of Haggard’s history of lawbreaking, the judge sentenced him to San Quentin for a maximum of fifteen years.

  While there, Haggard realized he was going to spend his entire life behind bars if he didn’t change his ways. He found
his direction at that New Year’s Day concert. When he saw how the inmates went wild for Cash, Haggard reconnected with his own dreams of a music career and vowed to turn his life around. Paroled a few months later, he went back to Bakersfield and began playing country music clubs.

  Haggard remembers that Cash looked terrible onstage at San Quentin. “He was hung over from the night before, and his voice was almost gone, but he came out on that stage and just blew everybody away,” he says. “He ripped down the walls with his music and he touched us with his songs. For a little while, he’d accomplished the impossible. He had replaced our misery with music. He’d made us forget where we were.”

  Already a Cash fan, Haggard had been awaiting the New Year’s Day show with the same sense of awe that Cash had brought to the Louvin Brothers’ appearance in Dyess. He found out where Cash’s party would be arriving and waited there. He went up to young Larry Collins, who had reunited with Lorrie by then, and asked if he could help carry his guitar into the stage area. He also introduced himself to Johnny Western and told him he wanted to be a singer too one day.

  Cash didn’t meet Haggard that time, but he was again moved by the deep affection of the prison audience. For reasons he didn’t try to figure out, he could identify with these men’s lust for freedom and redemption. On the way out of the prison, the warden invited Cash to come back any time he wanted. Cash turned to the warden and said, “Can’t think of any better place to spend next New Year’s Day.” Carnall, who was standing nearby, marked the date on his schedule.