Johnny Cash: The Life

by Robert Hilburn

  He never did great things to be remembered.

  He’d never been away from home before.

  But you’d thought he was president or something

  at Route 1, Box 144.

  Cash then headed back on the road, where he found the crowds larger and more enthusiastic than ever. Instead of 3,000 to 5,000 fans, he was now pulling in 15,000 for two shows in San Antonio, breaking records at the New Mexico State Fair by drawing 48,000 fans over four days, and in Los Angeles he could have sold out two shows at the 18,000-seat Hollywood Bowl instead of the single scheduled date.

  Things were going so well that Lou Robin and Allen Tinkley came up with a bold idea that gave even the normally ambitious Holiff pause: How about playing New York’s 20,000-capacity Madison Square Garden? The 2,800-seat Carnegie Hall was one thing, but playing Madison Square Garden in a city that hadn’t shown enough interest in country music even to have a country radio station would be something else entirely.

  “Everyone said we were insane to put a country show in Madison Square Garden, but we knew he had gone beyond country music,” Robin says. “Allen and I had done lots of shows in New York, including the Garden, and we knew the market. John was on every station by then, plus we put him in the round so we could advertise that every seat was a good seat. We finally talked Saul into it. He just said, ‘Don’t guess wrong!’ So we booked the show for December fifth, and it sold out almost immediately.”

  III

  The Johnny Cash Show had created such a buzz that ABC renewed it for 1970. Cash vowed to feature more country artists in the show when he spoke in October at a country music industry gathering in Nashville.

  “There were some mistakes in my show this summer, partly my fault, partly ABC’s, partly Screen Gems’,” he said. “I was, as they say, not an established television star then. So the people in charge felt they should put guests from various fields of entertainment on every week. But the mail we received asked for more of my own people.”

  As the audience cheered, Cash pledged that during the new season “we’re going to put more of the realism, truth, and down-to-earth feeling that is in country music into our show. We’ve already started lining up such guests as Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, as well as top new talent. We hope to present, with dignity, people like Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow. We feel country music has really come into its own, that it’s the biggest thing in the world, and we’re going to do our best for it.”

  The resentment over the non-country guests must not have been too great in Nashville, because that same week the Country Music Association awarded Cash five of the ten honors handed out at the group’s annual ceremony. They were for entertainer of the year, best male vocalist, best album (San Quentin), best single (“A Boy Named Sue”), and best group or duo (John and June).

  Cash made more news when it was announced that he would play a Cherokee chief in a film, The Trail of Tears, for National Educational Television. Despite the disaster of Five Minutes to Live, Cash still thought he had potential as an actor. The film’s director, Lane Slate, certainly built high expectations for him, making what is believed to be the first public reference to Cash as the heir to another cultural icon’s role as a strong, silent American hero.

  “He’s got the same sort of power about him that John Wayne has,” Slate said. “I don’t know whether he’ll ever be able to play anything but those strong parts, but Wayne has certainly been successful at it.”

  Cash had turned down at least six scripts before accepting The Trail of Tears, which also starred Joseph Cotton, Melvyn Douglas, and Jack Palance. The project appealed to Cash because it told of yet another shameless chapter in U.S.–Native American relations, this time the forced relocation in the 1830s of thousands of members of the Cherokee and other Native American nations from their lawful homes in the southeastern United States to reservations in Oklahoma. Thousands of the dislocated Cherokee alone died from disease or starvation during the trip.

  Amid all this nonstop news, there was one occurrence during the fall of 1969 that the papers didn’t cover. It was an event that could have destroyed Cash’s new superstar status.

  While in California, where John was to appear on another edition of the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, Cash apparently faced the biggest potential scandal since the days of Lorrie Collins and Billie Jean Horton.

  According to speculation that would continue to circulate on a hush-hush basis within the deepest levels of the Cash camp for decades, June, by now five months pregnant, learned that John had had an affair. To make the report even more explosive, the talk went, the woman John had been intimate with was June’s sister Anita.

  Years later, Jimmy Tittle, a musician who was married to Cash’s daughter Kathy, came across a song while organizing Cash’s publishing company files. It was titled “Forbidden Fruit.” When he mentioned the song to John, he was told that it was about Anita.

  The only public reference to any Anita-John affair around that time would appear years later in the National Enquirer, in November 2003—after the death of all three principals. According to the scandal-minded publication, an “insider” reported that Anita, on her deathbed in 1999, asked for June’s forgiveness for the affair.

  If the speculation is true, the three were able to keep the news secret from most of the people in their inner circle.

  But how could the marriage survive such a traumatic event?

  The likely answer is that June was nothing if not a realist. Like most women who married country music stars at the time, she had seen enough backstage affairs to wipe away any sense of innocence about the future. When she said “I do,” she was committing for life, as hard as that proved to be at times. The incident with Anita, if true, might have been more traumatic if John had an affair with someone other than her sister. In the fall of 1969, June may well have seen John’s affair with Anita as a momentary relapse, not a sign that he wanted to end their marriage.

  Cash, too, was aware of all the backstage temptations, and at the time of their marriage, he and June pledged to stick together as much as possible. John told his friend James Keach, “One of the things we talked about [before getting married], and one of her conditions and one that I wanted as well, was for us to stay side to side, work together, travel together.”

  After speculation arose regarding the Anita-John affair, some close to Cash saw June’s suddenly increased role in the television series as a sign that he was trying to reassure her about their relationship. During the first season she’d kept a low profile. Before the start of the second season, however, Cash told producer Stan Jacobson that he wanted June to appear in every episode. In Jacobson’s words, “It suddenly became the Johnny and June show.” It was a partnership offstage and on.

  IV

  It was just weeks after this trauma that one of the world’s most influential religious figures stepped into Cash’s life, urging him to use his fame to inspire young people everywhere to turn to Christ. “When we were growing up, Billy Graham was the essence of true spirituality,” says Cash’s younger sister Joanne. “He was someone you never heard anything bad about. To Mama and Daddy, he was bigger than any singer on the radio. It meant the world to Johnny to be able to tell them that Billy Graham was coming to his house for dinner.”

  Days before the dinner, Cash’s new star power was showcased on December 5, when he headlined the sold-out show at Madison Square Garden in New York, grossing $110,000, which was more than the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, or James Brown had registered at the arena. Reviews were even more glowing than at the Carnegie Hall date in 1968. In the Post, Alfred G. Aronowitz, a widely influential journalist in rock with ties to Dylan, focused on Cash’s emerging role in bridging youthful liberal and older conservative factions in America.

  “Johnny Cash knew how to talk to prisoners and to presidents,” Aronowitz wrote. “He knew, as a matter of fact, how to talk to all America….Only Johnny knows how many times he’s been shot down in his life, but he has k
ept picking himself up to become a folk figure so real, so heroic and so American that he could, as he did [at the Garden] endorse Richard M. Nixon’s conduct of the Vietnam War and give a ‘V’ [peace] sign from the same stage.”

  Aronowitz looked at the seeming contradiction not as a weakness or hypocrisy but as the sign of a man struggling to understand the complexities of the times. He even pointed out how Cash, rather than duck the issue, raised the matter at the concert.

  “I’ll tell you exactly how I feel about it,” he announced, regarding the war. “This past January, we brought our whole show over to the air base at Long Binh, and a reporter asked, ‘That makes you a hawk, doesn’t it?’ And I said, ‘No, that doesn’t make me a hawk, but when you watch the helicopters bringing in the wounded, that might make you a dove with claws.’”

  With his career expanding on all levels, Cash kept hearing he needed to build a business operation befitting a star of his level. He took the first step that month by buying the Plantation Dinner Theater in Hendersonville for $224,000, planning to turn it into a state-of-the-art recording studio facility. Not only would it give him a place to record less than five minutes from his house, but also he could make money by renting it to other musicians for their sessions. He would eventually house his publishing companies and a fan museum in the building, which he called the House of Cash.

  As rewarding as the Madison Square Garden concert and the recording studio plans were for him, Cash was looking forward even more to sitting down with Billy Graham.

  William Franklin “Billy” Graham Jr. was born in 1918, which made him fourteen years older than Cash, but they bonded like brothers. A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Graham started actively pursuing the ministry as a teenager, and in 1947 he initiated a series of “Crusades” that grew from simple revival tents to fill arenas and stadiums around the world. By the time he contacted Cash, he was the most famous religious figure besides the pope.

  He heard about Cash through his son Franklin, who suggested that Cash could attract millions of people to the Crusades, especially young people. Maria Beale Fletcher, a Nashville TV personality, agreed to introduce him to the singer, who was delighted to invite Graham and his wife, Ruth, to the house for dinner. During dinner, Graham asked John and June to take part in his Crusades, stressing the role Cash could play in spreading the word of Christ, a message that Cash embraced. Cash explained how fulfilled gospel music made him feel, that he had never been more inspired to write a song than when he wrote “He Turned the Water into Wine” during his trip to Israel. He also pointed out how warmly that song and “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)” had been received at Madison Square Garden.

  Their first Crusade appearance came in May 1970 in Knoxville, with Cash singing before 62,000 worshipers at Newland Stadium on the campus of the University of Tennessee. He and June would eventually testify at nearly three dozen Crusades in front of nearly 2 million people. Cash and Graham grew close, frequently joining hands before the crowds at the Crusades, and also vacationing together.

  “We both had a mutual faith in Christ and we also came from similar backgrounds, both of our families were southern farm families,” says Graham. “But I also definitely saw the ‘preacher’ in Johnny. You heard it in his testimony and listened to it in his music. June encouraged that ‘preacher’ in him as well.”

  When Cash described himself as a “C+ Christian” at various times in his life, most thought this American icon was just being humble. To those who’d been close to him at various points, it appeared he was being a bit generous with his evaluation. But there was no question Cash believed. He wasn’t using his religion as commercial strategy; he carried his Bible with him everywhere, and he regularly read books to deepen his understanding of Judeo-Christian history.

  The impact of Billy Graham’s friendship and counsel was profound, which made it all the more difficult later when Cash would sometimes show up under the influence of pills at a Graham Crusade. It tore him apart to know that Graham would be looking at him and know that something was wrong, though Graham, in his forgiving way, never challenged Cash about it.

  “Johnny Cash believed in the eternal hellfire and damnation,” Bill Miller says. “He believed that if he died and he wasn’t right with God that he would go to hell and he would experience the physical burning and gnashing of teeth. He never lost track of that and I think it scared him and tortured him…when he kept repeating the same sins over and over and kept asking for forgiveness. I think his [continued turning] to gospel music was his way of saying, ‘God, I’m still here. I’m not perfect, but I want to be here with you.’”

  As an adult looking back over his father’s life, John Carter Cash, himself a devout Christian, was struck by the depth of his father’s spiritual beliefs and the role of Graham, his grandfather Ezra, and his mother in reinforcing those feelings.

  “Billy and my father maintained their friendship all through their lives,” John Carter says. “When my father fell short, he could always reach out to Billy. Billy didn’t judge my father; he was there as his friend unconditionally. Billy would lift him up, support him, and say, ‘You can do this. Stand back up. You know who you are.’ From that point on, Dad would tell you his purpose in life was to spread the word of Jesus Christ.”

  Three weeks after the dinner with Graham, Cash sat down at nine p.m. on New Year’s Eve to write his second year-end reflection. As with the 1968 note, Cash was relentlessly upbeat: “This year, 1969, tops 1968 in every good way.” In the six-page letter, he again focused almost exclusively on material accomplishments, something he would note and reject in his New Year’s Eve letter two years later. He cited the massive album sales, the summer TV show (“a hit”), nice dinners at the house (with guests such as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and songwriter Mickey Newbury), the CMA awards (“all five”), the Trail of Tears film, the trips overseas (“What a night!!!!”), Billy Graham, and magazine profiles. He mentioned having given up cigarettes on Christmas Day, and then quickly asked himself, “(Can I tough it out????).” He also expressed thanks that his mother and father had moved to Hendersonville from California.

  The only hint of disappointment was that his daughters weren’t able to join him for Christmas. The sole trace of anger—“Bitter, Hateful”—was directed at Vivian, presumably because she wouldn’t approve the trip.

  In closing, he listed seven items under his “prospects for 1970,” including the Billy Graham Crusades and the resumption of TV tapings.

  Chief in his mind, however, was the item that topped the list: “Baby due March 10. Boy.”

  Chapter 22

  “It’s a Boy” and the White House

  I

  “HELLO, I’M JOHN CARTER CASH’S DADDY.”

  When Cash opened his TV show with those words on March 15, 1970, his fans, now numbering in the millions, surely smiled, but they weren’t surprised. Thanks to a burst of news reports, the first of more than two thousand floral bouquets began arriving at the small Madison Hospital within minutes of the announcement of the baby’s birth on March 3. By the time the seven-pound, ten-ounce boy headed home six days later, he had received more than five thousand gifts.

  “It’s a boy, June…it’s a boy,” John said as soon as he was allowed to see his wife and his son. It seemed to June that the whole world was celebrating with them.

  “I couldn’t believe the flowers—they were everywhere, from the floor to the ceiling in that big hospital room and out in the hall, even at the nurses’ station,” she said. “And the letters and telegrams! From governors and the president and people all over the world—wiring and writing and calling to say how truly glad they were that John had a son.”

  When the family left the hospital, nearly one hundred patients and staff members gathered in the lobby with gifts, including a $100 savings bond and a book of biblical stories. As news photographers captured the moment, Cash leaned over and playfully grabbed one of his son’s fingers. Then he wheeled June and Joh
n Carter to his black Cadillac for the ten-minute ride home. They hired one of the hospital nurses, Winifred Kelly, to be the boy’s nanny. She became part of what was a growing household staff that included Peggy Knight, a friend of Maybelle’s who was so close to the Cashes she was often called “the third spouse,” though there was no sexual connection implied.

  On the following morning, newspapers around the country, which had printed photos of Cash in handcuffs in El Paso just five years earlier, now carried photos of a family man who was well on his way to becoming a cultural icon. It was a remarkable transformation, in fact, from even two years earlier, when Columbia Records had embellished Cash’s outlaw side in ads to build interest in the Folsom album.

  In the ad that appeared in Rolling Stone in 1968, readers were told: “The audience is convicts. They can’t leave when the show’s over. Some of them know what it means when the songs talk about killing a man. The atmosphere is electric….When you listen close, you hear clanging doors, whistles, shouts. Responses that aren’t the same as yours. Because they’re not walking around like you are. You’ll probably never really know what it’s like. Johnny Cash does. He’s been inside prisons before. Not always on a visit.”