A lot of people like Johnny Cash, but mostly for the wrong reasons.

We were talking about the song „Wonderful world“ made famous by Louis Armstrong. I offered: wasn’t that one written by a country music artist after he left jail? Answers my colleague: sure, the one who took so many drugs. The one that was in that movie some months ago. I said: you mean Johnny Cash? Johnny Cash never was in jail except once for some days.

A young guy hiding his rich man’s son life behind the (imagined) outfit of a mechanic from a New Jersey bodyshop and with piercings and tatoo says to me: Johnny Cash is cool. He sings about shooting people, just to watch them die. Cool.

Yes, Johnny Cash took drugs and he wrote those infamous lines, but there is much more to the man that is important. Reducing him to drugabuse and outlaw-songs is real close to heresy in my book. Johnny Cash is one of the few remaining heroes that I have. But why?

Because he was a big man. He stood tall and was able to contain many things in one person. He stood to his beliefs even if they meant to include paradoxes. For instance, he was so big he supported the soldiers in Vietnam while speaking up against the war. He was a true Southern man with all the white trash gone rich style but he was also the first to write a concept album about the destruction of indian life when America was conquered. He also did concept albums about cowboys or railwaymen building the transamerican railway. And the one about Jesus Christ should not be forgotten.

Johnny Cash obviously was a deeply religious man as well, believing in god and jesus christ the saviour. But he wasn’t some kind of born again christian. He had his strong beliefs at the same time he abused drugs, broke up marriages with his behaviour and destroyed stage equipment, cars and other stuff. He set out to sing gospel originally but turned to other issues (murder, broken love, abuse of all kind) just as quick. He loved people and started fights with them all the time. He had a special penchant to lowdown characters, like prisoners.

He never judged people for what they did but for who they are. He didn’t care if people made mistakes, because who would know more about mistakes than he did. One of my stories is by Steve Earle, when he came out of prison for drug dealing and was invited to record a tribute to something or other. In a waiting room in the studio he met Johnny Cash who offered him a sandwich, made by June Carter. Not one word about his prison spell. That is big.

 

He played emotional love songs as well as heartbreaking lost love songs and he did comic songs and rough edged songs. He covered a lot of songs as well. He recorded over seventy albums in his life time, which is hard to imagine nowadays. But most important of all, he sang every song in a way that shows he meant it. Even the album worth of kid’s songs or some of the inane stuff he released in the Eighties has that tingle of seriousness.

I realize the word that I used most in this eulogy is „deep“. Only a big man is able to have depths. You never know what might wait in these depths. But in comparison to superficial and shallow artists en vogue today, I hope you realize what makes Johnny Cash such a grand personae.