Johnny Cash was big like his country, and his catalogue of music
was as sprawling as Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Traditional
ballads, country classics, blues, folk, gospel, rockabilly, story
songs complete with spoken narration, patriotic songs, love songs,
and near the end of his life, some stunning covers of contemporary
songwriters — it all came together somehow when Cash laid it
down.
Like any artist who works steadily for nearly 50 years, Cash
invariably produced uneven work; he recorded so many songs, made so
many albums, that more than a few are forgettable. And like any
star whose image becomes shrouded in myth, his persona both served
and limited his art. At times, the figure of the Man in Black
loomed too large over his music — particularly on his final
albums, which were powerful but not immune to a certain degree of
hubris and contrivance. By and large, though, Cash’s self-styled
identity became him well, and in the end he became it.
He was one of the last figures of American consensus, with
admirers from three generations across the cultural spectrum. Many
reasons have been advanced for his nearly unprecedented appeal, but
the simplest explanation of all is that he wrote and sang great
songs for a very long time, in a way that generally ignored
fashion, thereby transcending it. A corollary explanation is that
he tapped into an older America that most of us never saw, but
remember somehow. That older America was harder to characterize
politically than the technological society we live in today, and so
for most of his career Cash was claimed by listeners of every
conceivable political stripe. But his songs and his manner reminded
us of an old truth, that there are no politics in experience.
Politics only comes with interpretation. Cash’s music stuck with
experience and left interpretation to others.
So while he sang to and for the downtrodden — as eagerly
pointed out in obituaries by the BBC and the New York
Times — he also played at the Nixon White House and hung
around with Billy Graham. Cash even telephoned Richard Nixon to
wish him a Merry Christmas in 1974, the year he resigned the
presidency. He wrote some of the most lurid and despairing songs in
popular music, but he also wrote innumerable songs extolling simple
pleasures or the bliss of love. At the height of the Vietnam War,
he wrote the patriotic “Ragged Old Flag,” which took on new life on
the Internet after 9/11. And he wrote devotional songs by the
dozen, including “Man in White,” about Paul on the road to
Damascus. Our popular culture is much more comfortable with Cash ‘s
darker-hued alter ego, and that’s probably as it should be. But he
was no less compelling, no less human, as a penitent than he was as
a hell-raiser. Those who prefer one Cash to another are within
their rights, of course, but they have a less than complete picture
of what made his music so powerful.
It all started with the voice, a low, rich baritone that made
even pedestrian songs impossible to ignore. The voice deepened and
grew husky with age and ill health, until by his final albums it
was the sound of a man living in the End Times. Even then, Cash had
the ability of the greatest vocalists to inhabit a song, whether he
had written it himself or not. Even his Generation X fans are
learning something about this gift. In 1996, Cash covered a song
from the “grunge” rock band Soundgarden called “Rusty Cage.” It was
one of the hardest, most electrified sounds he’d ever put to
record, but the words still came out loud and clear, delivered in a
voice that somehow got deeper and deeper as the song went on. After
the Cash version of “Rusty Cage” was released, Chris Cornell of
Soundgarden, who had written it, was amazed at how many people were
suddenly complimenting his lyrical abilities. He realized that
Cash’s unique vocal style directed listeners to the words more than
his own version of the song had done: “When Johnny sings a song,
you listen to what he has to say.”
We listened also because Johnny Cash carried himself in a way
that evoked respect, even awe. He was able to break through to
Generation X-ers raised on irony, and he had a wonderfully dry
sense of humor, but he never indulged in the self-parody so prized
by postmodernists. He began each concert by saying “Hello, I’m
Johnny Cash,” and being Johnny Cash meant something. Compare this
to U2’s Bono, a rock star who claims a deep affinity for Cash’s
music and who in his early career was viewed (rightly or wrongly)
as a symbol of certain values and ideals. But then he took his band
on a tour called “Popmart” and spent years teaching his fans that
it was all just a pose, that the name of the game was commerce
after all. When they didn’t buy, he backtracked and resumed singing
about Third World dissidents. If he were to say, “Hello, I’m Bono,”
it could only evoke a laugh or a shrug.
Because of his catalogue of bad-man songs, Cash has been called
a godfather of gangsta rap. His legendary line from “Folsom Prison
Blues” — “I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die” — is
frequently cited in this context. But while Cash’s songs may
feature all manner of mayhem, his protagonists suffer deeply for
their deeds, both physically and spiritually. The narrator in
“Folsom Prison Blues” is genuinely anguished by what he has done:
“When I hear that whistle blowing/I hang my head and cry.” And he
is tormented by the sound of distant trains carrying the innocent,
who are free to enjoy a life he has squandered: “I’ll bet there’s
rich folks eatin’ in a fancy dining car/They’re probably drinking
coffee, and smoking big cigars…” Forty years after writing
that song, Cash emerged with perhaps his most savage murder ballad,
“Delia.” Youthful purveyors of shock rock, eager to claim Cash as
one of their own, focused only on the murder deed, not the
perspective. They didn’t seem to hear the mournful cry in Cash’s
voice, or the haunting lines where the narrator hears “the patter
of Delia’s feet” in his jail cell. Nobody gets away with anything
in Johnny Cash songs. One way or another, to borrow another phrase
of his, “the man comes around.” You couldn’t find a moral universe
further from gangsta rap, or most other pop music, for that
matter.
Besides being a great loss to our musical heritage, Johnny
Cash’s passing means that America has lost one of its few remaining
human landmarks. They don’t make shadows in his size anymore.
