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Anomaly Craft Resolution (interview)
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by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
What’s most remarkable about Johnny Cash: The Biography, is that it gives us Johnny Cash as a man, not a legend, and though they are difficult to separate, Micael Streissguth tries to peel the two apart and present a portrait separate from the many manufactured legends. Cash has been many things for many people: the bad man in black, a story of redemption or a piece of Americana. As Streissguth says “It has not been an easy task. Cash’s legends are legion, and they are stubborn.”
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The bio starts with a short sketch of Johnny Cash’s father Ray Cash, a hard working, hard drinking man. Ray was raised by his brother Dave, who was coldly cruel but wealthy enough to help his brother during the hard times of the Depression. Ray did a stint in the Army and worked as laborer where ever he could. While out on one of these jobs clear cutting timber, Ray boarded with the Rivers family where their daughter, Carrie, caught his eye. The rough hewn man somehow won the heart of the graceful and young (she was only sixteen) Carrie Rivers. After their marriage, Ray drifted from job to job scrambling to make a living to support their five children, a nearly impossible task during the depths of the Great Depression. By 1934 the Cash family was one of the legions of desperate families taking government benefits. A road to stability finally opened up for the Cashes when Ray Cash applied for a resettlement project in Dyess, Arkansas, funded by the new deal. There, the government made plots of land available on easy terms for poor but hardworking farmers. All the folks participating in Dyess would form a cooperative, enabling them to compete with large commercial crop growers.
The Cash family moved while Johnny was still a baby, when Johnny Cash was still known as J.R. As the story goes, he was known by those initials because when he was born, his mother wanted to name him John and his father wanted to name him Ray junior. His parents apparently compromised by naming him simply by the initials J.R. Later, when Johnny joined the Air Force, the military wouldn’t accept initials as a first name and he ended up choosing John.
Streissguth covers some of the early influences that later inspired Johnny Cash. The move to Dyess saved the Cash family from poverty and they prospered, eventually outright owning the land and buying adjacent plots of farmland. They even weathered a flood that chased them out of their home. Ray and his eldest son Roy stayed behind to herd all the animals into the house to save the livestock, something that was very important since the flooding had already taken their crops. Memories of the flood and the family’s flight from the farm stayed with Johnny, later inspiring the song “Five Feet High and Rising.” The constant train themes that run through Johnny’s songs may have come from little Johnny waiting for his father to return from the out of town jobs he took to earn extra money.
Johnny’s older brother, Roy spent time writing poems, songs and appeared in school plays. Roy eventually played in a rock-a-billy band as the front man, which he eventually give up after the loss of a thumb. Steissguth cites Roy’s example as a reason Johnny was so interested in performing. Johnny’s mother, also musically inclined, encouraged Johnny to sing.
The pious streak that was later to show up in Johnny Cash, may well have been as a result of his brother Jack. Before Jack’s tragic and early death in an accident caused by a Dewalt bale arm saw, Jack was slated to become a Baptist minister. His death affirmed the presence of God for Johnny, but it also haunted him with a survivor’s guilt that often came through in some of his more tortured ballads.
Streissguth takes us through Johnny’s stint in the military, through his beginnings in the music business, his marriage to Vivian and his later courtship of June Carter. We learn about Johnny’s association with Elvis and Bob Dylan and about his fight through addiction. Johnny spent time touring with Elvis, perfecting a funny imitation of Elvis that stayed in his act until the 1960’s. In the 1960’s Cash and Dylan began a correspondence, although Cash later distanced himself from his association with the protest singers of Greenwich Village.
Completing the detailed portrait of the man is a chronicle of his last days in the industry and of his partnership with Rick Rubin, who was responsible for Cash’s American series. We get a look inside the decisions made toward the editing of the music video ‘Hurt’ Cash’s cover of the Nine Inch Nails song. The music video quickly became an emblem of Cash’s own mortality. It was hard to guess that it would be June who would die first, though Johnny soon followed her. The book chronicles Cash’s last moments in his hospital bed, surrounded by family.
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