September 25, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Johnny Cash’s life was as raw and unforgettable as his music. Known for songs like I Walk the Line, Folsom Prison Blues, and Ring of Fire, Cash also battled addiction, broken relationships, and inner turmoil. What makes him an American icon is not just his music but how he found redemption through faith, resilience, and the love of June Carter Cash. Author Greg Laurie shares how Cash’s struggles and triumphs gave his songs lasting power and why his story continues to inspire.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, a unique take on the life story of
Johnny Cash, who was himself an American original. This story
is an insider's look at the man whose music sprung
(00:30):
from the way he lived. Our storyteller is none than
greg Glory. Laurie is the pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship
in Orange County, California and Maui. Gregor is here to
tell the story from his recent book, Johnny Cash, The
Redemption of an American Icon. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Going back to the earliest days of my childhood, I
had an awareness of Johnny Cash. One of the reasons
for that is our family is from Arkansas, not far
from where Johnny's family was raised, and my grandparents, who
I lived with for a number of years because of
my mother's crazy lifestyle. She'd been married and divorced seven
(01:16):
times and was having a lot of boyfriends in between
and was running around, and so she left me with
my grandparents, Charles and Stella McDaniel, who we called Daddy
Charles and Mama Stella. So I remember as a little
boy watching Johnny Cash's television show, and I remember hearing
my grandfather say to my grandmother when he'd be reading
(01:37):
the paper, well, Stella, your cousin's in trouble again. Because
Johnny had a lot of problems early in his life
after he had his initial success, he was arrested numerous times.
He never served time in prison. He never murdered anybody.
Sometimes people think that because of lyrics from his songs,
such as I shot a man in Reno, just a
(01:59):
while him die. Johnny never shot anyone, but he had
a problem with amphetamines that he got addicted to when
he first started out his career on the road. But anyway,
I was always aware of Johnny Cash. So, as it
turns out, my grandmother's maiden name Estella Fowler Cash, and
so I'm distantly related to Johnny Cash. But there was
(02:21):
something always about Johnny that was different from any other musician.
His contemporaries would have been Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, many others,
but Johnny was Johnny. He was called the king of
country music, but in a way he was more like
the king of his own music, because his music transcended
(02:41):
all forms of music from country to rock and roll.
I mean, in some ways he was a pioneer of
what they called rockabilly. When he was in the studio,
there was Sam Phillips who also discovered Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis,
and Carl Perkins, and they developed this sound that evolved
into rock and roll. Elvis ran with it, but Johnny
(03:02):
couldn't have continued with that boom chicken boom sound. He
would play his guitar, he'd put a card in the
frets of the guitar because at one point he didn't
have a drummer to provide percussion, so he would get
that sound that you hear on so many Johnny Cash records. Right,
So Johnny should have never become who he was. But
(03:26):
it was all a part of a plan, and in
my mind, it was a part of God's plan. He
was raised in abject poverty. His father, Ray was a cold,
distant man. He was a sharecropper, never really succeeded in life,
and he favored one son over the other. Johnny had
an older brother named Jack, and clearly Ray favored Jack
(03:48):
over Johnny. And I'm getting a little ahead of myself
in the story. But when Johnny's brother, Jack was tragically
killed in an accident in the sawmill. Ray was quoted
to have said later, I think God took the wrong
son to Johnny. Really, all throughout his life, when Johnny
did find some success in music and then huge success,
(04:10):
even being invited to the White House, he would always
invite his father Ray. I think he was trying to
impress him well into his adult years. So that was
a very strange relationship between father and son. Well, Johnny's mother,
Carrie was a very nurturing, loving woman, and Johnny's father,
(04:32):
Ray was a very distant aloof uncommunicative father. So Johnny
and Jack were as thick as thieves, very very close brothers.
Johnny looked up to his brother, who, though still very young,
was almost like a proper father figure for him. He
(04:53):
gave Johnny guidance, encouragement, and Jack knew that he wanted
to be a preacher one day and Johnny he wanted
to be a singer. They often went fishing together and
done one particular day, Johnny was gonna go fishing, he
invited Jack to come and join him, but Jack said,
I gotta go work down with the sawmill to make
(05:13):
a few extra dollars for the family. That's because Jack
was such a responsible young man. And so Jack was
there working and tragically he was pulled into the saw. Somehow,
amazingly he survived it, but he stumbled out into the
field and he was literally holding his vital organs in.
(05:34):
So he was taken to the hospital. So meanwhile, Johnny's
out there fishing and his father shows up with a
minister and Jack's bloody shirt, and he says, get in
the truck, and he threw his fishing pole in the
back and they went down to the hospital and there
on that bed was Johnny's brother Jack, who was very
(05:56):
close to passing into eternity. So in my book book
Johnny Cash, a Redemption of an American Icon, I described
the scene as follows, and I'm reading from my book Jr.
That would be Johnny took Jack's hand and brought his
cheek close to his brothers. Goodbye, Jack is all he
(06:17):
could get out. Jack looked at his father and asked,
will you meet me in heaven? Ray Cash did the
most unexpected thing. He fell on his knees and prayed,
asking Jesus Christ to be his Lord and savior. Then
Jack looked at Carrie that would be Jack's mother. Why
is everybody crying over me? Mama, don't cry over me.
(06:39):
Don't you see the river? On one side of the river,
he said, was fire. On the other side was heaven.
I thought it was going toward the fire, but I'm
headed in the other direction now, Mama, can you hear
the angel singing? Jack squeezed her hand in tears of
happiness rolled down his cheeks. Mama, he said, listen to
(06:59):
the als. I'm going there, Mama. A moment later, Jack said,
what a beautiful city and the angel singing? Oh, Mama,
I wish you could hear the angel singing.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Then he was gone, and you've been listening to GREGLORI
share the story of Johnny Cash. The redemption of an
American icon continues here on Our American Stories. Lie h
Habib here and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe
(07:33):
to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify,
or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed
or want to hear again can be found there daily again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
(07:55):
helps us keep these great American stories coming, and we
continue with our American stories. We last left off hearing
how In nineteen forty four, Johnny Cash's older brother, Jack,
(08:19):
with whom he was very close, died at twelve years
of age in a tragic table saw accident, with Johnny
by his bedside. His final words were, will you meet
me in heaven. Let's return to Greg Glory.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And those words are inscribed on Jack Cash's tombstone. Will
you meet me in Heaven, our preacher to the very end.
This made a powerful impression on Johnny, who missed his
brother so deeply, and on through his life he continued
to think about his brother, and in fact, his brother
(08:55):
would appear to him in dreams. He said, and what's
in Justine is as his brother appeared to him over
the years. He was an older version of what his
brother might have looked like. And actually Johnny used a
sort of a point of reference throughout his life. What
would Jack have done? What would Jack have thought? About? This?
So the influence of his brother impacted Johnny Cash for
(09:20):
the rest of his life. Johnny grew up picking cotton
out in the fields. It sounds like a story from
the Old West, And in many ways it was because
Johnny was just like any other poor young boy working
with this family, no real sense of what his future
(09:40):
would be. But one thing that Carrie loved to do
on on the common fields was seeing old hymns that
they would hear at church.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It is what it was raised. It was a thing
that inspired me as a child growing up on a
cotton farm where work was drudgery and it was so
hard that when I was in a sing all the time,
and usually gospel songs, because they lifted me up above
the black dirt.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
After supper, they loved to sit around the radio and
listen to the Grand Ole Opry and the songs. And
Johnny the young boy began to dream that maybe one
day he could do that. And so they were out
in the fields one day and Johnny came in singing
a song and Carrie turned and said, who just sang that? Well,
it was Johnny, but his voice dropped and it was
(10:30):
that more familiar Johnny Cash Timber, And she said, God
has given to you a gift, my son. So I
think it was at that point that Johnny's dreams really
caught fire, where he thought that he could one day
maybe be on the Grand Ole Opry. He could be
on the radio, he could have a hit song. But
before that would happen, he would serve a stint in
(10:52):
the Air Force. So during his stint in the Air Force,
Johnny found himself very adept at working as a Morse
code operator. And I think Johnny was beginning to discover
his relationship with sound, with pitch, and later with music.
(11:14):
He was a Morse code operator and actually he was
the one who intercepted the news, a top secret message
from the Russians that Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin had died
from a stroke on March fifth, nineteen fifty three. And
this is an amazing thing because Johnny retained this skill
(11:35):
well into the later years of his life, because his son,
John Carter Cash said, the old man still had it.
When he came to retaining his skills, he proved it
by writing out the twenty third Psalm on Morse code
on a piece of paper. So this sense of understanding
of sounds was something that would help Johnny when he
(11:55):
began to write songs, and he was writing a lot
of letters to the love of his life life at
that time, Vivian and he also began to compose songs
about places he'd never been to before. But his imagination
was running wild, and really that skill set that would
later be fully realized was being developed as he was
(12:17):
stationed there over in Germany. So after Johnny got back
from Germany, he took various odd jobs, from selling appliances
to other things, none of which really interested him. He
wanted to be a musician. He knew of this success
of Elvis Presley, so he started calling Sun's studios wanting
to talk to Sam. He could never really get hold
(12:37):
of him, and one day he did communicate with him,
and so Sam invited him down and Sam actually said
to him, or you're the one who keeps calling, So
you know, there's something to be said for persistence. And
when Sam heard Johnny, he didn't really know what to
make of him because a lot of people were trying
to sound like Elvis, but Johnny didn't sound anything like Elvis.
(13:00):
Johnny was his own guy. And you know, you really
have to stop and be amazed by this collection of
talent at one moment in time, and the ability of
Sam Phillips to pick that talent. I mean, Jerry Lee
Lewis also known as the Killer Carl Perkins, who wrote
Blue Suade Shoes, and of course Elvis and Johnny. He
(13:20):
saw something that others did not see. And I think
what he saw was an authenticity. And this, to me
is the key to really making your mark. I think
it's really the very definition of what cool is. What
is cool? By the way, Johnny was called the godfather
of cool. Why is it then when his musical career
(13:41):
was resurrected later by producer Rick Rubin that a whole
new generation Generation X thought he was the coolest thing
to ever come along. Answer, Because Johnny was Johnny. Johnny
was authentic. Johnny was an American original. Being cool is
not dressing in the latest fads or the latest clothing
(14:03):
or using the latest phrases. Being cool, of my definition,
is being an authentic version of yourself, being real. And
I think people can see that, and I think people
could hear it in the songs of Johnny. But it's
not just the way he's saying, it's the way he spoke,
you know, the timbre of his voice. He was described
as the voice of America. I like Chris Christofferson's definition
(14:28):
of Johnny Cash. He said he was like Abraham Lincoln
with a wild side, you know. So that was Johnny.
No one sounded like Johnny, No one sang like Johnny.
Of course, he had his own dress code, which ultimately
became black, and so he was known as the man
in Black. So how Johnny came to write the song
(14:48):
Cry Cry is pretty interesting. So he was listening to
the radio and he heard dj Eddie Hill glibly in
tone we've got good songs, love songs, sweet songs, happy songs,
and so songs that'll make you cry, Cry Cry, And
hearing those words caused Johnny to pick up his pencil
and start writing down the lyrics to what would become
(15:09):
a hit song, Cry Cry Cry. The finished product clocked
in at two minutes in twenty nine seconds. So Johnny
now he had a hit on his hands, and he
had radio airplane happening. And now he's out on the
road and he's touring. So while Johnny was out on
one of his first tours that happened to be with
Elvis Presley, he met a man named Sonny James, and
(15:32):
Sonny was an outspoken Christian, and Johnny, of course was
a Christian as well. And now he's having this first success,
and he's wondering, how do you handle this? How do
you live a Christian life out here on the road.
And I love the advice that Sonny gave to Johnny.
He said, Johnny, the way I do this is by
being the way that I am. I'm not just an
(15:53):
entertainer who has become a Christian. I'm a Christian who
chose to be an entertainer, but I'm first a Christian.
Remember who you are and what you are in life
sings louder than any song. And then Sonny told Johnny,
and don't forget to pray. And you know, I think
Johnny did follow that advice. He did have lapsis, He
did things he should have never done. He trashed hotel
(16:16):
rooms like a proper rock star. He got drunk, he
got banned from certain stages for his crazy antics. But
Johnny always turned to the Lord. And later when he
was really having his greatest success with his television show,
I think Johnny really lived out this advice of Sonny
James speaking openly about his faith without embarrassment. In fact,
(16:39):
that became a source of great tension with him in
the network, and some believe that's the reason they ultimately
canceled his television show that was very successful. But Johnny
was always wanting to express his faith openly and publicly,
and I think deep down in his heart he still
wanted to be a gospel singer. Psyche was when he
(17:01):
originally went to see Sam Phillips over at Sun Studios.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Gospel music is such so ingrained into my bones. You know,
I can't do a concert without singing the gospel song.
I have a calling, It's called to perform and sing
and gospel gospel song is a ministry in a way.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And you've been listening to Greg Glory tell the story
of Johnny Cash's faith life. Johnny Cash The Redemption of
an American Icon is the book, by the way, It's
also a terrific documentary. I'm not an entertainer who is
a Christian. He was advised by someone he look up to.
I'm a Christian who is an entertainer. And what a
(17:41):
difference that will make in Cash's musical life and his
spiritual life as well. When we come back more with
Greg Glory and Johnny Cash The Redemption of an American Icon,
here on our American stories, and we returned to our
(18:10):
American stories and to Greg Glory telling the story of
Johnny Cash and his faith journey. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
So now Johnny's out on the road. He's touring endlessly
and the road is wearing him down. He's exhausted. So
one night he shared a bill with a guy known
as the Hillbilly Hart Throb Farren Young, who said, I've
got something that will fix you right up. From a pocket,
he pulled out a handful of cream colored pills and
(18:43):
all went out to Cash and he said, take this.
He won't be tired for long. You'll get to the
night with no problem whatsoever. Johnny grabbed the pill, he
swallowed it, and he gave quite a show. And that
was the beginning of Johnny's addiction to amphetamines. Now, in fairness,
a lot of people touring at this time, we're taking
(19:03):
these amphetamines. And there were commercials on television advocating how
these can help you give you more pep. And I'm
not justifying the addiction that Johnny developed, but he was
not the only one, and they actually were quite mainstream.
But this became a problem that he struggled with on
through his life, and these amphetamines certainly took a toll
(19:26):
on him in many ways physically, and I would also
add spiritually.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Well.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Johnny loved Vivian. He wrote all these love letters, so
many to her over the years, and then finally they
were married and they had children together. But Johnny's career
was exploding and Vivian would not see him for long
stretches of time. And then she went to one of
his shows and she saw the girls. She saw the
(19:55):
girls and their interest in Elvis and in Johnny, and
it began to cause her to be very concerned. But
it all culminated when Johnny actually played at the Hollywood
Bowl and she was there with their children, their daughters,
and Johnny got into a car with June Carter Cash
excuse me, June Carter at that time, now cash, and
(20:15):
he drove away instead of Johnny driving away with Vivian,
and she knew that trouble was afoot. And of course,
Johnny had fallen in love with June Carter and decided
he wanted to marry her and announced it to her,
and so this ultimately resulted in the complete dissolution of
(20:37):
his first marriage to Vivian, something he deeply regretted. It
was wrong. Johnny was making wrong decisions. Johnny was doing
sinful things and he knew it. But looking at a
bigger picture, one can look back on that and say,
though it is tragic that he was not the best
husband to Vivian and should have held that marriage together
(21:00):
because of his severe addiction to drugs, June Carter would
eventually save his very life, because I think if it
wasn't for June who was out there with him, that
Johnny probably would have died of a drug overdose. He
could have followed in the footsteps of his friend Elvis Presley.
But June was someone that helped him through this very
(21:23):
hard time. Here's a quote from Johnny Cash. You know,
I used to sing with you there when they crucified
my Lord while I was stoned on amphetamines. I used
to sing all those gospel songs, but I never really
felt them, And maybe I was a little ashamed of
myself at the time because of the hypocrisy of it all.
(21:44):
There I was singing the praises of the Lord and
singing about the beauty and the piece you can find
in him, and I was stoned. So on one occasion,
Johnny borrowed June Carter's Cadillac and erecked it, breaking his nose.
He lost his front teeth as well as he had
head on collision with utility poll. He claimed a wet
(22:07):
roadway was the cause of the accident, but he was
taken to Vanderbilt Hospital, where surprisingly he refused to shot
up morphine for the pain that had his noset. And
another surprise was that of the policeman heading up the
investigation of the crash was none other than of Officer
Rip Nix, June Carter's husband. So no charges were filed
(22:30):
and the incident didn't make the paper, but Officer Nix's
wife undoubtedly got an earful at home. So I would
say at this point in his life, Johnny's trying to
live in two worlds.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
His sister Joanne put it this way. Johnny was like
two people. She said, Johnny was one person in Cash
was the other. And she said cash cost all the trouble,
and he was always struggling with different things throughout his
life and reaping the consequences of it. And I think
Johnny had too much of the world to be happy
(23:05):
in his relationship with God, and too much of a
relationship with God to be happy in the world. He
was in sort of this no man's land, trying to
live in two places at the same time, and it
was causing a lot of internal and external conflict and
problems in his life.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Well, I guess Christoberson pretty well summed it up. And
the song he wrote about me, He's a walking contradiction,
partly truth and partly fiction.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So Johnny got to a point where, with a collapse
of his marriage to his first wife, Vivian, his addiction
to drugs, his life spiraling out of control, he effectively
decided to take his life. So he made his way
to a cave about thirty miles from Chattanooga called Nika
Jack Cave. He had actually been there before as a
(23:58):
young man looking for arrowheads and the things, but now
he just thought he would keep walking as far in
as he possibly could walk and never return again. And
that's exactly what he did.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
I remember sitting in the mouth of that cave crying
and then taking a little two cell flash light and
started walking into that cave. And I decided I'd walk
as far as I could go and then lay down.
And I guess I probably one a mile through one
of the caverns and my flashlight completely burned out and
it was black, black, dark, so dark. He could feel
(24:32):
it and said, my goodbye prayers. I must have dozed off,
because I felt a presence within me, come from outside
of me to make me sit up. This is awfully corny,
but the nold Indian trick is the wed your fingers
stick it up, see which way the wind blows. I
(24:53):
tried everything to see, and then I finally did that,
and I felt cool air on one side of my finger,
and I needed I kept following it. It's long, you know, crawling.
Sometimes I'd fallow twenty or thirty feet into a pit,
but A claw my way back up, and just as
I was about to give up, I saw a little
flick of light way off in the distance, and I
(25:16):
finally made it there, and I collapsed in the mouth
of the cave. And when I woke, June was there
washing my face, and she said, you're almost dead, arn't you?
Speaker 4 (25:26):
And I said, you have to. I want to live.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So after this, another event happened in Lafayette, Georgia, on
November two, nineteen sixty seven. He was visiting a friend
there and went up by himself at evening and got lost,
and in an effort he get directions back to his
friend's house, he knocked on the door of an elderly
woman who lived alone, and she called the police on him.
Deputy Bob jeff responded and Patty Cash down discovered prescription
(25:53):
drugs on him, which were legal, and he took Cash
to jail and he spent the night in his south.
The next morning, the sheriff woke up Johnny and brought
him into his office. So Johnny's sick, he's desponded. He's
expecting this lowman to come down on him hard, but
instead Jones opens up a George takes out the money
and the pills he had taken off Cash the night before,
(26:15):
held him out and said, I'm going to give you
your money and you're dope back because you know better
than most people that God gave you free will to
do whatever you want with your life. Cash could throw
the pills away or go ahead and take them and
kill himself, and Sheriff Jones added, whichever one you want
to do, mister Cash, will be all right with me.
Johnny sinking was going on here, and as they were talking,
(26:39):
Johnny realized that this man really cared about him. In fact,
he told him they were huge Johnny Cash fans for
over a decade and at every record he had made,
the sheriff said, we love you. We've always loved you.
We've watched you on television, We've listened to you on
the radio, We've got your robum of hymns. You were
probably the biggest fan you've ever had. This made a
(27:01):
deep impression on Johnny.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
And you're listening to Greg Glory tell the story of
Johnny Cash and his faith walk, and it is a
difficult walk for Cash. The book Johnny Cash, The Redemption
of an American Icon. It's also a documentary. Get both
wherever you get your books or documentaries. We return with
more after these messages here on our American Stories, and
(27:39):
we continue with our American stories and the story of
Johnny Cash and his faith life. Let's pick up where
we last left off with Greg Glory.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
So, Johnny Cash had this unique relationship with prisoners, and
when he wanted to make a record in a prison,
the record executives of his company, he thought that was
the worst idea imaginable, but it ended up being a
brilliant career choice, and Johnny debuted his song A Boy
(28:10):
Named Sue that was recorded live. Johnny had a connection
to prisoners. Though he never spent time in prison, he
did spend time in jail. He knew what it was
like to fail. He knew what it was like to
hit rock bottom. And I think the prisoners could sense
that about him. And when he was asked why he
did these shows in prisons, he said, we're here because
(28:33):
the inmate population asked us to come. We're here because
we love the applause, you give us some prison talk
about a captive audience. And most importantly, he said, I'm
here because I'm a Christian. So after Johnny's television show
was canceled, he decided to take all of that fame
and all of that influence and do something he'd been
(28:55):
wanting to do for a long time. That is make
a film about Jesus Christ. It was called The Gospel Road. Now,
I would not describe this as a cinematic masterpiece, but
what I would say is his heart was in the
right place. He wanted to do something that would move
people toward a relationship with God. So he took his
(29:17):
family and his entourage over to Israel, and the man
that ended up directing the film, who was not a
believer at all, in fact was an atheist, ended up
ironically playing the role of Jesus. We might describe him
as a very Swedish Jesus because he was very blonde,
a reddish hair, and he literally Johnny was literally just
(29:38):
hiring people that he met to be extras in the film,
and his wife June, played the role of Mary Magdalene.
And the film, in my opinion, was not a great film,
but Billy Graham, who was a close friend of Johnny,
took a great interest in it and actually gave it
a second life, and it was seen by a lot
of people, and it even resulted in people coming to faith.
(30:01):
So this is not kind of the beginning of the
musical decline of Johnny Cash. He was eventually fired by
his record label Columbia, and actually he had made them
a lot of money, and it was a really surprising
turn of events. But Johnny went on to pursue the
things that mattered to him. He continued to sing, but
(30:23):
he also went out and became an ordained minister. Very
few people know that about him, but he still had
to make money he still had to make a living,
so he ended up having to audition to be in
another record label. Here he's sitting before a bunch of
young record executives or deciding if they want to record
this musical legend, and they told him basically, don't call us,
(30:48):
we'll call you. So Johnny's venues have become quite small
at this And one night he was playing at a
dinner club in Anaheim, California, and a thirty year old,
long haired, bearded man named Rick Rubin came to see him. Now,
(31:12):
Rick had been very successful with this def Jam record
label and had produced other rock acts and rap acts,
and he wanted to work with an older artist, and
so he came to hear Johnny. And after Johnny had performed,
someone came up to him and said, Hey, there's this
guy named Rick Rubin that wants to meet you. Well,
(31:33):
Johnny had never heard of Rick Rubin before, and in
walks rick and Rick introduces himself and says that he
wants to record Johnny. And Johnny asks, what are you
going to do for me that no one else has
been able to do for me before?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
I didn't believe it at first, I said, how how
are you going to be in a different than everybody else,
And he said, because we're going to get into the
music and find out what's the best thing Johnny Cash
can do and the most natural thing what we're going for.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
So now Rick wants to get Johnny back to his
roots again. And unbeknownst to Johnny, as Rick was recording
these songs, he already was mapping out in his mind
what would become the first of many records that Johnny
would do toward the end of his career, called American Recordings,
and there is some production on them. It's sparse, but
(32:23):
very effective, and Rick reintroduced Johnny to a whole new
audience of people who had never heard of him before,
specifically a youth audience. Country music really didn't have a
lot to do with Johnny at this point, but Johnny
was rediscovered by Generation X and actually ended up winning
(32:44):
an MTV Award for his amazing video based on the
Trent Reznor song called Hurt and still to this day
is something that really moves you when you watch it.
So Johnny was having a big career come back at
this point.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
A lot of times, I feel like I got the
best of both worlds. When I look out and there's
half of audience full of young people and half of
fans my age. You know, yeah, I feel like I
got to sec a third chance here to maybe do
it right.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
On the final album they did together, Johnny's health was failing.
His wife June had already died, and he was in
deep mourning, and he just felt the best thing he
could do was go back into the studio and express
his sorrow.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
If I quit, I would just live in front of
the television and get fat and die.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
You know.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
I just told him, pray, I can die with my
boots on him.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
So Johnny and Rick Rubin became very good friends. And
Rick was not a believer in Jesus Christ. In fact,
I believe he was a Buddhist. But Rubin said Cash
was the most spiritually committed person he'd ever met.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
He's probably the most committed spirit I've ever met. He
really lived his life according to his connection with God, really,
and he had such an honest and pure way about
it that I remember we had a dinner party at
my house one night with Johnny and June and some
(34:19):
musicians and film directors, and before dinner, Johnny had everyone
hold hands and he said a prayer and he read
from the Bible. And I know some of the people
at the table had never experienced that before, and some
of the people at the table were even atheists. But
his belief in what he believed was so strong that
what you believe didn't matter so much because you were
(34:41):
in the presence of someone who really believed, and that
felt good, and that made you believe really in him
more than anything else. It was really beautiful.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
So I wrote this book, Johnny Casher, Redemption of an
American Icon, and I was approached by the Kingdom Story
Company that wanted to a documentary film on the life
of Johnny Cash based on my book. So we agreed
to this, and now the film is going to be
seen in theaters around the country on December five, six,
(35:13):
and seven as a special Fathom event. It's a beautifully
done film and we had full buy in in cooperation
from the Cash estate. But ultimately it shows that no
matter how badly you've messed up in life, that God
can make a message out of a mess. He can
bring good despite the bad, and the Bible says that
(35:35):
God can bring beauty out of ashes. He did an
interview toward the end of his life with MTV's Kurt Loader,
and he talked about his life, his career, his faith,
and his imminent death. And Johnny said to Kurt, I
expect my life to end pretty soon.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
Oh, I expect my life to end pretty soon. You know.
I'm seventy one years old, and I have great faith.
Though I have unshakable faith, I've never been angry with God.
I've never turned my back on God, so to speak.
I never thought that God wasn't there. See, he is
my counselor he's my wisdom. All the good things of
(36:15):
my life come from him.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Where do you think we go afterwards?
Speaker 5 (36:19):
Where do we go.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
When we die?
Speaker 5 (36:22):
You mean? Oh, well, we all hope to go to heaven.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And a terrific job on the production and the storytelling
and editing by our own Greg Hangler, and a special
thanks to Greg Glory his book Johnny Cash, The Redemption
of an American Icon and the film the documentary version,
and what a story we heard. And you know, he
did have a unique relationship with prisoners, as we learned
(36:52):
earlier in the storytelling. And I think Bono said it
best about Cash. He said, Johnny doesn't sing to the Damned.
He sings with the Damned, and Bono is himself a
committed Christian who writes a lot about the intersection of
faith and life and doubt and in the end, music
(37:14):
and fame. The story of Hash being fired from his
label is heartbreaking, having to audition in front of young
people who see no future or talent. And then in
comes Rick Rubin into a club in California, a small venue,
and he sees something in Cash, and sees something in
himself that he can bring to the table, and that
(37:37):
is getting rid of all that production, getting rid of
all the fancy boards, and having Cash connect to his
guitar and to the song and capture that authenticity as
no one can do like Rick Rubin, one of the
great producers who doesn't produce. In the end, though country
music wanted nothing to do with Cash at this stage
(37:58):
in his career, he writes is again to fame with
an entirely new generation of audience. The story of Johnny
Cash his faith walk, as told by Greg Glory here
on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, a unique take on the life story of
Johnny Cash, who was himself an American original. This story
is an insider's look at the man whose music sprung
(00:30):
from the way he lived. Our storyteller is none than
greg Glory. Laurie is the pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship
in Orange County, California and Maui. Gregor is here to
tell the story from his recent book, Johnny Cash, The
Redemption of an American Icon. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Going back to the earliest days of my childhood, I
had an awareness of Johnny Cash. One of the reasons
for that is our family is from Arkansas, not far
from where Johnny's family was raised, and my grandparents, who
I lived with for a number of years because of
my mother's crazy lifestyle. She'd been married and divorced seven
(01:16):
times and was having a lot of boyfriends in between
and was running around, and so she left me with
my grandparents, Charles and Stella McDaniel, who we called Daddy
Charles and Mama Stella. So I remember as a little
boy watching Johnny Cash's television show, and I remember hearing
my grandfather say to my grandmother when he'd be reading
(01:37):
the paper, well, Stella, your cousin's in trouble again. Because
Johnny had a lot of problems early in his life
after he had his initial success, he was arrested numerous times.
He never served time in prison. He never murdered anybody.
Sometimes people think that because of lyrics from his songs,
such as I shot a man in Reno, just a
(01:59):
while him die. Johnny never shot anyone, but he had
a problem with amphetamines that he got addicted to when
he first started out his career on the road. But anyway,
I was always aware of Johnny Cash. So, as it
turns out, my grandmother's maiden name Estella Fowler Cash, and
so I'm distantly related to Johnny Cash. But there was
(02:21):
something always about Johnny that was different from any other musician.
His contemporaries would have been Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, many others,
but Johnny was Johnny. He was called the king of
country music, but in a way he was more like
the king of his own music, because his music transcended
(02:41):
all forms of music from country to rock and roll.
I mean, in some ways he was a pioneer of
what they called rockabilly. When he was in the studio,
there was Sam Phillips who also discovered Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis,
and Carl Perkins, and they developed this sound that evolved
into rock and roll. Elvis ran with it, but Johnny
(03:02):
couldn't have continued with that boom chicken boom sound. He
would play his guitar, he'd put a card in the
frets of the guitar because at one point he didn't
have a drummer to provide percussion, so he would get
that sound that you hear on so many Johnny Cash records. Right,
So Johnny should have never become who he was. But
(03:26):
it was all a part of a plan, and in
my mind, it was a part of God's plan. He
was raised in abject poverty. His father, Ray was a cold,
distant man. He was a sharecropper, never really succeeded in life,
and he favored one son over the other. Johnny had
an older brother named Jack, and clearly Ray favored Jack
(03:48):
over Johnny. And I'm getting a little ahead of myself
in the story. But when Johnny's brother, Jack was tragically
killed in an accident in the sawmill. Ray was quoted
to have said later, I think God took the wrong
son to Johnny. Really, all throughout his life, when Johnny
did find some success in music and then huge success,
(04:10):
even being invited to the White House, he would always
invite his father Ray. I think he was trying to
impress him well into his adult years. So that was
a very strange relationship between father and son. Well, Johnny's mother,
Carrie was a very nurturing, loving woman, and Johnny's father,
(04:32):
Ray was a very distant aloof uncommunicative father. So Johnny
and Jack were as thick as thieves, very very close brothers.
Johnny looked up to his brother, who, though still very young,
was almost like a proper father figure for him. He
(04:53):
gave Johnny guidance, encouragement, and Jack knew that he wanted
to be a preacher one day and Johnny he wanted
to be a singer. They often went fishing together and
done one particular day, Johnny was gonna go fishing, he
invited Jack to come and join him, but Jack said,
I gotta go work down with the sawmill to make
(05:13):
a few extra dollars for the family. That's because Jack
was such a responsible young man. And so Jack was
there working and tragically he was pulled into the saw. Somehow,
amazingly he survived it, but he stumbled out into the
field and he was literally holding his vital organs in.
(05:34):
So he was taken to the hospital. So meanwhile, Johnny's
out there fishing and his father shows up with a
minister and Jack's bloody shirt, and he says, get in
the truck, and he threw his fishing pole in the
back and they went down to the hospital and there
on that bed was Johnny's brother Jack, who was very
(05:56):
close to passing into eternity. So in my book book
Johnny Cash, a Redemption of an American Icon, I described
the scene as follows, and I'm reading from my book Jr.
That would be Johnny took Jack's hand and brought his
cheek close to his brothers. Goodbye, Jack is all he
(06:17):
could get out. Jack looked at his father and asked,
will you meet me in heaven? Ray Cash did the
most unexpected thing. He fell on his knees and prayed,
asking Jesus Christ to be his Lord and savior. Then
Jack looked at Carrie that would be Jack's mother. Why
is everybody crying over me? Mama, don't cry over me.
(06:39):
Don't you see the river? On one side of the river,
he said, was fire. On the other side was heaven.
I thought it was going toward the fire, but I'm
headed in the other direction now, Mama, can you hear
the angel singing? Jack squeezed her hand in tears of
happiness rolled down his cheeks. Mama, he said, listen to
(06:59):
the als. I'm going there, Mama. A moment later, Jack said,
what a beautiful city and the angel singing? Oh, Mama,
I wish you could hear the angel singing.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Then he was gone, and you've been listening to GREGLORI
share the story of Johnny Cash. The redemption of an
American icon continues here on Our American Stories. Lie h
Habib here and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe
(07:33):
to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify,
or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed
or want to hear again can be found there daily again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
(07:55):
helps us keep these great American stories coming, and we
continue with our American stories. We last left off hearing
how In nineteen forty four, Johnny Cash's older brother, Jack,
(08:19):
with whom he was very close, died at twelve years
of age in a tragic table saw accident, with Johnny
by his bedside. His final words were, will you meet
me in heaven. Let's return to Greg Glory.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And those words are inscribed on Jack Cash's tombstone. Will
you meet me in Heaven, our preacher to the very end.
This made a powerful impression on Johnny, who missed his
brother so deeply, and on through his life he continued
to think about his brother, and in fact, his brother
(08:55):
would appear to him in dreams. He said, and what's
in Justine is as his brother appeared to him over
the years. He was an older version of what his
brother might have looked like. And actually Johnny used a
sort of a point of reference throughout his life. What
would Jack have done? What would Jack have thought? About? This?
So the influence of his brother impacted Johnny Cash for
(09:20):
the rest of his life. Johnny grew up picking cotton
out in the fields. It sounds like a story from
the Old West, And in many ways it was because
Johnny was just like any other poor young boy working
with this family, no real sense of what his future
(09:40):
would be. But one thing that Carrie loved to do
on on the common fields was seeing old hymns that
they would hear at church.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It is what it was raised. It was a thing
that inspired me as a child growing up on a
cotton farm where work was drudgery and it was so
hard that when I was in a sing all the time,
and usually gospel songs, because they lifted me up above
the black dirt.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
After supper, they loved to sit around the radio and
listen to the Grand Ole Opry and the songs. And
Johnny the young boy began to dream that maybe one
day he could do that. And so they were out
in the fields one day and Johnny came in singing
a song and Carrie turned and said, who just sang that? Well,
it was Johnny, but his voice dropped and it was
(10:30):
that more familiar Johnny Cash Timber, And she said, God
has given to you a gift, my son. So I
think it was at that point that Johnny's dreams really
caught fire, where he thought that he could one day
maybe be on the Grand Ole Opry. He could be
on the radio, he could have a hit song. But
before that would happen, he would serve a stint in
(10:52):
the Air Force. So during his stint in the Air Force,
Johnny found himself very adept at working as a Morse
code operator. And I think Johnny was beginning to discover
his relationship with sound, with pitch, and later with music.
(11:14):
He was a Morse code operator and actually he was
the one who intercepted the news, a top secret message
from the Russians that Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin had died
from a stroke on March fifth, nineteen fifty three. And
this is an amazing thing because Johnny retained this skill
(11:35):
well into the later years of his life, because his son,
John Carter Cash said, the old man still had it.
When he came to retaining his skills, he proved it
by writing out the twenty third Psalm on Morse code
on a piece of paper. So this sense of understanding
of sounds was something that would help Johnny when he
(11:55):
began to write songs, and he was writing a lot
of letters to the love of his life life at
that time, Vivian and he also began to compose songs
about places he'd never been to before. But his imagination
was running wild, and really that skill set that would
later be fully realized was being developed as he was
(12:17):
stationed there over in Germany. So after Johnny got back
from Germany, he took various odd jobs, from selling appliances
to other things, none of which really interested him. He
wanted to be a musician. He knew of this success
of Elvis Presley, so he started calling Sun's studios wanting
to talk to Sam. He could never really get hold
(12:37):
of him, and one day he did communicate with him,
and so Sam invited him down and Sam actually said
to him, or you're the one who keeps calling, So
you know, there's something to be said for persistence. And
when Sam heard Johnny, he didn't really know what to
make of him because a lot of people were trying
to sound like Elvis, but Johnny didn't sound anything like Elvis.
(13:00):
Johnny was his own guy. And you know, you really
have to stop and be amazed by this collection of
talent at one moment in time, and the ability of
Sam Phillips to pick that talent. I mean, Jerry Lee
Lewis also known as the Killer Carl Perkins, who wrote
Blue Suade Shoes, and of course Elvis and Johnny. He
(13:20):
saw something that others did not see. And I think
what he saw was an authenticity. And this, to me
is the key to really making your mark. I think
it's really the very definition of what cool is. What
is cool? By the way, Johnny was called the godfather
of cool. Why is it then when his musical career
(13:41):
was resurrected later by producer Rick Rubin that a whole
new generation Generation X thought he was the coolest thing
to ever come along. Answer, Because Johnny was Johnny. Johnny
was authentic. Johnny was an American original. Being cool is
not dressing in the latest fads or the latest clothing
(14:03):
or using the latest phrases. Being cool, of my definition,
is being an authentic version of yourself, being real. And
I think people can see that, and I think people
could hear it in the songs of Johnny. But it's
not just the way he's saying, it's the way he spoke,
you know, the timbre of his voice. He was described
as the voice of America. I like Chris Christofferson's definition
(14:28):
of Johnny Cash. He said he was like Abraham Lincoln
with a wild side, you know. So that was Johnny.
No one sounded like Johnny, No one sang like Johnny.
Of course, he had his own dress code, which ultimately
became black, and so he was known as the man
in Black. So how Johnny came to write the song
(14:48):
Cry Cry is pretty interesting. So he was listening to
the radio and he heard dj Eddie Hill glibly in
tone we've got good songs, love songs, sweet songs, happy songs,
and so songs that'll make you cry, Cry Cry, And
hearing those words caused Johnny to pick up his pencil
and start writing down the lyrics to what would become
(15:09):
a hit song, Cry Cry Cry. The finished product clocked
in at two minutes in twenty nine seconds. So Johnny
now he had a hit on his hands, and he
had radio airplane happening. And now he's out on the
road and he's touring. So while Johnny was out on
one of his first tours that happened to be with
Elvis Presley, he met a man named Sonny James, and
(15:32):
Sonny was an outspoken Christian, and Johnny, of course was
a Christian as well. And now he's having this first success,
and he's wondering, how do you handle this? How do
you live a Christian life out here on the road.
And I love the advice that Sonny gave to Johnny.
He said, Johnny, the way I do this is by
being the way that I am. I'm not just an
(15:53):
entertainer who has become a Christian. I'm a Christian who
chose to be an entertainer, but I'm first a Christian.
Remember who you are and what you are in life
sings louder than any song. And then Sonny told Johnny,
and don't forget to pray. And you know, I think
Johnny did follow that advice. He did have lapsis, He
did things he should have never done. He trashed hotel
(16:16):
rooms like a proper rock star. He got drunk, he
got banned from certain stages for his crazy antics. But
Johnny always turned to the Lord. And later when he
was really having his greatest success with his television show,
I think Johnny really lived out this advice of Sonny
James speaking openly about his faith without embarrassment. In fact,
(16:39):
that became a source of great tension with him in
the network, and some believe that's the reason they ultimately
canceled his television show that was very successful. But Johnny
was always wanting to express his faith openly and publicly,
and I think deep down in his heart he still
wanted to be a gospel singer. Psyche was when he
(17:01):
originally went to see Sam Phillips over at Sun Studios.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Gospel music is such so ingrained into my bones. You know,
I can't do a concert without singing the gospel song.
I have a calling, It's called to perform and sing
and gospel gospel song is a ministry in a way.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And you've been listening to Greg Glory tell the story
of Johnny Cash's faith life. Johnny Cash The Redemption of
an American Icon is the book, by the way, It's
also a terrific documentary. I'm not an entertainer who is
a Christian. He was advised by someone he look up to.
I'm a Christian who is an entertainer. And what a
(17:41):
difference that will make in Cash's musical life and his
spiritual life as well. When we come back more with
Greg Glory and Johnny Cash The Redemption of an American Icon,
here on our American stories, and we returned to our
(18:10):
American stories and to Greg Glory telling the story of
Johnny Cash and his faith journey. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
So now Johnny's out on the road. He's touring endlessly
and the road is wearing him down. He's exhausted. So
one night he shared a bill with a guy known
as the Hillbilly Hart Throb Farren Young, who said, I've
got something that will fix you right up. From a pocket,
he pulled out a handful of cream colored pills and
(18:43):
all went out to Cash and he said, take this.
He won't be tired for long. You'll get to the
night with no problem whatsoever. Johnny grabbed the pill, he
swallowed it, and he gave quite a show. And that
was the beginning of Johnny's addiction to amphetamines. Now, in fairness,
a lot of people touring at this time, we're taking
(19:03):
these amphetamines. And there were commercials on television advocating how
these can help you give you more pep. And I'm
not justifying the addiction that Johnny developed, but he was
not the only one, and they actually were quite mainstream.
But this became a problem that he struggled with on
through his life, and these amphetamines certainly took a toll
(19:26):
on him in many ways physically, and I would also
add spiritually.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Well.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Johnny loved Vivian. He wrote all these love letters, so
many to her over the years, and then finally they
were married and they had children together. But Johnny's career
was exploding and Vivian would not see him for long
stretches of time. And then she went to one of
his shows and she saw the girls. She saw the
(19:55):
girls and their interest in Elvis and in Johnny, and
it began to cause her to be very concerned. But
it all culminated when Johnny actually played at the Hollywood
Bowl and she was there with their children, their daughters,
and Johnny got into a car with June Carter Cash
excuse me, June Carter at that time, now cash, and
(20:15):
he drove away instead of Johnny driving away with Vivian,
and she knew that trouble was afoot. And of course,
Johnny had fallen in love with June Carter and decided
he wanted to marry her and announced it to her,
and so this ultimately resulted in the complete dissolution of
(20:37):
his first marriage to Vivian, something he deeply regretted. It
was wrong. Johnny was making wrong decisions. Johnny was doing
sinful things and he knew it. But looking at a
bigger picture, one can look back on that and say,
though it is tragic that he was not the best
husband to Vivian and should have held that marriage together
(21:00):
because of his severe addiction to drugs, June Carter would
eventually save his very life, because I think if it
wasn't for June who was out there with him, that
Johnny probably would have died of a drug overdose. He
could have followed in the footsteps of his friend Elvis Presley.
But June was someone that helped him through this very
(21:23):
hard time. Here's a quote from Johnny Cash. You know,
I used to sing with you there when they crucified
my Lord while I was stoned on amphetamines. I used
to sing all those gospel songs, but I never really
felt them, And maybe I was a little ashamed of
myself at the time because of the hypocrisy of it all.
(21:44):
There I was singing the praises of the Lord and
singing about the beauty and the piece you can find
in him, and I was stoned. So on one occasion,
Johnny borrowed June Carter's Cadillac and erecked it, breaking his nose.
He lost his front teeth as well as he had
head on collision with utility poll. He claimed a wet
(22:07):
roadway was the cause of the accident, but he was
taken to Vanderbilt Hospital, where surprisingly he refused to shot
up morphine for the pain that had his noset. And
another surprise was that of the policeman heading up the
investigation of the crash was none other than of Officer
Rip Nix, June Carter's husband. So no charges were filed
(22:30):
and the incident didn't make the paper, but Officer Nix's
wife undoubtedly got an earful at home. So I would
say at this point in his life, Johnny's trying to
live in two worlds.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
His sister Joanne put it this way. Johnny was like
two people. She said, Johnny was one person in Cash
was the other. And she said cash cost all the trouble,
and he was always struggling with different things throughout his
life and reaping the consequences of it. And I think
Johnny had too much of the world to be happy
(23:05):
in his relationship with God, and too much of a
relationship with God to be happy in the world. He
was in sort of this no man's land, trying to
live in two places at the same time, and it
was causing a lot of internal and external conflict and
problems in his life.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Well, I guess Christoberson pretty well summed it up. And
the song he wrote about me, He's a walking contradiction,
partly truth and partly fiction.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So Johnny got to a point where, with a collapse
of his marriage to his first wife, Vivian, his addiction
to drugs, his life spiraling out of control, he effectively
decided to take his life. So he made his way
to a cave about thirty miles from Chattanooga called Nika
Jack Cave. He had actually been there before as a
(23:58):
young man looking for arrowheads and the things, but now
he just thought he would keep walking as far in
as he possibly could walk and never return again. And
that's exactly what he did.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
I remember sitting in the mouth of that cave crying
and then taking a little two cell flash light and
started walking into that cave. And I decided I'd walk
as far as I could go and then lay down.
And I guess I probably one a mile through one
of the caverns and my flashlight completely burned out and
it was black, black, dark, so dark. He could feel
(24:32):
it and said, my goodbye prayers. I must have dozed off,
because I felt a presence within me, come from outside
of me to make me sit up. This is awfully corny,
but the nold Indian trick is the wed your fingers
stick it up, see which way the wind blows. I
(24:53):
tried everything to see, and then I finally did that,
and I felt cool air on one side of my finger,
and I needed I kept following it. It's long, you know, crawling.
Sometimes I'd fallow twenty or thirty feet into a pit,
but A claw my way back up, and just as
I was about to give up, I saw a little
flick of light way off in the distance, and I
(25:16):
finally made it there, and I collapsed in the mouth
of the cave. And when I woke, June was there
washing my face, and she said, you're almost dead, arn't you?
Speaker 4 (25:26):
And I said, you have to. I want to live.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So after this, another event happened in Lafayette, Georgia, on
November two, nineteen sixty seven. He was visiting a friend
there and went up by himself at evening and got lost,
and in an effort he get directions back to his
friend's house, he knocked on the door of an elderly
woman who lived alone, and she called the police on him.
Deputy Bob jeff responded and Patty Cash down discovered prescription
(25:53):
drugs on him, which were legal, and he took Cash
to jail and he spent the night in his south.
The next morning, the sheriff woke up Johnny and brought
him into his office. So Johnny's sick, he's desponded. He's
expecting this lowman to come down on him hard, but
instead Jones opens up a George takes out the money
and the pills he had taken off Cash the night before,
(26:15):
held him out and said, I'm going to give you
your money and you're dope back because you know better
than most people that God gave you free will to
do whatever you want with your life. Cash could throw
the pills away or go ahead and take them and
kill himself, and Sheriff Jones added, whichever one you want
to do, mister Cash, will be all right with me.
Johnny sinking was going on here, and as they were talking,
(26:39):
Johnny realized that this man really cared about him. In fact,
he told him they were huge Johnny Cash fans for
over a decade and at every record he had made,
the sheriff said, we love you. We've always loved you.
We've watched you on television, We've listened to you on
the radio, We've got your robum of hymns. You were
probably the biggest fan you've ever had. This made a
(27:01):
deep impression on Johnny.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
And you're listening to Greg Glory tell the story of
Johnny Cash and his faith walk, and it is a
difficult walk for Cash. The book Johnny Cash, The Redemption
of an American Icon. It's also a documentary. Get both
wherever you get your books or documentaries. We return with
more after these messages here on our American Stories, and
(27:39):
we continue with our American stories and the story of
Johnny Cash and his faith life. Let's pick up where
we last left off with Greg Glory.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
So, Johnny Cash had this unique relationship with prisoners, and
when he wanted to make a record in a prison,
the record executives of his company, he thought that was
the worst idea imaginable, but it ended up being a
brilliant career choice, and Johnny debuted his song A Boy
(28:10):
Named Sue that was recorded live. Johnny had a connection
to prisoners. Though he never spent time in prison, he
did spend time in jail. He knew what it was
like to fail. He knew what it was like to
hit rock bottom. And I think the prisoners could sense
that about him. And when he was asked why he
did these shows in prisons, he said, we're here because
(28:33):
the inmate population asked us to come. We're here because
we love the applause, you give us some prison talk
about a captive audience. And most importantly, he said, I'm
here because I'm a Christian. So after Johnny's television show
was canceled, he decided to take all of that fame
and all of that influence and do something he'd been
(28:55):
wanting to do for a long time. That is make
a film about Jesus Christ. It was called The Gospel Road. Now,
I would not describe this as a cinematic masterpiece, but
what I would say is his heart was in the
right place. He wanted to do something that would move
people toward a relationship with God. So he took his
(29:17):
family and his entourage over to Israel, and the man
that ended up directing the film, who was not a
believer at all, in fact was an atheist, ended up
ironically playing the role of Jesus. We might describe him
as a very Swedish Jesus because he was very blonde,
a reddish hair, and he literally Johnny was literally just
(29:38):
hiring people that he met to be extras in the film,
and his wife June, played the role of Mary Magdalene.
And the film, in my opinion, was not a great film,
but Billy Graham, who was a close friend of Johnny,
took a great interest in it and actually gave it
a second life, and it was seen by a lot
of people, and it even resulted in people coming to faith.
(30:01):
So this is not kind of the beginning of the
musical decline of Johnny Cash. He was eventually fired by
his record label Columbia, and actually he had made them
a lot of money, and it was a really surprising
turn of events. But Johnny went on to pursue the
things that mattered to him. He continued to sing, but
(30:23):
he also went out and became an ordained minister. Very
few people know that about him, but he still had
to make money he still had to make a living,
so he ended up having to audition to be in
another record label. Here he's sitting before a bunch of
young record executives or deciding if they want to record
this musical legend, and they told him basically, don't call us,
(30:48):
we'll call you. So Johnny's venues have become quite small
at this And one night he was playing at a
dinner club in Anaheim, California, and a thirty year old,
long haired, bearded man named Rick Rubin came to see him. Now,
(31:12):
Rick had been very successful with this def Jam record
label and had produced other rock acts and rap acts,
and he wanted to work with an older artist, and
so he came to hear Johnny. And after Johnny had performed,
someone came up to him and said, Hey, there's this
guy named Rick Rubin that wants to meet you. Well,
(31:33):
Johnny had never heard of Rick Rubin before, and in
walks rick and Rick introduces himself and says that he
wants to record Johnny. And Johnny asks, what are you
going to do for me that no one else has
been able to do for me before?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
I didn't believe it at first, I said, how how
are you going to be in a different than everybody else,
And he said, because we're going to get into the
music and find out what's the best thing Johnny Cash
can do and the most natural thing what we're going for.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
So now Rick wants to get Johnny back to his
roots again. And unbeknownst to Johnny, as Rick was recording
these songs, he already was mapping out in his mind
what would become the first of many records that Johnny
would do toward the end of his career, called American Recordings,
and there is some production on them. It's sparse, but
(32:23):
very effective, and Rick reintroduced Johnny to a whole new
audience of people who had never heard of him before,
specifically a youth audience. Country music really didn't have a
lot to do with Johnny at this point, but Johnny
was rediscovered by Generation X and actually ended up winning
(32:44):
an MTV Award for his amazing video based on the
Trent Reznor song called Hurt and still to this day
is something that really moves you when you watch it.
So Johnny was having a big career come back at
this point.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
A lot of times, I feel like I got the
best of both worlds. When I look out and there's
half of audience full of young people and half of
fans my age. You know, yeah, I feel like I
got to sec a third chance here to maybe do
it right.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
On the final album they did together, Johnny's health was failing.
His wife June had already died, and he was in
deep mourning, and he just felt the best thing he
could do was go back into the studio and express
his sorrow.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
If I quit, I would just live in front of
the television and get fat and die.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
You know.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
I just told him, pray, I can die with my
boots on him.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
So Johnny and Rick Rubin became very good friends. And
Rick was not a believer in Jesus Christ. In fact,
I believe he was a Buddhist. But Rubin said Cash
was the most spiritually committed person he'd ever met.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
He's probably the most committed spirit I've ever met. He
really lived his life according to his connection with God, really,
and he had such an honest and pure way about
it that I remember we had a dinner party at
my house one night with Johnny and June and some
(34:19):
musicians and film directors, and before dinner, Johnny had everyone
hold hands and he said a prayer and he read
from the Bible. And I know some of the people
at the table had never experienced that before, and some
of the people at the table were even atheists. But
his belief in what he believed was so strong that
what you believe didn't matter so much because you were
(34:41):
in the presence of someone who really believed, and that
felt good, and that made you believe really in him
more than anything else. It was really beautiful.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
So I wrote this book, Johnny Casher, Redemption of an
American Icon, and I was approached by the Kingdom Story
Company that wanted to a documentary film on the life
of Johnny Cash based on my book. So we agreed
to this, and now the film is going to be
seen in theaters around the country on December five, six,
(35:13):
and seven as a special Fathom event. It's a beautifully
done film and we had full buy in in cooperation
from the Cash estate. But ultimately it shows that no
matter how badly you've messed up in life, that God
can make a message out of a mess. He can
bring good despite the bad, and the Bible says that
(35:35):
God can bring beauty out of ashes. He did an
interview toward the end of his life with MTV's Kurt Loader,
and he talked about his life, his career, his faith,
and his imminent death. And Johnny said to Kurt, I
expect my life to end pretty soon.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
Oh, I expect my life to end pretty soon. You know.
I'm seventy one years old, and I have great faith.
Though I have unshakable faith, I've never been angry with God.
I've never turned my back on God, so to speak.
I never thought that God wasn't there. See, he is
my counselor he's my wisdom. All the good things of
(36:15):
my life come from him.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Where do you think we go afterwards?
Speaker 5 (36:19):
Where do we go.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
When we die?
Speaker 5 (36:22):
You mean? Oh, well, we all hope to go to heaven.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And a terrific job on the production and the storytelling
and editing by our own Greg Hangler, and a special
thanks to Greg Glory his book Johnny Cash, The Redemption
of an American Icon and the film the documentary version,
and what a story we heard. And you know, he
did have a unique relationship with prisoners, as we learned
(36:52):
earlier in the storytelling. And I think Bono said it
best about Cash. He said, Johnny doesn't sing to the Damned.
He sings with the Damned, and Bono is himself a
committed Christian who writes a lot about the intersection of
faith and life and doubt and in the end, music
(37:14):
and fame. The story of Hash being fired from his
label is heartbreaking, having to audition in front of young
people who see no future or talent. And then in
comes Rick Rubin into a club in California, a small venue,
and he sees something in Cash, and sees something in
himself that he can bring to the table, and that
(37:37):
is getting rid of all that production, getting rid of
all the fancy boards, and having Cash connect to his
guitar and to the song and capture that authenticity as
no one can do like Rick Rubin, one of the
great producers who doesn't produce. In the end, though country
music wanted nothing to do with Cash at this stage
(37:58):
in his career, he writes is again to fame with
an entirely new generation of audience. The story of Johnny
Cash his faith walk, as told by Greg Glory here
on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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