December 6, 2022 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Johnny Cash is an American original. And this story is an insider’s look at the man whose music sprang from the way he lived. Greg Laurie is here to tell the story from his recent book/documentary, Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Leigh 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. Going
(00:54):
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 in divorce seven times
(01:16):
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 the paper, well, Stella,
(01:39):
your cousins and 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 song, such as I
shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
(02:01):
Johnny never shot anyone, but he had a problem with
amphetamines that he got addicted to when he first started
out is a career on the road. But anyway, I
was always aware of Johnny Cash. So, as it turns out,
my grandmother's maiden name Estella Foller Cash, and so I'm
distantly related to Johnny Cash. But there was something always
(02:21):
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
all forms of music, from country to rock, and roll.
(02:45):
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
couldn't have continued with that boom chick a boom sound.
(03:06):
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 it was all a part of a plan.
(03:27):
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 share cropper, 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 over Johnny. And I'm getting a
(03:50):
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, even being invited to the White House, he
(04:13):
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, Ray was a very distant aloof uncommunicative father.
(04:39):
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 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
(05:02):
went fishing together, and on one particular day, Johnny was
going to go fishing, he invited Jack to come and
join him, but Jack said, I gotta go work down
with the sawmill to make 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
(05:23):
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 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,
(05:44):
and he says, getting the truck, and he threw his
fishing poll on the back and they went down to
the hospital and there on that bed was Johnny's brother Jack,
who was very close to passing into eternity. So in
my book Johnny Cash, a Redemption of an American Icon,
I described the scene as follows, and I'm reading him
(06:06):
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 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
(06:27):
his knees and prayed, asking Jesus Christ to be his
Lord in savior. Then Jack looked at Carrie. That would
be Jack's mother, Why is everybody crying over me? Mama,
don't cry over me. 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
(06:47):
toward the fire, but I'm headed in the other direction now, Mama,
can you hear the angels singing? Jack squeezed her hand
and tears of happiness rolled down his cheeks. Mama, he said,
listen to the angels. I'm going there, Mama. A moment later,
Jack said, what a beautiful city and the angels singing. Oh, Mama,
(07:07):
I wish you could hear the angels singing. Then he
was gone, and you've been listening to Greg Glory share
the story of Johnny Cash. The redemption of an American
icon continues here on Our American Stories. Leihabibi here the
(07:33):
host of our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
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(07:55):
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and give and we continue with our American Stories. We
last left off hearing how In nineteen forty four, Johnny
(08:16):
Cash's older brother, Jack, 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 Greglorie
and those words are inscribed on Jack Cash's tombstone. Will
(08:38):
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
would appear to him in dreams. He said, and what's it, Justine?
(09:00):
As his brother appeared to him over the years, he
was an older version of what his brother might have
looked like. That 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 the rest of
(09:20):
his life. Johnny grew up picking cotton out in the fields.
It sounds like a story from the old Weston. 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 would be. But one thing
(09:41):
that Carrie loved to do out on the Compon fields
was seeing old hymns that they would hear at church.
It's what it was raised on. It was a thing
that inspired me as a child growing up on a
cotton farm roof where work was trudgery and it was
so hard that when I was in the FIELDSS all
the time, and usually gospel songs because they lifted me
(10:03):
up above the le dirt. 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
(10:24):
and said, who just sang that? Well, it was Johnny,
but his voice dropped and it was 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
(10:44):
the Grand ol Opry. He could be on the radio,
he could have a hit song. But before that would happen,
he would serve as stint in the Air Force. So
during his stint in the Air Force, a Johnny found
himself very adept at working as a Morse Code operator.
(11:05):
And I think Johnny was beginning to discover his relationship
with sound, with pitch, and later with music. 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
(11:27):
stroke on March fifth, nineteen fifty three. And this is
an amazing thing because Johnny retained the skill 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
(11:47):
a piece of paper. So this sense of understanding of
sounds was something that would help Johnny when he began
to write songs, and he was writing a lot of
letters to the love of his life at that time, Vivian,
and he also began to compose songs, songs about places
he'd never been to before. But his imagination was running wild,
(12:10):
and really that skill set that would later be fully
realized was being developed as he was 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,
(12:32):
so he started calling Sun Studios wanting to talk to
Sammy could never really get hold 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
(12:53):
a lot of people were trying to sound like Elvis,
but Johnny didn't sound anything like Elvis. John He 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,
(13:17):
and of course Elvis and Johnny. He 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
(13:39):
is it then when his musical career 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
(14:00):
fads or the latest clothing 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 singing,
it's the way he spoke, you know, the timbre of
(14:21):
his voice. He was described as the voice of America.
I like Chris Chris Stofferson's definition 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
(14:42):
was known as the man in Black. So how Johnny
came to write the song Cry 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 song, sweet songs, happy songs, and sad song that'll
make you cry, Cry Cry, And hearing those words caused
(15:04):
Johnny to pick up his pencil and start writing down
the lyrics too what would become 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
(15:26):
tours that happened to be with Elvis Presley, he met
a man named Sonny James. And 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 loved the
advice that Sonny gave to Johnny. He said, Johnny, the
(15:48):
way I do this is by being the way that
I am. I'm not just an entertainer who has become
a Christian. I'm a Christian who chose to be an entertainer,
but I'm first a Christian rember. 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.
(16:08):
And you know, I think Johnny did follow that advice.
He did have lopsis. He did things he should have
never done. He trashed hotel 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
(16:29):
with his television show, I think Johnny really lived out
this advice of Sonny James speaking openly about his faith
without embarrassment. In fact, 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
(16:52):
faith openly and publicly, and I think deep down in
his heart he still wanted to be a gospel singer,
just like he us when he originally went to see
Sam Phillips over Red Sun Studios. Gospel music is such
a so ingrained into my into my bones. You know,
I can't do a concert without singing the gospel song.
(17:13):
I have a calling, It's called to perform and sing
and gospel gospel song is a ministry in a way.
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
(17:34):
a Christian. He was advised by someone he look up to.
I'm a Christian who is an entertainer. And what a
difference that will make in Cash his 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
(18:09):
to our 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. 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
(18:31):
a bill with a guy known as the Hillbilly heartthrob
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 Hell 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
(18:52):
quite a show. And that was the beginning of Johnny's
addiction to emphetamines. Now, in fairness, a lot of people
touring it this time, we're taking these amphetamines. And there
were commercials on television advocating how these could help you
give you more pep. And I'm not justifying the addiction
(19:13):
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 on him in many
ways physically, and I would also add spiritually well. Johnny
(19:33):
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 girls
(19:54):
and their interest in Elvis and in Johnny, and it
began to Cancer 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 they drove
(20:14):
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 his first
(20:36):
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 of
Vivian and should have held that marriage together because of
(20:59):
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 over those He could have
followed in the footsteps of his friend Elvis Presley, But
June was someone that helped him through this very hard time.
(21:24):
Here's a quote from Johnny Cash. You know, I used
to sing will you there when they crucified my Lord
while I was stoned on inphetamines. I used to sing
all those gospel songs, but I never really felt them,
And maybe it was a little ashamed of myself at
the time because of the hypocrisy of it all. There
I was singing the praises of the Lord and singing
(21:46):
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 he wrecked it, breaking his nose.
He lost his front teeth as well as he had
hit on collision with utility Paul. He claimed a wet
roadway was a cause of the accident, but he was
(22:08):
taken to Vanderbilt Hospital where surprisingly he refused a shot
up morphine for the pain and had his nose set.
And another surprise was that of the policeman heading up
the investigation of the crash was none other than Officer
Rip Knicks, June Carter's husband. So no charges were filed
(22:29):
in the incident didn't make the paper, but Officer Nix's
wife undoubtedly got an earfull at home. So I would
say at this point in his life, Johnny's trying to
live in two worlds, you know. His sister Joanne put
it this way. Johnny was like two people. She said,
Johnny was one person in Cashua was the other. And
(22:50):
she said cash caused 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 in his relationship
with God, and too much of a relationship with God
to be happy in the world. He was in sort
(23:10):
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 conflicting problems in his life. Well,
I guess Chris Stofferson pretty well summed it up. And
the song he wrote about me, He's a walking contradiction,
(23:31):
Partley truth and Parley fiction. So Johnny got to a
point with the 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
(23:52):
called Nick and Jack Cave. He had actually been there
before as a young man looking for arrowheads and other 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. I remember sitting in
the mouth of that cave crying and then taking a
(24:14):
little too self flash light and started walking into that cave.
And I said it, I'd walk as far as I
could go and then lay down. And I guess so
probably one a mile through one of the caverns, and
my flash light completely burned out and it was black, black, dark,
so dark you could feel it and sit in my
good black prayer. I must have dozed off, because I
(24:38):
felt a presence within me come from outside of me
to make me sit up. This is awfully corny, but
the noble Indian tricks to which your fingers stick it
up to see which way the wind blows. I tried
everything to see and then I finally did that, and
I felt cooler on one side of my finger, and
I knew that I kept following. There's a you know, crawling.
(25:02):
Sometimes I fall twenty or thirty feet into a pit,
but A clawed my way back up, and just as
I was about to give up, I saw a little
fleck of light way off in the distance, and I
finally made it there, and I collapsed in the mouth
of the cave. When I woke, June was there washing
my face, and she said, you're almost dead, aren't you?
(25:25):
And I said, you have to know want to live.
So after this, another event happened in Lafayette, Georgia, on
November second, nineteen sixty seven. He was visiting a friend
there and went up by himself at evening and got lost.
In an effort to 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
(25:47):
Bob jeff responded and, patting Cash down, discovered prescription drugs
on him, which were legal, and he took Cash to jail,
and he spent the night in his cell. The next morning,
the sheriff woke up Johnny and brought him into his office.
So Johnny's sick, he's despondent. He's expecting the slawman to
come down on him hard, but instead Jones opens up
(26:10):
at George takes out the money and the pills he
had taken off Cash the night before. He held them
out and said, I'm going to give you your money
and your 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.
(26:32):
Mister Cash, will be all right with me. Johnny's thinking
what's going on here? And as they were talking, 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
(26:53):
the radio, We've got your roblem of hymns. You were
probably the biggest fan you've ever had. This be the
deep impression on Johnny. 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
(27:16):
a documentary. Get both wherever you get your books or documentaries.
We return with Moore after these messages here on our
American Stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(27:40):
the story of Johnny Cash and his faith life. Let's
pick up where we last left off with Greg Glory.
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 thought that was the
worst idea imaginable, but it ended up being a brilliant
(28:05):
career choice, and Johnny debuted a song a boy 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.
(28:27):
And when he was asked why he did these shows
in prisons, he said, we're here because 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
(28:48):
take all of that fame and all of that influence
and do something he'd been wanting to do for a
long time. That is, make a film about Jesus Christ.
It was called The Gospel. Wrote Now, I would not
describe this as a cinematic masterpiece, but what I would
say is his heart was in the right place. He
(29:10):
wanted to do something that would move people toward a
relationship with God, so he took his family and his
entourage over to Israel, and the men that ended up
directing the film, who was not a believer at all,
in fact, was in atheists, ended up ironically playing the
role of Jesus. We might describe him as a very
Swedish Jesus because he was very blond, a reddish hair,
(29:34):
and he literally Johnny was literally just 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,
(29:55):
and it was seen by a lot of people, and
it even resulted in people coming to faith. 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.
(30:17):
But Johnny went on to pursue the things that mattered
to him. He continued to sing but 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
(30:39):
or deciding if they want to record this musical legend,
and they told him basically, don't call us, we'll call you.
So Johnny's venues had become quite small at this point,
and one night he was playing at a dinner club
(31:01):
in Anaheim, California, and a thirty year old, long haired,
bearded man named Rick Rubin came to see him. Now,
Rick had been very successful with his def Jam record
label and had produced other rock acts and rap acts,
and he wanted to work with an older artist, and
(31:22):
so he came to hear Johnny. And after Johnny had performed,
someone came up to him and said he there's this
guy named Rick Rubin that wants to meet you. Well,
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 asked, what are you
going to do for me that no one else has
been able to do for me before. I didn't believe
(31:44):
it at first. I said, how, how are you going
to be an indifference than everybody else? And he said,
because we're going to get into the music and find
out what it's the best thing Johnny Cash can do,
the most natural thing, and that's what we're going for.
So now wants to get Johnny back to his roots again.
And unbeknownst to Johnny, as Rick was recording these songs,
(32:07):
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 very effective,
and Rick reintroduced Johnny to a whole new audience of
people who had never heard of him before, specifically a
(32:31):
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 an MTV
Award for his amazing video based on the Trent Resner
song called Hurt and still to this day is something
(32:53):
that really moves you when you watch it. So Johnny
was having a big career comeback at this point. A
lot of times, I feel like I got the best
of both worlds when I look out a nurse, a
half of audience full of young people, and half of
fans my age. You know, yeah, I feel like I
got a second, third chance here to maybe do it right.
(33:16):
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. If I quit, I would just live in
from the television and get fat and die. You know,
(33:37):
I just told him, prayer, I can die with my
boots on. So Johnny and Rick Ribbin became very good friends.
And Rick was not a believer in Jesus Christ. In fact,
I believe he was a Buddhist. But Ruben said Cash
was the most spiritually committed person he'd ever met. He's
probably the most committed spiritual person I've ever met. Um.
(34:01):
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
some musicians and some film directors, and before dinner, Johnny
(34:22):
had everyone hold hands and he said a prayer, and
I think just he finished strong musically. I know some
of the people finished never experienced that before. The Christian
life is like a race. It as a beginning, a
middle belief in what he started well collapse and didn't
matter so much. Some of those start finished believed Johnny
started and finish may believe in the thing. He had
(34:47):
his thumbs really beautiful and he had his falls. So
I wrote Johnny American Icon in Jesus. I was approached
by the very Story company that wanted to do 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
(35:08):
country on December five, six, and seven as a special
Fathom event. It's a beautifully done film, and we had
full buy in and 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
(35:28):
of a mess. He can bring good despite the bad
and the Bible says that God can bring beauty out
of ashes. He did an interview toward the end of
his life with MTV's Kurt Loder, and he talked about
his life, his career, his faith, and his imminent death.
And Johnny said to Kurt, I expect my life to
(35:51):
end pretty soon. Oh, I expect my life to him
pretty soon. You know, I'm seventy one years old, and
I have great faith though, 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
(36:13):
things of my life come from him. Where do you
think we go afterwards? Where do we go when we die?
You mean, oh, well, we all hope to go to heaven.
And a terrific job on the production and the storytelling
and editing by our own Greg Hangler and his special
(36:36):
thanks to Greg Glory his book Johnny Cash, The Redemption
of an American Icon and the film the documentary version
again available December fifty sixth and seventh, And what a
story we heard. And you know, he did have a
unique relationship with prisoners, as we learned earlier in the storytelling,
(36:56):
and I think Bono said it best about Can. He said,
Johnny doesn't sing to the damned, he sings with the damned.
And Bano is himself a committed Christian who writes a
lot about the intersection of faith and life and doubt
and in the end, music and fame. The story of
(37:18):
Hash being fired from his label is heartbreaking, having to
audition in front of young people who see no future
or talent. And then incomes Rick Rubin into a club
in California, small venue, and he sees something in Cash,
and sees something in himself that he can bring to
the table, and that is getting rid of all that production,
(37:41):
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 his career, he rises again to fame with
(38:03):
an entirely new generation of audience. The story of Johnny
Cash his faith walk, as told by Greg Laury here
on our American Stories
This is Leigh 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. Going
(00:54):
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 in divorce seven times
(01:16):
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 the paper, well, Stella,
(01:39):
your cousins and 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 song, such as I
shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
(02:01):
Johnny never shot anyone, but he had a problem with
amphetamines that he got addicted to when he first started
out is a career on the road. But anyway, I
was always aware of Johnny Cash. So, as it turns out,
my grandmother's maiden name Estella Foller Cash, and so I'm
distantly related to Johnny Cash. But there was something always
(02:21):
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
all forms of music, from country to rock, and roll.
(02:45):
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
couldn't have continued with that boom chick a boom sound.
(03:06):
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 it was all a part of a plan.
(03:27):
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 share cropper, 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 over Johnny. And I'm getting a
(03:50):
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, even being invited to the White House, he
(04:13):
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, Ray was a very distant aloof uncommunicative father.
(04:39):
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 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
(05:02):
went fishing together, and on one particular day, Johnny was
going to go fishing, he invited Jack to come and
join him, but Jack said, I gotta go work down
with the sawmill to make 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
(05:23):
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 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,
(05:44):
and he says, getting the truck, and he threw his
fishing poll on the back and they went down to
the hospital and there on that bed was Johnny's brother Jack,
who was very close to passing into eternity. So in
my book Johnny Cash, a Redemption of an American Icon,
I described the scene as follows, and I'm reading him
(06:06):
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 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
(06:27):
his knees and prayed, asking Jesus Christ to be his
Lord in savior. Then Jack looked at Carrie. That would
be Jack's mother, Why is everybody crying over me? Mama,
don't cry over me. 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
(06:47):
toward the fire, but I'm headed in the other direction now, Mama,
can you hear the angels singing? Jack squeezed her hand
and tears of happiness rolled down his cheeks. Mama, he said,
listen to the angels. I'm going there, Mama. A moment later,
Jack said, what a beautiful city and the angels singing. Oh, Mama,
(07:07):
I wish you could hear the angels singing. Then he
was gone, and you've been listening to Greg Glory share
the story of Johnny Cash. The redemption of an American
icon continues here on Our American Stories. Leihabibi here the
(07:33):
host of our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to our American Stories
dot com and click the donate button, Give a little,
(07:55):
give a lot. Go to our American Stories dot com
and give and we continue with our American Stories. We
last left off hearing how In nineteen forty four, Johnny
(08:16):
Cash's older brother, Jack, 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 Greglorie
and those words are inscribed on Jack Cash's tombstone. Will
(08:38):
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
would appear to him in dreams. He said, and what's it, Justine?
(09:00):
As his brother appeared to him over the years, he
was an older version of what his brother might have
looked like. That 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 the rest of
(09:20):
his life. Johnny grew up picking cotton out in the fields.
It sounds like a story from the old Weston. 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 would be. But one thing
(09:41):
that Carrie loved to do out on the Compon fields
was seeing old hymns that they would hear at church.
It's what it was raised on. It was a thing
that inspired me as a child growing up on a
cotton farm roof where work was trudgery and it was
so hard that when I was in the FIELDSS all
the time, and usually gospel songs because they lifted me
(10:03):
up above the le dirt. 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
(10:24):
and said, who just sang that? Well, it was Johnny,
but his voice dropped and it was 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
(10:44):
the Grand ol Opry. He could be on the radio,
he could have a hit song. But before that would happen,
he would serve as stint in the Air Force. So
during his stint in the Air Force, a Johnny found
himself very adept at working as a Morse Code operator.
(11:05):
And I think Johnny was beginning to discover his relationship
with sound, with pitch, and later with music. 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
(11:27):
stroke on March fifth, nineteen fifty three. And this is
an amazing thing because Johnny retained the skill 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
(11:47):
a piece of paper. So this sense of understanding of
sounds was something that would help Johnny when he began
to write songs, and he was writing a lot of
letters to the love of his life at that time, Vivian,
and he also began to compose songs, songs about places
he'd never been to before. But his imagination was running wild,
(12:10):
and really that skill set that would later be fully
realized was being developed as he was 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,
(12:32):
so he started calling Sun Studios wanting to talk to
Sammy could never really get hold 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
(12:53):
a lot of people were trying to sound like Elvis,
but Johnny didn't sound anything like Elvis. John He 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,
(13:17):
and of course Elvis and Johnny. He 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
(13:39):
is it then when his musical career 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
(14:00):
fads or the latest clothing 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 singing,
it's the way he spoke, you know, the timbre of
(14:21):
his voice. He was described as the voice of America.
I like Chris Chris Stofferson's definition 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
(14:42):
was known as the man in Black. So how Johnny
came to write the song Cry 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 song, sweet songs, happy songs, and sad song that'll
make you cry, Cry Cry, And hearing those words caused
(15:04):
Johnny to pick up his pencil and start writing down
the lyrics too what would become 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
(15:26):
tours that happened to be with Elvis Presley, he met
a man named Sonny James. And 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 loved the
advice that Sonny gave to Johnny. He said, Johnny, the
(15:48):
way I do this is by being the way that
I am. I'm not just an entertainer who has become
a Christian. I'm a Christian who chose to be an entertainer,
but I'm first a Christian rember. 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.
(16:08):
And you know, I think Johnny did follow that advice.
He did have lopsis. He did things he should have
never done. He trashed hotel 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
(16:29):
with his television show, I think Johnny really lived out
this advice of Sonny James speaking openly about his faith
without embarrassment. In fact, 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
(16:52):
faith openly and publicly, and I think deep down in
his heart he still wanted to be a gospel singer,
just like he us when he originally went to see
Sam Phillips over Red Sun Studios. Gospel music is such
a so ingrained into my into my bones. You know,
I can't do a concert without singing the gospel song.
(17:13):
I have a calling, It's called to perform and sing
and gospel gospel song is a ministry in a way.
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
(17:34):
a Christian. He was advised by someone he look up to.
I'm a Christian who is an entertainer. And what a
difference that will make in Cash his 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
(18:09):
to our 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. 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
(18:31):
a bill with a guy known as the Hillbilly heartthrob
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 Hell 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
(18:52):
quite a show. And that was the beginning of Johnny's
addiction to emphetamines. Now, in fairness, a lot of people
touring it this time, we're taking these amphetamines. And there
were commercials on television advocating how these could help you
give you more pep. And I'm not justifying the addiction
(19:13):
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 on him in many
ways physically, and I would also add spiritually well. Johnny
(19:33):
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 girls
(19:54):
and their interest in Elvis and in Johnny, and it
began to Cancer 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 they drove
(20:14):
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 his first
(20:36):
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 of
Vivian and should have held that marriage together because of
(20:59):
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 over those He could have
followed in the footsteps of his friend Elvis Presley, But
June was someone that helped him through this very hard time.
(21:24):
Here's a quote from Johnny Cash. You know, I used
to sing will you there when they crucified my Lord
while I was stoned on inphetamines. I used to sing
all those gospel songs, but I never really felt them,
And maybe it was a little ashamed of myself at
the time because of the hypocrisy of it all. There
I was singing the praises of the Lord and singing
(21:46):
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 he wrecked it, breaking his nose.
He lost his front teeth as well as he had
hit on collision with utility Paul. He claimed a wet
roadway was a cause of the accident, but he was
(22:08):
taken to Vanderbilt Hospital where surprisingly he refused a shot
up morphine for the pain and had his nose set.
And another surprise was that of the policeman heading up
the investigation of the crash was none other than Officer
Rip Knicks, June Carter's husband. So no charges were filed
(22:29):
in the incident didn't make the paper, but Officer Nix's
wife undoubtedly got an earfull at home. So I would
say at this point in his life, Johnny's trying to
live in two worlds, you know. His sister Joanne put
it this way. Johnny was like two people. She said,
Johnny was one person in Cashua was the other. And
(22:50):
she said cash caused 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 in his relationship
with God, and too much of a relationship with God
to be happy in the world. He was in sort
(23:10):
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 conflicting problems in his life. Well,
I guess Chris Stofferson pretty well summed it up. And
the song he wrote about me, He's a walking contradiction,
(23:31):
Partley truth and Parley fiction. So Johnny got to a
point with the 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
(23:52):
called Nick and Jack Cave. He had actually been there
before as a young man looking for arrowheads and other 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. I remember sitting in
the mouth of that cave crying and then taking a
(24:14):
little too self flash light and started walking into that cave.
And I said it, I'd walk as far as I
could go and then lay down. And I guess so
probably one a mile through one of the caverns, and
my flash light completely burned out and it was black, black, dark,
so dark you could feel it and sit in my
good black prayer. I must have dozed off, because I
(24:38):
felt a presence within me come from outside of me
to make me sit up. This is awfully corny, but
the noble Indian tricks to which your fingers stick it
up to see which way the wind blows. I tried
everything to see and then I finally did that, and
I felt cooler on one side of my finger, and
I knew that I kept following. There's a you know, crawling.
(25:02):
Sometimes I fall twenty or thirty feet into a pit,
but A clawed my way back up, and just as
I was about to give up, I saw a little
fleck of light way off in the distance, and I
finally made it there, and I collapsed in the mouth
of the cave. When I woke, June was there washing
my face, and she said, you're almost dead, aren't you?
(25:25):
And I said, you have to know want to live.
So after this, another event happened in Lafayette, Georgia, on
November second, nineteen sixty seven. He was visiting a friend
there and went up by himself at evening and got lost.
In an effort to 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
(25:47):
Bob jeff responded and, patting Cash down, discovered prescription drugs
on him, which were legal, and he took Cash to jail,
and he spent the night in his cell. The next morning,
the sheriff woke up Johnny and brought him into his office.
So Johnny's sick, he's despondent. He's expecting the slawman to
come down on him hard, but instead Jones opens up
(26:10):
at George takes out the money and the pills he
had taken off Cash the night before. He held them
out and said, I'm going to give you your money
and your 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.
(26:32):
Mister Cash, will be all right with me. Johnny's thinking
what's going on here? And as they were talking, 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
(26:53):
the radio, We've got your roblem of hymns. You were
probably the biggest fan you've ever had. This be the
deep impression on Johnny. 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
(27:16):
a documentary. Get both wherever you get your books or documentaries.
We return with Moore after these messages here on our
American Stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(27:40):
the story of Johnny Cash and his faith life. Let's
pick up where we last left off with Greg Glory.
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 thought that was the
worst idea imaginable, but it ended up being a brilliant
(28:05):
career choice, and Johnny debuted a song a boy 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.
(28:27):
And when he was asked why he did these shows
in prisons, he said, we're here because 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
(28:48):
take all of that fame and all of that influence
and do something he'd been wanting to do for a
long time. That is, make a film about Jesus Christ.
It was called The Gospel. Wrote Now, I would not
describe this as a cinematic masterpiece, but what I would
say is his heart was in the right place. He
(29:10):
wanted to do something that would move people toward a
relationship with God, so he took his family and his
entourage over to Israel, and the men that ended up
directing the film, who was not a believer at all,
in fact, was in atheists, ended up ironically playing the
role of Jesus. We might describe him as a very
Swedish Jesus because he was very blond, a reddish hair,
(29:34):
and he literally Johnny was literally just 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,
(29:55):
and it was seen by a lot of people, and
it even resulted in people coming to faith. 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.
(30:17):
But Johnny went on to pursue the things that mattered
to him. He continued to sing but 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
(30:39):
or deciding if they want to record this musical legend,
and they told him basically, don't call us, we'll call you.
So Johnny's venues had become quite small at this point,
and one night he was playing at a dinner club
(31:01):
in Anaheim, California, and a thirty year old, long haired,
bearded man named Rick Rubin came to see him. Now,
Rick had been very successful with his def Jam record
label and had produced other rock acts and rap acts,
and he wanted to work with an older artist, and
(31:22):
so he came to hear Johnny. And after Johnny had performed,
someone came up to him and said he there's this
guy named Rick Rubin that wants to meet you. Well,
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 asked, what are you
going to do for me that no one else has
been able to do for me before. I didn't believe
(31:44):
it at first. I said, how, how are you going
to be an indifference than everybody else? And he said,
because we're going to get into the music and find
out what it's the best thing Johnny Cash can do,
the most natural thing, and that's what we're going for.
So now wants to get Johnny back to his roots again.
And unbeknownst to Johnny, as Rick was recording these songs,
(32:07):
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 very effective,
and Rick reintroduced Johnny to a whole new audience of
people who had never heard of him before, specifically a
(32:31):
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 an MTV
Award for his amazing video based on the Trent Resner
song called Hurt and still to this day is something
(32:53):
that really moves you when you watch it. So Johnny
was having a big career comeback at this point. A
lot of times, I feel like I got the best
of both worlds when I look out a nurse, a
half of audience full of young people, and half of
fans my age. You know, yeah, I feel like I
got a second, third chance here to maybe do it right.
(33:16):
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. If I quit, I would just live in
from the television and get fat and die. You know,
(33:37):
I just told him, prayer, I can die with my
boots on. So Johnny and Rick Ribbin became very good friends.
And Rick was not a believer in Jesus Christ. In fact,
I believe he was a Buddhist. But Ruben said Cash
was the most spiritually committed person he'd ever met. He's
probably the most committed spiritual person I've ever met. Um.
(34:01):
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
some musicians and some film directors, and before dinner, Johnny
(34:22):
had everyone hold hands and he said a prayer, and
I think just he finished strong musically. I know some
of the people finished never experienced that before. The Christian
life is like a race. It as a beginning, a
middle belief in what he started well collapse and didn't
matter so much. Some of those start finished believed Johnny
started and finish may believe in the thing. He had
(34:47):
his thumbs really beautiful and he had his falls. So
I wrote Johnny American Icon in Jesus. I was approached
by the very Story company that wanted to do 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
(35:08):
country on December five, six, and seven as a special
Fathom event. It's a beautifully done film, and we had
full buy in and 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
(35:28):
of a mess. He can bring good despite the bad
and the Bible says that God can bring beauty out
of ashes. He did an interview toward the end of
his life with MTV's Kurt Loder, and he talked about
his life, his career, his faith, and his imminent death.
And Johnny said to Kurt, I expect my life to
(35:51):
end pretty soon. Oh, I expect my life to him
pretty soon. You know, I'm seventy one years old, and
I have great faith though, 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
(36:13):
things of my life come from him. Where do you
think we go afterwards? Where do we go when we die?
You mean, oh, well, we all hope to go to heaven.
And a terrific job on the production and the storytelling
and editing by our own Greg Hangler and his special
(36:36):
thanks to Greg Glory his book Johnny Cash, The Redemption
of an American Icon and the film the documentary version
again available December fifty sixth and seventh, And what a
story we heard. And you know, he did have a
unique relationship with prisoners, as we learned earlier in the storytelling,
(36:56):
and I think Bono said it best about Can. He said,
Johnny doesn't sing to the damned, he sings with the damned.
And Bano is himself a committed Christian who writes a
lot about the intersection of faith and life and doubt
and in the end, music and fame. The story of
(37:18):
Hash being fired from his label is heartbreaking, having to
audition in front of young people who see no future
or talent. And then incomes Rick Rubin into a club
in California, small venue, and he sees something in Cash,
and sees something in himself that he can bring to
the table, and that is getting rid of all that production,
(37:41):
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 his career, he rises again to fame with
(38:03):
an entirely new generation of audience. The story of Johnny
Cash his faith walk, as told by Greg Laury here
on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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