May 28, 2019 • 31 mins
Johnny Cash took no shit. He was a total original. Could maneuver that big baritone around a ballad or a rave up like nobody’s business. He also burned down a national forest, crashed cars, overdosed, was arrested for drug trafficking, and was obsessed with June Carter. Their love affair is one for the ages. Through it all, Johnny maintained his sense of empathy and his big heart. His story is unlike any other. Listen to Disgraceland to hear how Johnny Cash played with fire both figuratively and literally.
This episode was originally published on May 28, 2019.
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Disgraceland as a production of double Elvis.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Stories about country singer Johnny Cash are insane. He was
busted for drug smuggling, burned down a national forest, crashed cadillacs,
fueled himself daily with speed, tranquilizers, and beer, and was
rebellious to his core. He took little to no lip
from anyone, fought relentlessly with authority, cops, judges, prison wardens,
(00:39):
and for the underdog, and against social injustice, once even
famously getting into it with the Ku Klux Klan. He
was also daring and big hearted at most everything he did,
daring to dream big and love and in life, and
fearless in pursuit of his art and the woman he loved,
June Carter. Johnny Cash constantly played with fire. He was
(00:59):
a walking time bomb, a human wrecking ball of self destruction,
seemingly always one false move from death. But Johnny Cash
made great music. That music you heard at the top
of the show that wasn't great music. That was a
preset loop for my melotron called Flaming Mellow Flutes BK one.
I played you that loop because I can't afford the
(01:21):
rights to Hello Goodbye by the Beatles and why would
I play you that specific slice of Two Faced Cheese?
Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
song in America on January thirteenth, nineteen sixty eight, And
that was the day that Johnny Cash stepped onto the
stage at Falsom Prison and created one of the most
enduring musical statements of the twentieth century, a statement that
(01:44):
were not for his willingness to play with fire, likely
would have never happened. On this episode, Two Faced Cheese,
Mellow Flutes, Drugs at the Border, playing with Fire, and
the man in Black Johnny Cash, I'm Jake Brennan and
his disgrace slam. The gunman's hand was steady, cool under pressure.
(02:38):
Johnny Cash respected that the steal from the pistol was cold.
Johnny wanted to stay that way. He could feel it
as the gunman pressed it to the back of his neck.
Johnny wasn't scared though, as usual. He was cool, steady,
just like his assailant, not because he was some sort
of TV tough guy, and not because he was distracted
(02:58):
by drugs or drink, but because he had faith, faith
in three things. His Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the
love of his life, his wife, June Carter Cash. In
the power of music, he dedicated his life to all
of them, most recently to his wife, sitting next to
him at the moment in their home, bound by strong rope,
(03:19):
with their eyes averting contact with their homes invaders, resolute
as was their normal disposition.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
For the past decade or so, Johnny had dedicated a
large portion of his creative and personal efforts to Christ,
churning out numerous recordings to evangelize the Good Word and
declaring that quote, being a Christian isn't for sisses. It
takes a real man to live for God, a lot
more man than to live for the devil. If you
really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.
(03:47):
But Johnny happily preached another kind of gospel as well,
the gospel of country music, on his long running music
variety television show on ABC that he hosted and produced,
bringing to the stage and thus the living rooms of
mind millians of Americans country musicians he adored and respected,
like Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, Marty Robbins, and many others,
as well as the folk rock musicians he admired. Like
(04:09):
his friend Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, Johnny's faith was calming.
It was everything, even back then, back in the sixties,
when his life was anything but calm. The gunmen were
desperate and playing with fire, but Johnny knew that the
demands they were making on him and his family would
somehow work themselves out. Johnny Cash knew about desperation, and
(04:34):
he knew about playing with fire. He closed his eyes,
took a long, quiet, deep breath, and let his mind
bring him back a couple of years in nineteen sixty four,
Johnny Cash was a well known or respected performer. His
musical style was completely his own. To date, there's never
been anyone who's come close to sounding like him. His
(04:55):
was a hard driving, but effortless sound, honest at times, humorous,
and it's totally authentic. Johnny Cash's music definitely balanced the
energy of rockabilly with seasoned country music, and it was
all anchored into something spiritual with the gravitas afforded him
by his voice, a deep, sophisticated sounding baritone. When you
heard Johnny Cash, you knew it was Johnny Cash. He
(05:19):
performed upwards of two hundred shows a year. His albums
and singles on Sun and Columbia Records were well known
to country and pop fans alike. His nineteen sixty three
single Ring of Fire topped the country charts at number
one for seven weeks and cracked the Top twenty pop chart.
His reputation is a hard drinking outlaw, constantly battling his
demons and song, along with his signature man in Black style,
(05:43):
made him unmistakable and one of the most popular entertainers
in the country. But despite his star status, Johnny Cash
was a serious drug addict and alcoholic who popped up
to one hundred pills a day, mostly amphetamines and barbituates,
and chased them with full cases of beer, the result
of which made him legless, incoherent, and totally unreliable as
(06:03):
a performer to his fans and as a husband to
his wife and as a father to his four daughters
at the time. But the bad behavior did have the
benefit of making him a totally reliable narrator, authentic to
his core, and with the absolute authority to deliver lyrics
that are bold and direct and right up in your face.
Just like Johnny Cash, the drugs, the drink and the violent,
(06:24):
dangerous mishaps that went along with his particular brand of
boldness meant that Johnny Cash was playing with fire. Just
like the lyrics to his nineteen sixty four song bad
News said, There's no mistaking who or what he was,
a fast moving, bad bad man. The judge knew this,
he could sense it sitting across the courtroom from Johnny.
(06:46):
Johnny had been in front of many judges up until
this point and had little interest in what they had
to say, And Johnny took the criminal rap and stride.
Things always seemed to work themselves out. He'd live another day,
breathe the air of a free man, and make his
way to the next gig, or through the next pile
of pills, or to the bottom of the next case
of cold ones, whichever came first. So Johnny had no
(07:07):
problem getting lippy with the judge. Besides, the charges were bullshit,
killing condors, endangering protected wildlife, destroying property, federal property. Shit
regarding the fire that did all the damage. Johnny was
now being charged with the one that burned down five
hundred acres of Los Padres National Forest in California and
(07:27):
killed a reported fifty three endangered condors. The judge asked, Johnny,
did you start this fire? Johnny shot back to the judge, No,
my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it.
Johnny meant it, at least he thought he did. Truth
be told, he couldn't remember who or what started the fire,
(07:47):
but he was sticking to his story that his truck's
wheelbearing overheated, cracked and leaked oil onto a tire, which
threw it up to the forest dry grass, and that
that's what started the fire. However, the most reasonable explanation
and accounts for Johnny picking up his nephew Damon for
a fishing trip. Johnny was half in the bag when
he arrived, and by the time they hit the forest,
(08:07):
Johnny was blitzed dim and bailed to get in some
fishing and left his uncle to get his head right.
Johnny set up camp in a little fire to keep warm,
but blitzed on pills and beer, was unable to control
the flames when they quickly began to spread like wildfire.
The smoke was reported and in no time over one
hundred firefighters descended, including Healey jumpers and five air takers.
(08:30):
After a couple hours, the fire spread, covering acre upon
acre of forestland. Four hundred firemen from all over the
state were called in to battle and eventually stopped the
flames in the process, and eventual five hundred acres was destroyed,
as were fifty three endangered and protected condors nesting in
a refuge in the nearby Sespy Wildlife Area. Johnny was
(08:53):
near legless in court, packed to the gills with pills
to fend off the reality of the situation. The judge
asked him, do you feel bad about what you did?
Johnny replied with a thick tongue, well, I feel pretty
good right now. But how about driving all those condors
out of the refuge? The judge asked, you mean those
yellow buzzards. I don't give a damn about your yellow buzzards.
(09:15):
Why should I care? Johnny Cash cared about little at
the time. He didn't care about the judge or the
judges questions, nor did he care about his family, or
his fate, or even his career. He didn't care about
his fans or his music. He didn't care about condors
or yellow buzzards, and unlike the rest of the world
at the time, he didn't care about the Beatles either,
(09:36):
why should he he was Johnny Cash. The gig in
(09:57):
Dallas that night was unmemorable. Johnny was supposed to bounce
out afterward on a flight to la but he bailed instead,
he flew to El Paso. From there, it was only
a short thirty minute drive south on Route forty five
over the US border to war As, Mexico, where they
kept the good pills, and Johnny Cash needed those pills.
(10:18):
The Cavey drove like a maniac, just the way Johnny
liked it, and there was no time to spare. He
needed to score and get high, or else his moods
would get the best of him. The road from El Paso,
Texas to Warres, Mexico was a dusty, passing blur of
sunstrokes and roadkill, a vision right at home in the
drug added cobweb Brain of Johnny Cash. In October nineteen
sixty five, the volume on the Cave's radio was jacked
(10:42):
downtown by Petula Clark, blasting back at maximum volume. Johnny
was annoyed and about to say something when the song ended,
and within seconds the cat was overtaken by the sound
of John Lennon singing help, his unmistakable voice repeating the
title word over and over again in the chorus, the
(11:04):
final call for help, dragging Johnny suspiciously into the Beatles'
verse with curious ears and what the hell was this?
The song was enthralling. Paul McCartney's bass bounced from the
one to the five, boom tom to kaboom in a
way that was very familiar to Johnny, as were the
little bass notes struck by George Harrison on the rhythm guitar, Goom, doom, doom.
(11:26):
It was all country music. Johnny felt a tinge of resentment,
but Ringo swung like a motherfucker, and Johnny was hard
pressed to do anything but loved the song. The rhythm
sealed it for him, just like it always did. The
song was infectious, and that big acoustic guitar humming along,
bold and up in your face. Johnny knew that sound too,
the sound of a Gibson J one eighty, the model
(11:47):
made popular by the Everly Brothers, a little smaller than
the J two hundred. Johnny slum a country nonetheless, either
way he had handed to the Beatles. There was way
more going on in this tune than anything else in
the radio at the time, just like countless numbers of
previously recorded country songs, help was jammed with insecurity and desperation,
(12:08):
but it was funneled through a completely new pop songwriting paradigm.
The sound, the production, It was alive and it came
screaming out of the speakers. Sure, the country influences were there,
but combined with the modern production and the naked emotion,
the whole sound was totally new. Johnny blitzed as usual,
wasn't sure if his head was fucking with him or not.
(12:28):
Was Lennin literally crying out for help in the track
on the record over the radio? The thought was gone
almost as quickly as it came, kind of like the song.
It was over in two minutes and thirty seconds, followed
quickly by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs excellent Willy Bully,
Oh no those one two tresquatro. Johnny let the song
(12:56):
bounce through him in unison with the rock and the
role of the early model De Soto custom, carrying him
over the bumpy road to Horras, Mexico. But despite Sam
the Sham, Johnny couldn't get his head off of the Beatles.
He'd met them a couple months earlier. At the Kyle
Palace up near San Francisco, and frankly could have cared less.
He found them at the time at least to be comical,
(13:17):
but also smug in a wash in the glory of
their own bullshit. Johnny was there because, frankly, he didn't
have anything better to do that day. June Carter of
Carter Family country music royalty fame was off playing shows
somewhere else, no longer on the road with Johnny and
his band and support of Johnny's act, and Johnny was
at loose ends without her. Their secret affair was next
(13:39):
to getting high his main priority in nineteen sixty five,
and at the Kyle Palace that night, backstage and waiting
like a chump alongside folk singer Joan Bias to meet
the Beatles. Johnny Cash, perhaps because of Bias's undeniable beauty,
had June Carter on his mind. She was beautiful, kind,
(13:59):
supremely talented, both as a musician and as an artist.
She was one of those rare types of people whose
talent doesn't affect their ego. June Carter, despite her obvious
gifts and celebrity, was at once endlessly interested as well
as being endlessly interesting, and she understood Johnny Cash on
a molecular level. It was the type of understanding that
(14:21):
can possess and propel a man. Their attraction for one
another was next level. It was chemical scientific. June Carter's sexuality,
singed Johnny Cash at a show with June back in
August up in Toronto. Johnny, overcome with his desire for
his not so secret secret girlfriend, called her a sex
machine from the stage. Wasted again on booys and pills,
(14:44):
Johnny left the stage, dropped down onto all fours, and
began howling at June and following her around while attempting
to lick her ankles. It was the kind of public
breakdown that, had it happened in the Internet age, would
likely have been a career killer, but because it happened
in nineteen sixty five, resulted and only a short mention
in the Toronto Star admonishing Johnny for his act being
inappropriate for children. Married or not. Johnny was obsessed to
(15:09):
the point of distraction. Johnny Cash was once again playing
with fire. June Carter was a world wrecker. Pills were
ever necessary. It may have been Mexican Radio, but it
was owned by the Little Lads from Liverpool. After Willie Bully,
it was right back to the Beatles again. George Harrison's
intro rift to Ticket to Ride pierced the static on
(15:30):
the cabs speakers and pulled Johnny's head out of June
Carter's pants. For the moment, Ringos staggered, but steady beat
banged on through, and Johnny was held fixed again by
John Lennon's lyrics melancholy, blue and full of sex, just
like Johnny. Johnny knew Lennon was talking about sex. It
was all right there in the air in his head. Damnit,
(15:50):
he missed June. The pills would help, they always did,
and right now Johnny Cash was staring at a suitcase
filled with them. His enterprising cab driver had turned from
a shady Horras bar with enough dex adrine and tranquilizers
to put an entire audience of Grand Old Opry fans
out the pasture, which, after being banned from the Opry
back in fifty six, was a fate Johnny would have
(16:12):
relished seeing come to fruition. But enough about the past.
The future was now, and Johnny Cash was movie jonesing,
so he threw a handful of pills to the back
of his throat, chased him down with a warm bottle
of beer, and began stuffing the rest of his newly
procured stash into his guitar case. He was flying back
to the States. He had to get back to June asap,
(16:32):
and the DeSoto, despite the Cabby's lead foot, wasn't going
to cut it Johnny's drug slinging. Cabby made his way
to the airport nel Passo, but not before being made
by a couple of cops. Johnny was searched on suspicion
of heroin possession. The cops didn't find heroin, but they
did find Johnny's pills six hundred and eighty eight dexadrine
(16:52):
four hundred and fifty seven equanol. Johnny Cash was busted
and thrown in jail. Perhaps out of shame, or more
likely out of fear of being locked up for a
long stretch, Johnny Cash straightened himself out for a moment anyway,
He put June Carter on the shelf and began a
period of reconciliation with his wife, Vivian. If for no
(17:13):
other reason, appearance is sake, the judge would most likely
go easy on a family man went to thinking, especially
one who was doing his best to clean up his
act and to pull himself out of the scandalous ring
of fire that had come to define him in the newspapers.
It worked. At his arraignment, Johnny appeared clear eyed, in
a gained weight. His wife was at his side, standing
(17:33):
by her man, and there was no smart ass in
Johnny's answers to the judge like there had been back
during the Los Padres wildfire incident. Johnny's lawyers went to
work and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge. The
judge went easy on him, a thousand dollars fine in
a thirty day suspended sentence, in effect leaving Johnny to
get his life and career back in order. But Johnny
(17:54):
Cash could not leave well enough alone. Reckless, stubborn, hell bent.
He was like a moth to a flame. We'll be
right back after this word, word word, Johnny Cash was
dead on the floor, and it was all Ronnie Hawkins's fault.
(18:16):
Ronnie Hawkins, the hard driving Canadian rockabilly hell raiser, singer
of The Hawks, the man who told his young guitarist
Robbie Robertson in his pitch to get him to join
his band, you won't make much money, or you'll get
more pussy than Sinatra had. It seemed drunk and drugged
his friend Johnny Cash into an early grave, pretty much
to the surprise of no one. Despite johnny'sttempt at sobriety
(18:39):
and fidelity a couple months prior, he was back to
his old ways pills booze June Carter. He was a
man possessed, bent on self destruction, and Ronnie Hawkins was
the perfect wingman for such a mission. Following a semi
disaster show earlier in the evening, the two set about
the party. At some point, Ronnie took off and Johnny
(19:02):
felt into a stupor. He was found the following morning,
face down on the floor of his motor home in
the parking lot of the Toronto Four Seasons without a pulse,
and that's the time. In the music industry, Johnny Cash
was a liability. Promoters knew he'd pack him in, but
they figured he was fifty to fifty on whether or
not he'd show up sober enough to play. His manager,
(19:24):
Sal hall Off was doing everything he could outrun Johnny's
ever deteriorating professional reputation, managing the fallout from the bust
in El Paso, the trials surrounding the fire at Los Padres,
the loan, string of canceled concerts due to Johnny's drug
and alcohol use, and of course, covering up the car
crash in Nashville, the one where Johnny totaled June Carter's Cadillac.
(19:45):
Saul had a scramble to keep the details of the
crash and Johnny and June's affair under wraps and out
of the newspapers. Somehow, Sal's hustle always kept it so
Johnny Cash would lived at the end of the day.
But on that morning in Toronto, on March nineteenth, nineteen
sixty six, they both seemed out of options. Johnny Cash
(20:06):
had no pulse and no one had any answers. Where
were his pillstash? What should they do? Who should they call?
Where should they go? They could go to the hospital,
but that would mean making the overdose public and thus
driving the final nail into the coffin. That was Johnny
Cash's career at the moment. And they could say fuck
it and try to revive Johnny themselves and head to
the next show. But that was in the States in Rochester,
(20:28):
New York. So that meant crossing the border and subjecting
Saul and the rest of Johnny's entourage to a custom
search and risking the discovery of what was believed to
be an ample supply of Johnny's illegal drugs, and thus
jail for the lot of them. Either way, they were screwed,
so they said fuck it, the show must go on,
and they headed to the border. They endeavored to bring
(20:50):
Johnny back to consciousness, slapping him about the face, yelling
at him, pounding his chest, until, by some stroke of
dumb luck, they were able to generate some signs of
life minimal as they were. Twitch of the eyelid, a moan,
a labored cough. It was enough for them to press on,
and they stashed a prone Johnny Cash under a pile
of dirty laundry and miraculously made it through customs without
(21:11):
being searched. Soon enough they were able to fully revive Johnny.
They made it to Rochester in time for the show,
and with Johnny's heartbeat now ticking again at a normal
pace and with the benefit of a couple hours of
forced sobriety, Johnny Cash waltzed onto the stage and delivered
a transformative performance. It was nothing short of a miracle.
It was inspired, just like Johnny's love for his touring
(21:33):
mate June Carter. That year, in nineteen sixty six, Johnny's wife, Vivian,
filed for divorce, a request Johnny was happy to oblige.
Also that year, June Carter, formerly divorced professional badass Edwin
rip Nicks, a former football player, race car driver, and cop.
Johnny and June were finally able to be with one another.
(21:56):
Not that anything had really stopped them before, but now
they were able to be out in the open about it,
and now with June's support, or more likely, with the
prospect of some sort of real future with June, the
woman of his dreams. Johnny Cash took a sincere swing
at sobriety and it stuck. With a clear head, his
next move was to take his career to the next level.
(22:17):
He needed a hit. Popular music was evolving at a
fevered pitch. Dylan had gone electric, the Beatles were going psychedelic,
and if Johnny Cash didn't make some sort of new
musical statement, he was going nowhere. He had an idea,
a collaboration of sorts with murderers, rapists, bank robbers, and
an assortment of men just like himself, bad bad men
(22:40):
who used to move fast but weren't going nowhere. A
captive audience of bag men, second story men, wheelmen, confidence men,
men out on the margins, men with no direction home
men who played with fire. Fulsome prison Men. Johnny's record label,
Columbia Records, wasn't having any of it, but Johnny went
(23:02):
through with the plan to record a live show for
an album release the storied prison he'd written about in
his nineteen fifty five Sun Records release Fulsome Prison Blues.
Since then, Johnny had been written to from countless prisoners
who identified with not only his music, but with his
fast living, sometimes criminal behavior. Just like them, Johnny Cash
had stripes. Johnny also had empathy. He felt for the prisoners.
(23:27):
He knew what they were up against, and he knew
the energy he'd bring to a live show for them
would be transformative and thus worthy of getting down on tape.
Against Columbia's wishes, Johnny went ahead with the project. The
proof was in the performance here on record on Johnny
Cash Is at Fulsome Prison As unlike any other pop
(23:48):
music live record, the excitement from the audience, the result
of a truly impassioned performance by Johnny Cash and his
band The Tennessee Three plus Carl Perkins on guitar and
June Carter on backing vocals and infectious. During the set,
Johnny was Johnny. He was inspired and inspiring. He cajoled
(24:08):
the inmates. He paraded June, a beautiful woman on stage,
the likes of which some of the men in the
audience hadn't seen in the flesh in years. In Cocaine Blues,
a song where the main character snorts a mountain oft
coke and kills his cheating wife after a bad night
in Horrors Mexico, Johnny changed the lyric I shot my
woman down to I shot that bad bitch down. Unsurprisingly,
(24:30):
the prisoners went nuts. There. He was the Man in Black,
Johnny Cash in a maximum security prison, surrounded by machine
guns and felons, with the woman he loved, skirting danger,
risking it to make the album that would define him.
The results were undeniable. The record went to number one
on the country charts, but more importantly, and totally on
(24:51):
brand for The Man in Black, it hit number thirteen
on the pop charts. Upon its release, the album was
held critically and to this day has become a cultural
landmark of sorts. A piece of music that is much
more than a piece of music. It's social commentary. It's
a fast thrill, it's a swing in the face of authority.
It's pure Johnny Cash. It redefined him as something more
(25:14):
than just another hard living country artist and reignited his
career exactly as he talked. A couple months after the
Fulsome performance, Johnny proposed to June on stage in front
of seven thousand people at the London Ice House in London, Ontario.
June said yes, finally after multiple previous proposals from Johnny,
(25:35):
and the two were married in a fever on March first,
nineteen sixty eight. Things finally leveled out for Johnny Cash
(25:59):
and thenineteen seventies. Not that it wasn't without its ups
and downs, both professionally and personally, but compared to the
nineteen sixties, the seventies was a decade of relative calm imbalance.
Johnny and June, despite being creatures of the road, anchored
themselves into domestic bliss. When not out on the road,
they split their time between their home in Hendersonville, Tennessee,
(26:22):
and their Cinnamon Hill home in Jamaica, an old sugar
plantation property built in seventeen forty seven near Montego Bay,
and it was where they sat listening to their housekeeper
recite Grace on an idyllic Christmas Day in nineteen eighty one,
along with their eleven year old son, John Carter Cash,
the boy's friend Doug Caldwell, Johnny's sister Reba, and her
(26:43):
husband Chuck. The sound of the bandits invading their peaceful
holiday home was at first more surprising than frightening. A
loud and out of place clang from the front entryway
had the guests searching each other's faces for answer across
the dinner table, then hurried feet marching furiously through the
(27:04):
adjacent rooms and toward the room. The guests re seated
and sent their heart rates from pulse to pound and
finally shouting out of place. In the Cash Carter home,
no one shouted, but there it was loud, angry and
desperate commands careening off the interior walls of the home
in the familiar Jamaican petois. Nobody move, Where are the jewels?
(27:24):
Give us the cash? Three armed robbers, locals, menacing hungry
at their wits ends, all armed, one with a gun,
another with a knife, and the tall one with a
twitch and the junkie gaze. He held a hatchet in
his hand. The one with the pistol grabbed eleven year
old Doug Coldwell and thrust the barrel of the gun
into his temple. Some of the guests gasps, others averted
(27:47):
their eyes. The smell of urine was now apparent. Johnny
played it cool.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
What do you want, he calmly asked, the assilence everything
where the boy dies replied the bandit, Johnny said, sat
there in his chair expressionless.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
He knew these men boys really desperate. He could see
it in their eyes. Addicted. He could also see himself
from a few years earlier, and recognized that, were it
not for a few faithful turns in the road, that
his reality could easily have been more like his junkie assailants.
So he knew what to do. Play it cool, give
(28:24):
him what they want. With that enough, wait for it.
With time, they'd let down their guard. It was human nature,
and when the opportunity presented itself, pounce, grab a chair
and swing it hard into the grill, the tall one
with a twitch level them and snatch his hatchet, and
hope and pray that outnumbering the other two in the
ensuing melee would save your family. But it never happened.
(28:46):
The bandits gave up pressing Johnny and his guests. They
were content with the fifty grand in cash and jewelry
they had taken from the house, along with the keys
to Johnny's range rover, and split and they didn't make
it far. After local authorities were alerted. The threesome was
located at the Montego Bay Airport en route to Miami
defence the stolen jewelry, and they were arrested, taken into custody,
(29:09):
and never seen or heard from again, apparently the victims
of swift, cold Jamaican justice, colonial style. In the end,
Johnny Cash was more upset by the fate of his assailants,
men who he reasoned were unjustly punished for a crime
against him, the punishment for which he had no agency,
than he was upset by the traumatic events of that day.
(29:32):
The way Johnny Cash saw it, it was pure luck
that he hadn't met a violent end sooner himself. Car
crashes wildfires, drug over doses, angry badass husbands. He'd been
playing with fire for years up to that point, and
even in his sober domestic years. The home in Jamaica
at Cinnamon Hill was risky living in comparison to the
(29:53):
vast majority of Jamaican locals who existed in poverty. Johnny Cash,
despite his down home salt of the Earth disposition, live
as an ostentatious American rock star and a big, expensive
house with a pretty wife, famous friends, hired servants, and
luxury vehicles, all with little to no obvious or effective security.
(30:14):
Playing with fire. Burned, Burned, Burned. I'm Jake Brennan and
this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and
(30:39):
is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this
episode can be found on the show notes page at
disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All
Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
We really appreciate it, and if not, you can become
a member right now by going to disgrace lamppod dot com.
Slash Membership members can listen to every episode of disgracelam
Ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode
every month, weekly unscripted bonus episode, special audio collections, and
early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgraylampod dot com
(31:15):
slash membership for details, Rate and review the show, and
follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at disgracelampod
and on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at disgracelampod.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Rock a roll up here the bed Donland
Disgraceland as a production of double Elvis.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Stories about country singer Johnny Cash are insane. He was
busted for drug smuggling, burned down a national forest, crashed cadillacs,
fueled himself daily with speed, tranquilizers, and beer, and was
rebellious to his core. He took little to no lip
from anyone, fought relentlessly with authority, cops, judges, prison wardens,
(00:39):
and for the underdog, and against social injustice, once even
famously getting into it with the Ku Klux Klan. He
was also daring and big hearted at most everything he did,
daring to dream big and love and in life, and
fearless in pursuit of his art and the woman he loved,
June Carter. Johnny Cash constantly played with fire. He was
(00:59):
a walking time bomb, a human wrecking ball of self destruction,
seemingly always one false move from death. But Johnny Cash
made great music. That music you heard at the top
of the show that wasn't great music. That was a
preset loop for my melotron called Flaming Mellow Flutes BK one.
I played you that loop because I can't afford the
(01:21):
rights to Hello Goodbye by the Beatles and why would
I play you that specific slice of Two Faced Cheese?
Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
song in America on January thirteenth, nineteen sixty eight, And
that was the day that Johnny Cash stepped onto the
stage at Falsom Prison and created one of the most
enduring musical statements of the twentieth century, a statement that
(01:44):
were not for his willingness to play with fire, likely
would have never happened. On this episode, Two Faced Cheese,
Mellow Flutes, Drugs at the Border, playing with Fire, and
the man in Black Johnny Cash, I'm Jake Brennan and
his disgrace slam. The gunman's hand was steady, cool under pressure.
(02:38):
Johnny Cash respected that the steal from the pistol was cold.
Johnny wanted to stay that way. He could feel it
as the gunman pressed it to the back of his neck.
Johnny wasn't scared though, as usual. He was cool, steady,
just like his assailant, not because he was some sort
of TV tough guy, and not because he was distracted
(02:58):
by drugs or drink, but because he had faith, faith
in three things. His Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the
love of his life, his wife, June Carter Cash. In
the power of music, he dedicated his life to all
of them, most recently to his wife, sitting next to
him at the moment in their home, bound by strong rope,
(03:19):
with their eyes averting contact with their homes invaders, resolute
as was their normal disposition.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
For the past decade or so, Johnny had dedicated a
large portion of his creative and personal efforts to Christ,
churning out numerous recordings to evangelize the Good Word and
declaring that quote, being a Christian isn't for sisses. It
takes a real man to live for God, a lot
more man than to live for the devil. If you
really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.
(03:47):
But Johnny happily preached another kind of gospel as well,
the gospel of country music, on his long running music
variety television show on ABC that he hosted and produced,
bringing to the stage and thus the living rooms of
mind millians of Americans country musicians he adored and respected,
like Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, Marty Robbins, and many others,
as well as the folk rock musicians he admired. Like
(04:09):
his friend Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, Johnny's faith was calming.
It was everything, even back then, back in the sixties,
when his life was anything but calm. The gunmen were
desperate and playing with fire, but Johnny knew that the
demands they were making on him and his family would
somehow work themselves out. Johnny Cash knew about desperation, and
(04:34):
he knew about playing with fire. He closed his eyes,
took a long, quiet, deep breath, and let his mind
bring him back a couple of years in nineteen sixty four,
Johnny Cash was a well known or respected performer. His
musical style was completely his own. To date, there's never
been anyone who's come close to sounding like him. His
(04:55):
was a hard driving, but effortless sound, honest at times, humorous,
and it's totally authentic. Johnny Cash's music definitely balanced the
energy of rockabilly with seasoned country music, and it was
all anchored into something spiritual with the gravitas afforded him
by his voice, a deep, sophisticated sounding baritone. When you
heard Johnny Cash, you knew it was Johnny Cash. He
(05:19):
performed upwards of two hundred shows a year. His albums
and singles on Sun and Columbia Records were well known
to country and pop fans alike. His nineteen sixty three
single Ring of Fire topped the country charts at number
one for seven weeks and cracked the Top twenty pop chart.
His reputation is a hard drinking outlaw, constantly battling his
demons and song, along with his signature man in Black style,
(05:43):
made him unmistakable and one of the most popular entertainers
in the country. But despite his star status, Johnny Cash
was a serious drug addict and alcoholic who popped up
to one hundred pills a day, mostly amphetamines and barbituates,
and chased them with full cases of beer, the result
of which made him legless, incoherent, and totally unreliable as
(06:03):
a performer to his fans and as a husband to
his wife and as a father to his four daughters
at the time. But the bad behavior did have the
benefit of making him a totally reliable narrator, authentic to
his core, and with the absolute authority to deliver lyrics
that are bold and direct and right up in your face.
Just like Johnny Cash, the drugs, the drink and the violent,
(06:24):
dangerous mishaps that went along with his particular brand of
boldness meant that Johnny Cash was playing with fire. Just
like the lyrics to his nineteen sixty four song bad
News said, There's no mistaking who or what he was,
a fast moving, bad bad man. The judge knew this,
he could sense it sitting across the courtroom from Johnny.
(06:46):
Johnny had been in front of many judges up until
this point and had little interest in what they had
to say, And Johnny took the criminal rap and stride.
Things always seemed to work themselves out. He'd live another day,
breathe the air of a free man, and make his
way to the next gig, or through the next pile
of pills, or to the bottom of the next case
of cold ones, whichever came first. So Johnny had no
(07:07):
problem getting lippy with the judge. Besides, the charges were bullshit,
killing condors, endangering protected wildlife, destroying property, federal property. Shit
regarding the fire that did all the damage. Johnny was
now being charged with the one that burned down five
hundred acres of Los Padres National Forest in California and
(07:27):
killed a reported fifty three endangered condors. The judge asked, Johnny,
did you start this fire? Johnny shot back to the judge, No,
my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it.
Johnny meant it, at least he thought he did. Truth
be told, he couldn't remember who or what started the fire,
(07:47):
but he was sticking to his story that his truck's
wheelbearing overheated, cracked and leaked oil onto a tire, which
threw it up to the forest dry grass, and that
that's what started the fire. However, the most reasonable explanation
and accounts for Johnny picking up his nephew Damon for
a fishing trip. Johnny was half in the bag when
he arrived, and by the time they hit the forest,
(08:07):
Johnny was blitzed dim and bailed to get in some
fishing and left his uncle to get his head right.
Johnny set up camp in a little fire to keep warm,
but blitzed on pills and beer, was unable to control
the flames when they quickly began to spread like wildfire.
The smoke was reported and in no time over one
hundred firefighters descended, including Healey jumpers and five air takers.
(08:30):
After a couple hours, the fire spread, covering acre upon
acre of forestland. Four hundred firemen from all over the
state were called in to battle and eventually stopped the
flames in the process, and eventual five hundred acres was destroyed,
as were fifty three endangered and protected condors nesting in
a refuge in the nearby Sespy Wildlife Area. Johnny was
(08:53):
near legless in court, packed to the gills with pills
to fend off the reality of the situation. The judge
asked him, do you feel bad about what you did?
Johnny replied with a thick tongue, well, I feel pretty
good right now. But how about driving all those condors
out of the refuge? The judge asked, you mean those
yellow buzzards. I don't give a damn about your yellow buzzards.
(09:15):
Why should I care? Johnny Cash cared about little at
the time. He didn't care about the judge or the
judges questions, nor did he care about his family, or
his fate, or even his career. He didn't care about
his fans or his music. He didn't care about condors
or yellow buzzards, and unlike the rest of the world
at the time, he didn't care about the Beatles either,
(09:36):
why should he he was Johnny Cash. The gig in
(09:57):
Dallas that night was unmemorable. Johnny was supposed to bounce
out afterward on a flight to la but he bailed instead,
he flew to El Paso. From there, it was only
a short thirty minute drive south on Route forty five
over the US border to war As, Mexico, where they
kept the good pills, and Johnny Cash needed those pills.
(10:18):
The Cavey drove like a maniac, just the way Johnny
liked it, and there was no time to spare. He
needed to score and get high, or else his moods
would get the best of him. The road from El Paso,
Texas to Warres, Mexico was a dusty, passing blur of
sunstrokes and roadkill, a vision right at home in the
drug added cobweb Brain of Johnny Cash. In October nineteen
sixty five, the volume on the Cave's radio was jacked
(10:42):
downtown by Petula Clark, blasting back at maximum volume. Johnny
was annoyed and about to say something when the song ended,
and within seconds the cat was overtaken by the sound
of John Lennon singing help, his unmistakable voice repeating the
title word over and over again in the chorus, the
(11:04):
final call for help, dragging Johnny suspiciously into the Beatles'
verse with curious ears and what the hell was this?
The song was enthralling. Paul McCartney's bass bounced from the
one to the five, boom tom to kaboom in a
way that was very familiar to Johnny, as were the
little bass notes struck by George Harrison on the rhythm guitar, Goom, doom, doom.
(11:26):
It was all country music. Johnny felt a tinge of resentment,
but Ringo swung like a motherfucker, and Johnny was hard
pressed to do anything but loved the song. The rhythm
sealed it for him, just like it always did. The
song was infectious, and that big acoustic guitar humming along,
bold and up in your face. Johnny knew that sound too,
the sound of a Gibson J one eighty, the model
(11:47):
made popular by the Everly Brothers, a little smaller than
the J two hundred. Johnny slum a country nonetheless, either
way he had handed to the Beatles. There was way
more going on in this tune than anything else in
the radio at the time, just like countless numbers of
previously recorded country songs, help was jammed with insecurity and desperation,
(12:08):
but it was funneled through a completely new pop songwriting paradigm.
The sound, the production, It was alive and it came
screaming out of the speakers. Sure, the country influences were there,
but combined with the modern production and the naked emotion,
the whole sound was totally new. Johnny blitzed as usual,
wasn't sure if his head was fucking with him or not.
(12:28):
Was Lennin literally crying out for help in the track
on the record over the radio? The thought was gone
almost as quickly as it came, kind of like the song.
It was over in two minutes and thirty seconds, followed
quickly by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs excellent Willy Bully,
Oh no those one two tresquatro. Johnny let the song
(12:56):
bounce through him in unison with the rock and the
role of the early model De Soto custom, carrying him
over the bumpy road to Horras, Mexico. But despite Sam
the Sham, Johnny couldn't get his head off of the Beatles.
He'd met them a couple months earlier. At the Kyle
Palace up near San Francisco, and frankly could have cared less.
He found them at the time at least to be comical,
(13:17):
but also smug in a wash in the glory of
their own bullshit. Johnny was there because, frankly, he didn't
have anything better to do that day. June Carter of
Carter Family country music royalty fame was off playing shows
somewhere else, no longer on the road with Johnny and
his band and support of Johnny's act, and Johnny was
at loose ends without her. Their secret affair was next
(13:39):
to getting high his main priority in nineteen sixty five,
and at the Kyle Palace that night, backstage and waiting
like a chump alongside folk singer Joan Bias to meet
the Beatles. Johnny Cash, perhaps because of Bias's undeniable beauty,
had June Carter on his mind. She was beautiful, kind,
(13:59):
supremely talented, both as a musician and as an artist.
She was one of those rare types of people whose
talent doesn't affect their ego. June Carter, despite her obvious
gifts and celebrity, was at once endlessly interested as well
as being endlessly interesting, and she understood Johnny Cash on
a molecular level. It was the type of understanding that
(14:21):
can possess and propel a man. Their attraction for one
another was next level. It was chemical scientific. June Carter's sexuality,
singed Johnny Cash at a show with June back in
August up in Toronto. Johnny, overcome with his desire for
his not so secret secret girlfriend, called her a sex
machine from the stage. Wasted again on booys and pills,
(14:44):
Johnny left the stage, dropped down onto all fours, and
began howling at June and following her around while attempting
to lick her ankles. It was the kind of public
breakdown that, had it happened in the Internet age, would
likely have been a career killer, but because it happened
in nineteen sixty five, resulted and only a short mention
in the Toronto Star admonishing Johnny for his act being
inappropriate for children. Married or not. Johnny was obsessed to
(15:09):
the point of distraction. Johnny Cash was once again playing
with fire. June Carter was a world wrecker. Pills were
ever necessary. It may have been Mexican Radio, but it
was owned by the Little Lads from Liverpool. After Willie Bully,
it was right back to the Beatles again. George Harrison's
intro rift to Ticket to Ride pierced the static on
(15:30):
the cabs speakers and pulled Johnny's head out of June
Carter's pants. For the moment, Ringos staggered, but steady beat
banged on through, and Johnny was held fixed again by
John Lennon's lyrics melancholy, blue and full of sex, just
like Johnny. Johnny knew Lennon was talking about sex. It
was all right there in the air in his head. Damnit,
(15:50):
he missed June. The pills would help, they always did,
and right now Johnny Cash was staring at a suitcase
filled with them. His enterprising cab driver had turned from
a shady Horras bar with enough dex adrine and tranquilizers
to put an entire audience of Grand Old Opry fans
out the pasture, which, after being banned from the Opry
back in fifty six, was a fate Johnny would have
(16:12):
relished seeing come to fruition. But enough about the past.
The future was now, and Johnny Cash was movie jonesing,
so he threw a handful of pills to the back
of his throat, chased him down with a warm bottle
of beer, and began stuffing the rest of his newly
procured stash into his guitar case. He was flying back
to the States. He had to get back to June asap,
(16:32):
and the DeSoto, despite the Cabby's lead foot, wasn't going
to cut it Johnny's drug slinging. Cabby made his way
to the airport nel Passo, but not before being made
by a couple of cops. Johnny was searched on suspicion
of heroin possession. The cops didn't find heroin, but they
did find Johnny's pills six hundred and eighty eight dexadrine
(16:52):
four hundred and fifty seven equanol. Johnny Cash was busted
and thrown in jail. Perhaps out of shame, or more
likely out of fear of being locked up for a
long stretch, Johnny Cash straightened himself out for a moment anyway,
He put June Carter on the shelf and began a
period of reconciliation with his wife, Vivian. If for no
(17:13):
other reason, appearance is sake, the judge would most likely
go easy on a family man went to thinking, especially
one who was doing his best to clean up his
act and to pull himself out of the scandalous ring
of fire that had come to define him in the newspapers.
It worked. At his arraignment, Johnny appeared clear eyed, in
a gained weight. His wife was at his side, standing
(17:33):
by her man, and there was no smart ass in
Johnny's answers to the judge like there had been back
during the Los Padres wildfire incident. Johnny's lawyers went to
work and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge. The
judge went easy on him, a thousand dollars fine in
a thirty day suspended sentence, in effect leaving Johnny to
get his life and career back in order. But Johnny
(17:54):
Cash could not leave well enough alone. Reckless, stubborn, hell bent.
He was like a moth to a flame. We'll be
right back after this word, word word, Johnny Cash was
dead on the floor, and it was all Ronnie Hawkins's fault.
(18:16):
Ronnie Hawkins, the hard driving Canadian rockabilly hell raiser, singer
of The Hawks, the man who told his young guitarist
Robbie Robertson in his pitch to get him to join
his band, you won't make much money, or you'll get
more pussy than Sinatra had. It seemed drunk and drugged
his friend Johnny Cash into an early grave, pretty much
to the surprise of no one. Despite johnny'sttempt at sobriety
(18:39):
and fidelity a couple months prior, he was back to
his old ways pills booze June Carter. He was a
man possessed, bent on self destruction, and Ronnie Hawkins was
the perfect wingman for such a mission. Following a semi
disaster show earlier in the evening, the two set about
the party. At some point, Ronnie took off and Johnny
(19:02):
felt into a stupor. He was found the following morning,
face down on the floor of his motor home in
the parking lot of the Toronto Four Seasons without a pulse,
and that's the time. In the music industry, Johnny Cash
was a liability. Promoters knew he'd pack him in, but
they figured he was fifty to fifty on whether or
not he'd show up sober enough to play. His manager,
(19:24):
Sal hall Off was doing everything he could outrun Johnny's
ever deteriorating professional reputation, managing the fallout from the bust
in El Paso, the trials surrounding the fire at Los Padres,
the loan, string of canceled concerts due to Johnny's drug
and alcohol use, and of course, covering up the car
crash in Nashville, the one where Johnny totaled June Carter's Cadillac.
(19:45):
Saul had a scramble to keep the details of the
crash and Johnny and June's affair under wraps and out
of the newspapers. Somehow, Sal's hustle always kept it so
Johnny Cash would lived at the end of the day.
But on that morning in Toronto, on March nineteenth, nineteen
sixty six, they both seemed out of options. Johnny Cash
(20:06):
had no pulse and no one had any answers. Where
were his pillstash? What should they do? Who should they call?
Where should they go? They could go to the hospital,
but that would mean making the overdose public and thus
driving the final nail into the coffin. That was Johnny
Cash's career at the moment. And they could say fuck
it and try to revive Johnny themselves and head to
the next show. But that was in the States in Rochester,
(20:28):
New York. So that meant crossing the border and subjecting
Saul and the rest of Johnny's entourage to a custom
search and risking the discovery of what was believed to
be an ample supply of Johnny's illegal drugs, and thus
jail for the lot of them. Either way, they were screwed,
so they said fuck it, the show must go on,
and they headed to the border. They endeavored to bring
(20:50):
Johnny back to consciousness, slapping him about the face, yelling
at him, pounding his chest, until, by some stroke of
dumb luck, they were able to generate some signs of
life minimal as they were. Twitch of the eyelid, a moan,
a labored cough. It was enough for them to press on,
and they stashed a prone Johnny Cash under a pile
of dirty laundry and miraculously made it through customs without
(21:11):
being searched. Soon enough they were able to fully revive Johnny.
They made it to Rochester in time for the show,
and with Johnny's heartbeat now ticking again at a normal
pace and with the benefit of a couple hours of
forced sobriety, Johnny Cash waltzed onto the stage and delivered
a transformative performance. It was nothing short of a miracle.
It was inspired, just like Johnny's love for his touring
(21:33):
mate June Carter. That year, in nineteen sixty six, Johnny's wife, Vivian,
filed for divorce, a request Johnny was happy to oblige.
Also that year, June Carter, formerly divorced professional badass Edwin
rip Nicks, a former football player, race car driver, and cop.
Johnny and June were finally able to be with one another.
(21:56):
Not that anything had really stopped them before, but now
they were able to be out in the open about it,
and now with June's support, or more likely, with the
prospect of some sort of real future with June, the
woman of his dreams. Johnny Cash took a sincere swing
at sobriety and it stuck. With a clear head, his
next move was to take his career to the next level.
(22:17):
He needed a hit. Popular music was evolving at a
fevered pitch. Dylan had gone electric, the Beatles were going psychedelic,
and if Johnny Cash didn't make some sort of new
musical statement, he was going nowhere. He had an idea,
a collaboration of sorts with murderers, rapists, bank robbers, and
an assortment of men just like himself, bad bad men
(22:40):
who used to move fast but weren't going nowhere. A
captive audience of bag men, second story men, wheelmen, confidence men,
men out on the margins, men with no direction home
men who played with fire. Fulsome prison Men. Johnny's record label,
Columbia Records, wasn't having any of it, but Johnny went
(23:02):
through with the plan to record a live show for
an album release the storied prison he'd written about in
his nineteen fifty five Sun Records release Fulsome Prison Blues.
Since then, Johnny had been written to from countless prisoners
who identified with not only his music, but with his
fast living, sometimes criminal behavior. Just like them, Johnny Cash
had stripes. Johnny also had empathy. He felt for the prisoners.
(23:27):
He knew what they were up against, and he knew
the energy he'd bring to a live show for them
would be transformative and thus worthy of getting down on tape.
Against Columbia's wishes, Johnny went ahead with the project. The
proof was in the performance here on record on Johnny
Cash Is at Fulsome Prison As unlike any other pop
(23:48):
music live record, the excitement from the audience, the result
of a truly impassioned performance by Johnny Cash and his
band The Tennessee Three plus Carl Perkins on guitar and
June Carter on backing vocals and infectious. During the set,
Johnny was Johnny. He was inspired and inspiring. He cajoled
(24:08):
the inmates. He paraded June, a beautiful woman on stage,
the likes of which some of the men in the
audience hadn't seen in the flesh in years. In Cocaine Blues,
a song where the main character snorts a mountain oft
coke and kills his cheating wife after a bad night
in Horrors Mexico, Johnny changed the lyric I shot my
woman down to I shot that bad bitch down. Unsurprisingly,
(24:30):
the prisoners went nuts. There. He was the Man in Black,
Johnny Cash in a maximum security prison, surrounded by machine
guns and felons, with the woman he loved, skirting danger,
risking it to make the album that would define him.
The results were undeniable. The record went to number one
on the country charts, but more importantly, and totally on
(24:51):
brand for The Man in Black, it hit number thirteen
on the pop charts. Upon its release, the album was
held critically and to this day has become a cultural
landmark of sorts. A piece of music that is much
more than a piece of music. It's social commentary. It's
a fast thrill, it's a swing in the face of authority.
It's pure Johnny Cash. It redefined him as something more
(25:14):
than just another hard living country artist and reignited his
career exactly as he talked. A couple months after the
Fulsome performance, Johnny proposed to June on stage in front
of seven thousand people at the London Ice House in London, Ontario.
June said yes, finally after multiple previous proposals from Johnny,
(25:35):
and the two were married in a fever on March first,
nineteen sixty eight. Things finally leveled out for Johnny Cash
(25:59):
and thenineteen seventies. Not that it wasn't without its ups
and downs, both professionally and personally, but compared to the
nineteen sixties, the seventies was a decade of relative calm imbalance.
Johnny and June, despite being creatures of the road, anchored
themselves into domestic bliss. When not out on the road,
they split their time between their home in Hendersonville, Tennessee,
(26:22):
and their Cinnamon Hill home in Jamaica, an old sugar
plantation property built in seventeen forty seven near Montego Bay,
and it was where they sat listening to their housekeeper
recite Grace on an idyllic Christmas Day in nineteen eighty one,
along with their eleven year old son, John Carter Cash,
the boy's friend Doug Caldwell, Johnny's sister Reba, and her
(26:43):
husband Chuck. The sound of the bandits invading their peaceful
holiday home was at first more surprising than frightening. A
loud and out of place clang from the front entryway
had the guests searching each other's faces for answer across
the dinner table, then hurried feet marching furiously through the
(27:04):
adjacent rooms and toward the room. The guests re seated
and sent their heart rates from pulse to pound and
finally shouting out of place. In the Cash Carter home,
no one shouted, but there it was loud, angry and
desperate commands careening off the interior walls of the home
in the familiar Jamaican petois. Nobody move, Where are the jewels?
(27:24):
Give us the cash? Three armed robbers, locals, menacing hungry
at their wits ends, all armed, one with a gun,
another with a knife, and the tall one with a
twitch and the junkie gaze. He held a hatchet in
his hand. The one with the pistol grabbed eleven year
old Doug Coldwell and thrust the barrel of the gun
into his temple. Some of the guests gasps, others averted
(27:47):
their eyes. The smell of urine was now apparent. Johnny
played it cool.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
What do you want, he calmly asked, the assilence everything
where the boy dies replied the bandit, Johnny said, sat
there in his chair expressionless.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
He knew these men boys really desperate. He could see
it in their eyes. Addicted. He could also see himself
from a few years earlier, and recognized that, were it
not for a few faithful turns in the road, that
his reality could easily have been more like his junkie assailants.
So he knew what to do. Play it cool, give
(28:24):
him what they want. With that enough, wait for it.
With time, they'd let down their guard. It was human nature,
and when the opportunity presented itself, pounce, grab a chair
and swing it hard into the grill, the tall one
with a twitch level them and snatch his hatchet, and
hope and pray that outnumbering the other two in the
ensuing melee would save your family. But it never happened.
(28:46):
The bandits gave up pressing Johnny and his guests. They
were content with the fifty grand in cash and jewelry
they had taken from the house, along with the keys
to Johnny's range rover, and split and they didn't make
it far. After local authorities were alerted. The threesome was
located at the Montego Bay Airport en route to Miami
defence the stolen jewelry, and they were arrested, taken into custody,
(29:09):
and never seen or heard from again, apparently the victims
of swift, cold Jamaican justice, colonial style. In the end,
Johnny Cash was more upset by the fate of his assailants,
men who he reasoned were unjustly punished for a crime
against him, the punishment for which he had no agency,
than he was upset by the traumatic events of that day.
(29:32):
The way Johnny Cash saw it, it was pure luck
that he hadn't met a violent end sooner himself. Car
crashes wildfires, drug over doses, angry badass husbands. He'd been
playing with fire for years up to that point, and
even in his sober domestic years. The home in Jamaica
at Cinnamon Hill was risky living in comparison to the
(29:53):
vast majority of Jamaican locals who existed in poverty. Johnny Cash,
despite his down home salt of the Earth disposition, live
as an ostentatious American rock star and a big, expensive
house with a pretty wife, famous friends, hired servants, and
luxury vehicles, all with little to no obvious or effective security.
(30:14):
Playing with fire. Burned, Burned, Burned. I'm Jake Brennan and
this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and
(30:39):
is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this
episode can be found on the show notes page at
disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All
Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
We really appreciate it, and if not, you can become
a member right now by going to disgrace lamppod dot com.
Slash Membership members can listen to every episode of disgracelam
Ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode
every month, weekly unscripted bonus episode, special audio collections, and
early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgraylampod dot com
(31:15):
slash membership for details, Rate and review the show, and
follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at disgracelampod
and on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at disgracelampod.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Rock a roll up here the bed Donland
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.