Johnny Cash: Love God Murder

It’s always good to look back at old friends and old favorites, and for me, a dear old musical friend is Johnny Cash. Now, if you check some of my other writing on music for Associated Content alone, that may surprise you. After all, I’ve written about the great French composer Olivier Messiaen, both about his hundredth birthday (here) and his Quartet for the End of Time (here). I’ve also written about the deaths of Miriam Makeba (here) and Yma Sumac (here) as well as about the ongoing life of a weird musical instrument, the theremin (here).

And now, I’m writing about Johnny Cash (Wikipedia article). Johnny Cash wrote and sang songs that people who tend to avoid his kind of music find themselves liking. He created stark songs that are closer to stories by William Faulkner or even tragedies by Sophocles, than to twangy, nasal songs. You know, the ones that you hear on AM radio late at night, lamenting that “my dog died, my truck got wrecked, my woman done left with my best friend, and I shore miss that dog.” On the other hand, there are few lines in all of literature more memorable than Johnny Cash’s “I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die,” from “Folsom Prison Blues” (video).

Johnny Cash: Love God Murder

In 2000, when Johnny Cash was in his late sixties, already suffering from the rare neurological disease that would end his life, he released a three-CD compilation Love God Murder that reviewed the best of his very varied work, with Cash himself selecting the songs (track list here). For me, it is a starting point for those not familiar with Cash’s work or a great returning point for those who are. The title, outlining Cash’s three main themes, reminds me of a remark by a European friend of mine, “You Americans have more churches and more murders than any other people I know of.”

Johnny Cash: Love

She did not comment on how we rank in the love department. Judging from the disc Love, Cash seems to have done quite well, thanks to his wife and the love of his life (that equals one lady, not typical of many songs in his line of work), June Carter Cash. She wrote Cash’s big love-song hit, “Ring of Fire” (video), included in this collection, which also preserves other great Cash love songs, such as “I Still Miss Someone” (video) There are also some little known treasures as well, including, “Happiness Is You” (video), a lovely, loving song for June Carter Cash, which I had never heard anywhere else, with this strikingly affectionate line, “I know now my pot of gold is anywhere you are.

Johnny Cash: God

The second disc God contains sixteen religious songs, but it is surprising how much variety there is in the selections, from swinging numbers like “Belshazzar” (video) to a rather hokey western, “The Greatest Cowboy of All” (video). Along the way, there are some songs that can make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and maybe make your soul reach upward a little as well. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (video) shows just how powerful a performer Cash was, bringing new strength or finding old strength in a grand old song.

Johnny Cash: Murder

Murder begins with “Folsom Prison” (video). Of course, the songs with this theme pack a special wallop, but one of the most intriguing performances on this CD is “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” (video), because in it Cash acts out a compressed drama that has all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. My favorite moments of all three of these CDs are when Cash’s rises to the challenge of one of the most succinct songs ever heard, the folk ballad “The Long Black Veil” (video). If you click through to only one video, this is the one I’d suggest.

Johnny Cash: A note on the videos

Over Johnny Cash’s long career-the recordings on these CDs span forty years-he would record songs more than once, sometimes in the studio, sometimes in concert. The videos I selected are not necessarily the versions included in God Love Murder. When given a choice, I selected videos of live performances; since for some of these, I could not find live performances, I selected what I felt was the best. Among the videos of Johnny Cash, there are some great duets that he sang with Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and others, but I wanted to emphasize Cash’s voice alone.

Johnny Cash: the final albums

In 1994, Johnny Cash released the first of what are known as the American Recordings with producer Rick Rubin (list of albums), the last of which has not yet been released. These albums took Johnny Cash back to songs he had recorded previously and into strange new territory, such as his recording of the Nine Inch Nails hit “Hurt” (video). These were albums that could have been made only after he had lived and loved through the songs of Love God Murder, the songs that show Johnny Cash to be a powerful, unique voice of America.