More on Johnny Cash
So we finally got around to seeing Walk the Line last night, and thought it was pretty good. I got my first JC album in 1985. I was working at the college radio station and they were clearing out the record library (never ever a good idea…) so I got a bunch of albums, most notably Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and KR&G Blues, Rags, & Hollers. Dylan and I both have copies of these albums, so whichever version of doubles is in the worst condition is in a box in the closet. Dylan (eating from the newly designed Corn Pops) says this was also his first Cash album, acquired at about the same time (though he was younger). The photo also includes his San Quentin live album.
My favorite Cash song is “One Piece at a Time.” I was surprised when people at my last corporate job didn’t know this song. Do I smell a team-building exercise?
on March 25th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
My folks saw Johnny Cash at the MN State Fair in about 1969 and bought the Folsom Prison album that year. Over the years, my Dad played it a lot. He worked at the Ford Plant for 37 years, so when One Piece At A Time came out in the seventies (?), he always got a special kick out that one, too.
When my wife, Jeanine, and I went to see Walk the Line, I almost had to leave the theater when he started singing Cocaine Blues in the Folsom Prison scene. It was an intense, culminating moment. To my total surprise, the song came up from deep in my memory and I started hyperventilating, then crying convulsively. Frankly, it was embarrassing!
Anti-climax: my Dad is alive and well and we’ve always had a great relationship. It had more to do with Johnny Cash himself and how, as a kid, I was always scared of that album cover and his voice.
Our family went and saw him in a cornfield somewhere. This was pre-Rick Rubin and some bar was able to hire him to play on a makeshift stage next to their parking lot. In about 1989, my sister and I saw him play at the Mission Creek Theme Park in Hinckley (another depressing pre-Rick Rubin gig) and a scale-model train (the kind you can sorta sit on) commemorating the Hinckley fire rescue train chugged past behind the stage during a gentler song. It seemed to catch him by surprise and the parody probably wasn’t lost on him, but he was very professional and did his best to ignore it.
on March 25th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
P.S. My Dad was on the assembly line and knew of a few guys who were fired for smuggling vehicle parts out of the plant under their coveralls. That song has a touch of assembly-line lore (the guy who wrote it, Wayne Kemp, was a mechanic before he became a country singer/songwriter).
on March 26th, 2006 at 7:05 am
I had a friend who went to that Hinckley gig (I was out of town) and he had a great time because everyone thought he was John Jr. and was taking photos with him. I imagine that song (One Piece…) triggered all sorts of people trying to do things like that. Thanks for your stories!