Prologue
When I was spending the summer of 2004 in the heat-beaten desolation of extreme Western Iraq, I had plenty of opportunity to get to know the men in my platoon. One of them, a guy named Larry, was a 155mm howitzer section chief by trade, forced into a role as a squad leader after Echo Battery’s transition from a counter-fire artillery battery to a provisional rifle (infantry) company.
Larry was from Iowa, and as good Midwestern boys and friendly Big Ten rivals, we spent a good share of our time on duty together talking about home, similar experiences growing up, and music. Larry was a big fan of Country music, especially older Country of the Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Johnny Cash variety. As it turned out, Johnny Cash was our mutual favorite recording artist.
In a conversation one evening, just after the Salatu-l-Maghrib (sunset prayer) was finished by the local mosque, Larry and I went outside to enjoy the cool night air. We were talking about respect for one’s elders, and the subject of Johnny Cash somehow dovetailed into the conversation.
Larry said that if he had ever met Johnny Cash that he would only have referred to him as “Mr. Cash,” and that it was his practice to only ever refer to him in the third person as “Johnny Cash” or “The Man in Black,” never “Cash” or simply “Johnny.” Larry had so much respect for Johnny Cash’s music that his very name became inseparable, a combined unit. To this day that conversation has stuck with me, and following Larry’s example, I will only refer to The Man in Black by his rightful title, the simple, yet powerful, “Johnny Cash.”
Background
My friend Rob asked me my impressions of American V: A Hundred Highways, the first posthumously-produced Johnny Cash album. For more information on how the album came to be, check out the Wikipedia entry.
Initial Impression
I’ve been an enormous fan of the American series, in terms of the music, the production, and the CD label design itself. Other than the musical results themselves, the thing I’ve loved most about the series was the album art. The stark black and white photography, the simple “CASH” on the front, the great liner notes inside - these albums are the complete package. Rick Rubin has earned my infinite praise by treating Johnny Cash’s music with the utmost seriousness and respect it deserves, and that respect is shown by the extremely careful attention to detail his American Recordings label has given to each Johnny Cash release.
The outside of American V is dark, though not as quite so dark as American IV: The Man Comes Around. Johnny Cash sits in front of a microphone, his headphones on, concentrating intensely on what he’s hearing, and following along on the sheet music on the stand in front of him. His posture leaves some doubt in the mind - is he sick/tired and feeling the weight of his years? Is his guard down? His mouth is pursed, the bottom lip sunken in slightly.
The Man in Black looks old and vulnerable, a marked difference from the first two albums in the American series, American Recordings and Unchained. American III: Solitary Man seems to be the turning point between the two designs. In the first two albums of the series he has very upright posture, a look of strength across his face, a sense of a career in the midst of a breathtaking rebirth.
American III gives us a slightly stooped Johnny Cash, a man perhaps feeling every bit of the nearly sixty-nine years he’d spent on this Earth to that point. American IV, released less than a year before his death, shows a Johnny Cash completely enveloped in shadow, only his face remaining exposed in the light. For all intents and purposes, it has the look of a last album, and indeed it would be the last album released before Johnny Cash’s death on 12 September, 2003.
I wonder, then, if this return to a greater balance of dark and light is intentional on American Records’ part. Certainly the parallel wouldn’t be lost on The Man in Black himself, as he believed that any death, though extremely dark, lonely, and foreboding, was merely a doorway to a new life. One can only wonder what the upcoming American VI will hold.
The Music
Track One - Help Me (Larry Gatlin) - 2:51
Lord, Help me walk
Another mile, just one more mile;
I’m tired of walkin’ all alone.
Lord, Help me smile
Another smile, just one more smile;
You know I just can’t make it on my own.
Fittingly, the first track of this album is a prayer set to music. A simple two guitar introduction, then Johnny Cash’s voice singing the first two stanzas, draws you in. As he finishes the first line of the refrain a cello provides a supporting chord, and a few seconds later another cello enters with quiet flourishes. The entire song is so simple, laid so bare, and so obviously personal in light of the death of his wife, June Carter Cash, in the spring that I can’t help but feel a huge knot form in my throat. The end of the song offers a bit of relief, with a few rays of divine support starting to break through the overcast atmosphere.
Track Two - God’s Gonna Cut You Down (Traditional) - 2:38
Opening with some fire and brimstone (feet stomping and hands clapping), Johnny Cash enters in unison with the light picking of guitars. This is the Old Testament Johnny Cash, singing in the voice of “the destroyer” of Exodus xii. 23, carrying a message of Divine Justice from the mouth of God to the corrupt and evil of the world:
He spoke to me in the voice so sweet
I thought I heard the shuffle of the angel’s feet
He called my name and my heart stood still
When he said, “John go do My will!”
Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler,
The gambler,
The back-biter
Tell ‘em that God’s gonna cut ‘em down
Tell ‘em that God’s gonna cut ‘em down.
This is also the dark, malevolent Johnny Cash of American Recordings The main difference between “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” and songs like “Thirteen” and “Delia’s Gone” is the character he assumes. Previously speaking as the murderous, possessed wrong-doer, Johnny Cash now steps forward as the Angel of Death, seeking to bring the corrupt to justice.
This song also features very robust singing on the part of The Man in Black, which was not always possible for Johnny Cash by the time he was recording the songs that would eventually make up this album. The quality of his vocals are always excellent, it is merely his ability to deliver the signature Johnny Cash range that is intermittent. In later songs, this actually contributes to the moukod.
Track Three - Like the 309 (Johnny Cash) - 4:35
It should be a while before I see Doctor Death
So it would sure would be nice if I could get my breath
The tune is quite bluesy, but Johnny Cash’s voice is hoarse and unable to completely project his singing. The effect is scratchy, like the bark of a gnarled old tree that has stood through many a storm. The tree knows it will eventually fall, but that doesn’t keep it from stretching it’s branches up as tall as possible to spite the sky.
This isn’t the first song Johnny Cash recorded for Rick Rubin joining the images of death and trains. American Recordings featured “Let the Train Blow the Whistle,” also an original composition by Johnny Cash, and I am left to wonder if this isn’t a coincidence. While the tone of “Let the Train…” is boisterous and devil-may-care, “Like the 309″ is more frolicsome and yet somehow content with the eventuality of death instead of flippant like the earlier song.
Track Four - If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot) - 4:30
If I could read your mind, love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell.
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstores sell.
When you reached the part where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me.
But heroes often fail,
And you won’t read that book again
Because the ending’s just too hard to take!
So obviously a song about his relationship with June Carter, this is one of the most touching pieces of the album. When the words catch in his throat in the third verse, and it is a moment that hangs in the balance. You nearly expect him, Johnny Cash, the man who has sung more songs about pain than any other American, living or dead, to not be able to finish the song. Johnny Cash loved June Carter so damn much, and every word of this song drives home the crushing void that her death left in his heart.
I never thought I could feel this way
And I’ve got to say that I just don’t get it.
I don’t know where we went wrong,
But the feelin’s gone
And I just can’t get it back!
Lacking her presence, he was so vulnerable, and that fact is left completely exposed by this song. I can’t listen to it without thinking of my own loved one, hoping she can read my mind.
Track Five - Further On (Up the Road) (Bruce Springsteen) - 3:25
An outstanding cover, “Further On” sees Johnny Cash’s voice start off somewhat strained, but as the song progresses, the bass creeps back in and the sound becomes fuller, with less scratchiness and more security.
The song is a upward slope of acceptance of June’s death and hope to meet her in the next life while acknowledging his work wasn’t finished. “But I got this fever burnin’ in my soul,” he signs. “So let’s take the good times as they go / And I’ll meet you further on up the road.” Before she died, June told her husband to continue working, and the recording sessions Johnny Cash did provided enough material for two more albums, both of which will be released posthumously because he was able to finish what was laid out for him and then set off to meet June.
Track Six - The Evening Train (Hank Williams) - 4:17
Another deeply touching tribute to June, “The Evening Train” is the second song on American V to use the death/train pairing. The song opens to Johnny Cash singing about saying goodbye to June:
I heard the laughter at the depot,
But my tears fell like the rain
When I saw them place that long white casket
In the baggage coach of the evening train.
The baby’s eyes are red from weeping,
Its little heart is filled with pain,
“Oh, Daddy,” it cried, “they’re taking Momma
Away from us on the evening train!”
As Johnny Cash turns to leave, June calls to him, telling him to be strong for their family. Overcome, he offers up a prayer to God, because Johnny Cash knows there is one burden he cannot carry:
As I turned to walk away from the depot,
It seemed I heard her call my name,
“Take care of baby and tell him, darling,
That I’m going home on the evening train.”
I pray that God will give me courage
To carry on ’til we meet again.
It’s hard to know she’s gone forever
They’re carrying her home on the evening train.
The song strikes me as one of Williams’ most sobering compositions, and makes me wonder if he released it as Luke the Drifter, much like he did “I Dreamed About Mama Last Night” and “Too Many Parties.” In Johnny Cash’s hands it is yet another dagger to the heart of his audience, a window into a wound so personal and crippling that it took his life less than four months after June passed on.
Track Seven - I Came to Believe (Johnny Cash) - 3:44
A personal statement about the various struggles he endured throughout his life and his eventual acceptance of a higher power over him, “I Came to Believe” has a very hymn-like quality which draws roots in the very beginning of Johnny Cash’s musical background - singing Gospel songs while working in the fields with his family. As with the best songwriters, The Man in Black tells a story rather than preach his revelation, and paired with a stout instrumental background it is a very engaging tune.
Track Eight - Love’s Been Good to Me (Rod McKuen) - 3:18
The title of American V: A Hundred Highways comes from a lyric in the refrain of this song. As the first truly happy song of the album, this comes as a welcome break from all the heartache expressed up to this point. That the first seven songs of the album were allowed to be songs so fraught with grief, loneliness, regret, and longing is a major statement by Rick Rubin. One wouldn’t expect all the gloom to drive record sales, but American V became the first Johnny Cash album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts since 1969’s Johnny Cash at San Quentin. As it is, “Love’s Been Good to Me” come across as very up-lifting and tranquil, as if Johnny Cash is counting his blessings. As with nearly all the guitar work on this album, the instrumentation is very soft and merely serves as a background for the still powerful voice of The Man in Black.
Track Nine - A Legend In My Time (Don Gibson) - 2:37
A bit tongue-in-cheek since Johnny Cash is the very definition of a legend, this song is still outstanding because of the pairing of a very prime-sounding Johnny Cash singing the majority of the song, then repeating the first two stanzas as spoken word while a Hammond B3 organ provides the perfect atmospheric resonance behind him. I’ve always been of the mind that the two most powerful modern American voices are Johnny Cash and John Wayne, and when The Man in Black does spoken word, I’m lead to believe that The Duke takes a seat behind him. This is an incredible song, one of the very best of the whole American Recordings-era.
Track Ten - Rose of My Heart (Hugh Moffat) - 3:18
You are the rose of my heart.
You are the love of my life.
A flower not faded nor falling apart,
If you’re cool let my love make you warm,
Rose of my heart.
So hard times are easy times, what do I care?
There’s nothing I’d change if I could.
The tears and the laughter are things that we share,
Your hand in mine makes all times good.
Another song for and about June. Three of the American series albums have songs about roses - Unchained (”The One Rose (That’s Left in My Heart)”), American IV (Give My Love To Rose), and now American V.
One of the messages of this album is loving someone so thoroughly that it completely destroys both soul and health when that individual is lost. The way Johnny Cash handles that message is much more mature, and with far more finesse, than any contemporary group or singer could. Some singers will claim such things with loud screams in their music, Johnny Cash gets by sounding as worn out and let down as he really was. The portrait he paints isn’t an easy one to look at, but it is so incredibly human and arresting that you can’t help but listen even as you fight back tears.
Track Eleven - Four Strong Winds (Ian Tyson) - 4:34
Four strong winds that blow lonely
Seven seas that run high
All these things that don’t change come what may
Now our good times are all gone
And I’m bound for movin’ on
I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way
My friend Tim commented that he’s normally skeptical of posthumous releases, and that he couldn’t think of a better way to close out Johnny Cash’s discography than the last track of American IV, “We’ll Meet Again.”
I can agree that “We’ll Meet Again” was an extremely fitting final track for a career as important and special as Johnny Cash’s, but “Four Strong Winds” is also a very good choice to start winding down American V. He’s leaving us behind, but there is the possibility that he’ll return to us again, perhaps sooner than we look for him.
Track Twelve - I’m Free from the Chain Gang Now (Klein Herscher) - 3:00
I got rid of the shackles that bound me and the guards that were always around me.
There were tears on the mail mother sent me in jail,
But I’m free from the chain gang now.
All the years I was known and respected, ’til one day I was wrongly suspected.
I was shackled in chains in the cold freezin’ rain, but I’m free from the chain gang now.
All the years I was known by a number, how I kept my mind is a wonder.
But like a bird in a tree, I got my liberty, and I’m free from the chain gang now.
I got rid of the shackles that bound me and the guards that were always around me.
There were tears on the mail mother sent me in jail,
But I’m free from the chain gang now.
There were tears on the mail mother sent me in jail,
But I’m free from the chain gang now.
Perhaps “I’m Free from the Chain Gang Now” isn’t the sentimental finish like “We’ll Meet Again,” but there is no disputing the message.
Johnny Cash is finally a free man. Possessed at alternate time by desire for a woman he couldn’t have, drug addition, a failing body, and then the loneliness and grief of his final months, Johnny Cash tells us to dry the tears we’ve shed for him. All the suffering is over, and he and June are reunited. Whatever mood his audience has when they start listening to the album, Johnny Cash manages to leave us hopeful and uplifted after taking us through music chronicling the worst days of his life, and he does it in one simple song.
Final Reflection
A few weeks ago I was in Barnes & Noble, browsing the music section. One of the gentlemen there I’ve had a few musical discussions with came up to ask if I needed any help. After a few minutes of chatting, he suggested I check out Bob Dylan’s 2001 effort “Love and Theft”. I hadn’t heard the album before, and he assured me that it was Dylan’s best in thirty years, and one of the most important releases of the last decade.
I’ve listened to “Love and Theft”, and it’s no American V. Not even close. Go out and get this album now. If you’re reading this at work, go out on your lunch and buy it.
Don’t listen to it until you get home, don’t listen to it at all until you can have forty-two minutes and forty-five seconds of uninterrupted time to yourself.
Take the phone off the hook, turn off the lights, and just let the music flow over you.
Cry for Johnny Cash a little.
Cry for June Carter a little.
Even cry for yourself a little.
Just listen to this album.
On 25 March, 2004, a family in Texas lost their son. For a bunch of guys sitting in the Iraqi desert, we lost a young man about our own age, a guy with a soft heart and quiet maturity. When Casper left us late that morning, and while we sat all afternoon in the hot sun reflecting on his brief life, we had no idea what lay in store for each of us as individuals, or what his death might signify to us.
I didn’t know Casper very well. I had come to Echo Battery only a month before as an augment from Headquarters Battery to assist them in accomplishing their mission as a counter-fire artillery unit. I worked in Communications and Casper was in Motor Transport, which meant he wasn’t in my section. Because of that, I didn’t really begin to chat with Casper until we had touched down in Kuwait. Once I got to know him, however, I took a shining to the guy. He had a nice smile, liked to joke around, but would sweat alongside you all day until the assigned tasks was done. Working next to him pushed all of us to work harder.
It’s been over two years since Casper died, two years since I heard the gunshot and screams less than twenty feet away. None of those screams were Casper’s - he was mercifully spared the agony of dying, perhaps as a sort of inadequate compensation for being plucked from the opening moments of the very best years of his life. To this day I can still hear the pop of the rifle some nights when I close my eyes, sifting in and out of that one second when I didn’t know for an eternity.
On the one year anniversary of Casper’s passing, our Battery First Sergeant gathered up the vets, the guys who are still around from our Iraq deployment. He suggested that we tip a cold one for Casper that evening and remember the time we had together.
I’ve drank many a brew in Casper’s honor in the time since then, and I’ve spent many evenings remembering the few months I spent with Casper. Those memories always flow into thinking about the time I’ve had since his death - the time he never got to have, the time his family never got to have with him. There will never be children to call him “Daddy.” There were family members, a girlfriend, friends, and brothers-in-arms left behind to carry on his memory, to carry a piece of Casper that he would have otherwise given to his children.
I think about my loved ones: my family, my girlfriend, my friends, and the time we’ve gotten to share since March 25, 2004. That day is a day I will never forget and will forever observe privately, because it was the day that the finite quality of life was tattooed into my brain.
Casper taught me a lesson in death that he could never have in life. But it doesn’t sit well with me that it took a young man losing his life in a seemingly meaningless war to teach me how fleeting life is, how quickly it can be snatched away, and the value of that individual existence. When I remember Casper, it is with a gratitude that I can never repay, and an overwhelming desire to hold my loved ones tightly just once more, lest the same happen to me.
James Casper, may you continue to rest in peace, and may those of you who read this have a pleasant Memorial Day weekend. Hug your loved ones, remember the sacrifices of those who are no longer with us, and travel safely.
Two Notes
Due to a technical glitch, the entry I wrote last Thursday for the following Friday entry remained private. I’ve published it now, availabe here.
As I will be on vacation in Chicago until Wednesday, regular posting here will resume Friday, 2 June.
On Sunday, three guys from Echo Battery, the unit I deployed to Iraq with, were struck by a roadside bomb. The first, Lopez, sustained third-degree burns over 50% of his body, and is burned a total of 95%. They have already amputated both his hands. Tapia, the second one hit, has third-degree burns over 25-50% of his body, and second degree burns over much of the rest. He also has a broken leg. Lovas, the driver, was the “luckiest,” sustaining only second-degree burns (30%) and a broken wrist.
Lopez and Tapia are scheduled to be flown from Germany to the burn ward in San Antonio, TX sometime this weekend. That is, if Lopez makes it that far. He’s been in and out of the OR the whole time, and frankly, at least according to what my colonel told me, he’s not expected to make it much longer.
So, the waste continues. More lives forever changed by a colossal mistake, a colossal ongoing mistake. Every time I think about it, pictures of Tapia’s little daughter float into my mind, or I see Lovas’ crooked smile. I knew both of those guys pretty well; we deployed together, came back together, drank together a few times, and had a great working relationship. Tapia was there for the third time since the war started. Lopez I didn’t know so well, he’s a new guy who joined up after I’d left Echo. Still, Echo was a family to me for a long time (though a completely dysfunctional one), and it leaves a mark.
I also wonder about my buddy Mike, who, as Echo’s chief Corpsman (the Navy version of a medic) would have treated them. He was on really good terms with Tapia and Lovas, too. I hope he’s holding up, but I have no way of knowing until I hear from him.
If you’ve got a minute and are so inclined, say a prayer for Lopez, Tapia, and Lovas, their families, and the boys of Echo that are left behind in Iraq. If you’re not religious, good thoughts go a long way, too. I really would appreciate it.
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