Ye Olde Christmas Post, 2009 edition

2009 has been much too wretched and sad a year to mull it over on the traditional Christmas post. Maybe I’ll save the litany of grief and despair for the New Year’s entry!

Instead, I want to take you back to a better time, a time of optimism. A time when America was only enmeshed in one ill-conceived, unwinnable overseas war. When gas was less than a buck a gallon, maybe way less (to say more would require research, which the proprietors of this site are not paying me enough to do), and when a young Fang was coming to the philosophically sound but ethically questionable conclusion that if everything he did was wrong, then nothing he did was wrong.

The world seemed alive with possibilities.

And the Big Three networks were giving variety shows to absolutely anybody. Glen Campbell had one and so did Flip Wilson and Joey Heatherton. So did Dean Martin, who enjoyed the singular perk of being contractually obligated only to show up for the actual taping of the show. The chaos that ensued from his weekly lack of preparation was the stuff of legend. They were giving variety shows out to anyone who was selling albums and agreed to play by the rules (sorry, Smothers Brothers).

They even gave one to Johnny Cash in 1969 after his massive hit concert album the year before, “Live From Folsom Prison,” catapulted him to mainstream superstar status. And for 58 mostly memorable episodes, Cash brought his unique hybrid of good ol’ boy patriotism and bleeding heart social activism to America’s living rooms.

The show isn’t available on the amazon, but I did find a copy of the full run on the ebay a few years back. Watched them with my boy in the pre-dawn hours from when he was an infant to early toddler-hood. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was an interesting thing Cash was trying to do. There’s no tell-all book out on the show so I’m only guessing, but word is Cash forced one musical guest on the network for every one the network would force on him.

That’s how you’d get shows where Tom T Hall would follow Pat Boone, or Odetta and Roger Miller would have to share screen time with alleged comedian Charlie Callas. Or another episode that included both Bobby Sherman and Burl Ives, or another one where Brenda Lee opened for Pete Seeger (who ended up dominating the at-first skeptical Grand Ol’ Opry crowd—oh hell, I have to imbed that one, from March 4, 1970).



Another thing that was consistent was an 8-10 minute segment called “Ride This Train,” where Cash would talk about the history—and sing the songs of—a featured underclass of American society every week. Or do an episode about Civil War songs, or another about long-haul truckers. Cash knew from “real America” and as long as he had a forum, the people in the big cities, who tuned in for Brenda Lee and Stevie Wonder, would too.

I wish I had watched the show at the time, but as I alluded to earlier, I was just getting ready to go off the rails and thus missed most of the pop culture of the period except that which was televised on weekend mornings. I don’t remember my parents being big TV watchers but maybe I was in bed.

The clip at the top of this piece is from Cash’s Dec. 23, 1970 broadcast. The episode also featured Johnny and June Carter’s infant son John Carter Cash in what amounted to his television debut. That clip is HERE.

In the clip at top, Cash welcomes the episode’s guests into an ersatz living room and passes a guitar around. Don and Phil Everly sing “Kentucky,” followed by Roy Orbison doing a solo acoustic version of “Pretty Paper.” Then Ike Everly plays “Cannonball Rag” before Mother Maybelle Carter joins him on guitar—literally. She does the chords and Ike strums. Someone named Vince Matthews sings “Melva’s Wine;” Johnny’s Dad, Ray Cash, rhapsodizes about meeting President Nixon then Cash’s mother, Carrie Cash, plays piano while the ensemble sings “Silent Night.”

This here is my Christmas gift to anyone who stumbles across this blog, from “real Americans” to the Intellectual Elite. To Johnny Cash, we were all just Americans.

So Merry Christmas, my fellow Americans. May better days be coming for us all.