The Road Goes On Forever

I have this recurring conversation with my Mom that goes something like this. Mom: If you could do just one thing for me, son, it would be to give your heart to the Lord. Me: Come on, Mom. Not again… Mom: [dramatic sigh, right into the receiver] It would just give me so much peace knowing we’ll spend eternity together… Me: Are you kidding? We barely survived 18 years of living together.

Actually, I don’t say that last part. We’ve stopped hurting each other for sport decades ago now.

What I do say is—and it bugs the hell out of her—is that I’m a Believer once-removed. Johnny Cash believed in Jesus, and I believe in Johnny Cash, so I figure I’m about half way there and can we please drop the subject already?

Johnny Cash’s body of work so perfectly reflects the simplicity, depth and spirituality of the man himself that it is impossible to separate the two. In a world full of hypocrites and posers (especially the show-biz part of the world), Cash was simply who he was; a reliably decent man, bent on speaking on behalf of those upon whom society had turned its back, even at the lowest points of his epic battles with drugs and alcohol.

Artistically, he took the kind of fearless, principled risks with his career that wouldn’t be seen again in a major name until Neil Young came along. He invited his Mama and Papa down to the legendary Ryman Auditorium for every episode of his short-lived TV variety show, and played free shows for prisoners as well as internationally-telecast Billy Graham come-to-Jesus rallies.

He embraced both the darkness and the light in equal measure, always looking to strike a livable balance between the two, but never completely forsaking one for the other.

I get that. We’re the products of our impulses as well as our empathies. It’s our choices that dictate our destinies, not our circumstances.

Cash and I made a lot of the same mistakes in our personal lives as young men, including an eventual deliverance from said errors in judgment that never completely chased away the demons.

So when Johnny Cash used to talk about his relationship with the Lord, it was hard not to listen. Out of respect for him, my mind remains officially open on the subject.

And that’s what I mean when I answer questions about my religious affiliation by referring the questioner to the music of Johnny Cash. Because if God can’t be found somewhere in the music of Johnny Cash, maybe the heathen horde is right after all and He doesn’t exist.

Anyway, like anyone with a quasi-religious agenda to promote, I have taken my campaign to YouTube.

As I alluded to a few paragraphs above, back in the late 60s/early 70s, Cash had his own TV variety program for a couple seasons. Back then they were giving variety shows to anyone. They were like the reality shows of the day in that they were cheap to produce and it was easy to control the content because they were usually produced in-house. And the public just couldn’t get enough of them; celebrities, in their front rooms! Imagine.

Dean Martin famously showed up for his own show only once a week, for the taping, and winged it every time. Glen Campbell had a show. Sonny and Cher had a show…

Well, Johnny Cash was smoking hot off the release of his Folsom Prison Blues album and ABC came to him with an offer he couldn’t refuse. He ended getting to shoot his show from the historic Ryman Theater in Nashville, Tennessee, then home of country and western’s venerable Grand ol’ Opry.

The rest is pop culture history.

And unfortunately, currently unavailable commercially on DVD except in a truncated, edited form (which I bought anyway and love for the picture’s crystal-clarity).

Fortunately, the same Interweb that has made a laughingstock of most of my chosen careers in the last few years, has also made it relatively easy to get my hands on a full run of the show, as well as to post highlights occasionally online via the YouTube.

The coolest thing about my Johnny Cash YouTube channel isn’t watching the number of hits grow—although that has become part of it—it’s receiving the emails from YouTube every time anybody leaves a comment on one of my clips. About 90% of the comments happen to be glowing praise for my favorite artist—and frequently gratitude for my having posted the clips—from Cash fans. It’s like a little stream of good will that flows in regularly, through good days and bad.

I mean, how can your outlook not improve when you receive this kind of thing in your email:

[name redacted] left a comment on Johnny Cash recites “The Ballad of the Harp Weaver,” below: I was 20 years old when I heard this song, I have been looking for the song for 40 years, every year at Christmas time.. I’d think of it, and wish I could hear it, just one more time. Today, I thought on youtube, dare I look. just one more time ? I knew if it wasn’t there. I would never hear it again !! Thank You for sharing this beautiful poem ~ and for making this womans dream come true. Bless you, and Johnny...Rest in Peace ~with love [redacted].



(Caveat: I’ve decided to leave all comments verbatim, or [sic]. Not only would it take forever to edit them into grammatical precision, but in some cases the form and the content of the communiqué dovetail revealingly well.)

Only a couple of the clips have generated controversy. I have several uploads where Cash talks and sings about the Civil War, and even 150 years later, the subject still enflames passions (which I will get to shortly). I usually don’t moderate comments—newspaperman, First Amendment, you do the math—but have occasionally had to step into conversations about that particular clip, or in a few cases, delete what I considered hate speech.

Mostly though, it’s all sunshine and light. Check out a few examples…

Somebody reacted to Maybelle and Sarah Carter on The Johnny Cash Show (below): Oh my God...how did you ever get ahold of such a gem? Thank you for sharing it with us al1!



Another left a comment on The Everly Brothers on The Johnny Cash Show: thank you for this my Dad and my Uncle used to be entertainers on the road and did these songs all the time Uncle Fred passed a few years ago so this music is very near and dear to me.

Another left a comment on Johnny Cash sings “Man In Black” for the first time (with intro): Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I Love Johnny Cash and this is BY FAR my favorite version of this song!

Another left a comment on Pete Seeger on “The Johnny Cash Show” complete and uncut: Holy hell I feel better about my day. Thank you for sharing this.

Another left a comment on Johnny Cash sings “Bird on a Wire” on Jon Stewart’s old show: Thank you, man, thank you very much for posting this video! It is... like heaven’s speaking to you. Every time I watch it... I look into these great old man’s eyes, and I would have like talked to him so much. So much more than show biz. That is life.



Another left a comment on Johnny Cash and June Carter: I’ll Fly Away: 0:23 holy shit.. i never heard johnny belt out a note like that before! that was awesome!

Then there are the commenters who relate to Cash’s crash-and-burn period of his life…

One such person left a comment on Johnny Cash sings “The Junkie’s Prayer”: Cash was clean when he did this song, but no one knew better than him the total destruction that drugs cause, He was a very brave man to publicly admit his level of addiction. God Bless you Johnny Cash.

Another left a comment on Dennis Hopper reads a poem on The Johnny Cash Show: IF I CAN DIE CLEAN AND SOBER ALL MY IFS WILL HAVE COME TRUE



Only a couple clips have raised a ruckus, one being an extended version of “This Land Is Your Land” that also mixed in elements of “God Bless America.”



Here are a few samples of the comments generated:

One commenter wrote: I like how you all are saying this land is stolen....
The native Americans never “owned” America, they just lived there. This is because they didn’t believe land could be owned, and I think they were right, how can you claim a piece of this earth?
You do not own America, you just live there.

Another said: Agony of it all internation immigrants respect America and the American flag, culture and beliefs but Americans themselves are cursing this nation at a time when it needs it’s people to stick by it’s side, you are disgracing the founding fathers of this great nation they built this country with their own bare hands lived through tough times and you people are living in today’s America where these economic problems can be solved because we have the required resources.

Another wrote: he knew what America was about, the nature, this country is beautiful, the government is fucked up.

Another wrote: Had it not been for the imperialistic policies of the US government, America would have been the most loved country in the world . I still love the American people (not the government ), the ones who have helped my country so much.
Love from Pakistan

Another wrote: If we didn’t take this land, SOMEONE ELSE WOULD HAVE! This country has done so much amazing good, if the Chinese or the Middle Easterns took this land, it would be HORRIBLE. We have modernized and changed the whole WORLD. In a period of 200 years, we made a 5000 year leap. Someone else would have “stolen’ this land, and they would not have NEAR such an audacious idea as freedom. We are wonderful people, who’ve done wonderful things. Stop making us out to be evil.

Another wrote: Great video. If you notice who is shown, there are workingmen, Native Americans, and children. Not a CEO or banker or politician to be seen.

I eventually had to post a rebuttal clip of Cash doing ten minutes of prime-time TV educating America on the plight of the American Indian, even though he had done an entire album on the subject, “Bitter Tears,” less than ten years earlier. As an advocate for Native Americans, Cash got to have his cake and eat it, too.

But the most hotly contested clip is “Johnny Cash sings Civil War songs.” It really brings out the faithful, if you know what I mean.



I lost this guy’s name, but his comments are typical of the of the revisionist wing of 19th-century American history:

“In most class rooms now kids are taught that the civil war was about slavery. People seem to know less and less about the war the more time passes. It irritates me to hear people say it was about slavery, that was only a small part of it. It’s hard for us now to understand the politics involved that started the war. For the most part it was states rights. People associate having southern pride with being racicist, which is not the case at all. Blacks fought for the south as well.”

Then I made the classic mistake, and replied to him in the comments section:

Actually, it’s not that hard at all to understand the politics involved in the Civil War. There are many excellent histories written about the conflict, and the one thing they all agree on, is that every road to secession began and ended with slavery. Most states’ official documents of secession cite slave-owners’ rights and/or the South’s ‘peculiar institution’ (period doublespeak for the slave trade) in the first paragraph, if not the first line. It would be like saying the Revolutionary War wasn’t about taxation without representation.

Well, I haven’t made that mistake again. It didn’t make me a lot of new online friends, as I learned the only side still fighting this particular battle are the historical revisionists, and boy did I hear from them. A random sampling:

One wrote: The war was fought by the South for good reason. To overthrow the the tyrannic government that had formed. They raised taxes and abolished many peoples only means of income. The Declaration of Independence stated we had the right to do this. Nowadays, the US government is becoming the same way. Will the South rise again? The answer is no. But anyone who gives a damn about what this country USED to be about, and has a spine, will march up to the white house and take this country back.

Another wrote: Good reason this, good reason that, either way, the war was going to be fought. No war should be fought, but this one was definitley going to be. As for the POW’s, as a veteran and a former supply worker, I can tell you that NO one prepares for pow’s, thousands of German’s died in US hands at the end of WWII cuz we had no where to put them, and not enough to feed them, and the locals wouldn’t help us. We have the ability to feed the insurgents we get in Iraq and afghanistan but only because only because we only get like a dozen or so of them at a time. We don’t get droves and droves of prisoners like we did in WWII, WWI or the bigger wars. In the civil war, they expected the war to be over in the north in a few weeks. Months at most. They did not expect or set aside the food reserves needed to maintain their armies and the pow’s. Remember, this is nowhere near the amount of food we’re making now. There was no way either side could cope with the numbers they were receiving. • War sucks. People die. Usually its the poor man fighting, and not the rich man telling them what to do who does the dieing. Look at it like this. Yes the Union was a bit oppressive but the Confederate states were also being a little beligirent (they did fire on ft. sumter first) and there is that slavery bit. The war was never truly about slavery, it was about succession. • Either way, both sides were wrong. And for that, thousands upon thousands died. And the financial debt mounted wasn’t paid off fully until near 1918 - if my memory serves correctly. And we still sit here and argue about it like two feuding brothers.

Another wrote: Is that why the CSA, in it’s established constitution, outlawed the slave trade? Yes, that’s right. The Confederate States of America outlawed the slave trade before the United States of America. Historical fact. But please continue spouting the various Yankee lies you’ve been taught.

Another wrote: Slavery would have died out of natural causes if the yankees had`nt showed aggresion agnest its own peoples rights to choose for themselves. To quote General Lee “We should have freed the slaves and than declared secession, but we didnt want to look like we was backing down. A mistake we will pay deerly for.”

Then there are the ones from obscure clips that are just plain interesting for so many different reasons…

For example, one person made a comment on Johnny Cash: Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord): Christ is my Savior, not my religion.

Preach, brother!

Another made a comment on Johnny Cash: Singin’ in Vietnam Talkin’ Blues: My Father served in Vietnam, 4 tours of duty, He is my hero. This song makes me tear up everytime. Thank you Johnny Cash. at least he cared and tried to offer some sort of comfort to the troops. It is also the reason that Hate Hippies and the whole Hippie culture. Hippies and anti-war protesters are death of this country self respect. Have you kicked a hippie today?



And finally there are the 2% who are unpleasant about random non-hot-button issues, like this fellow:

You don’t know who Al Hirt is? Was Johnny Cash the only music you had to listen to under the rock you grew up under?

To which I replied: @[commenter’s name]... you’re welcome?



Even before there was YouTube, I traded non-commercially-available live Cash recordings with like-minded folks. Back in those days we found each other via the nascent internet, but still exchanged CDs by the U.S. Mail.

There yet remains a very old page on my eponymous site, hidden from everything but The Google, where (an outdated) list of my Johnny Cash collection resides. I never took it down because, over the years, I’ve met some of the coolest and most interesting people courtesy of that page.

Last year, another such person contacted me. He said he was from Australia, and his band, the Hawking Brothers, had opened for Cash one night in 1973 and I had a recording of the show but he didn’t. He begged me for a copy. Offered me money, the whole deal. I told him I never take money for anything Cash-related. 

What I do when contacted nowadays—since I already have just about every underground recording extant and therefore the interested party never has anything but dollars to offer me in trade—is I ask petitioners to write me a little essay entitled “What Johnny Cash Means To Me.” Then I send them whatever they ask for.

I have gotten some amazing responses over the years. I wish I had compiled them somewhere. But this one was recent enough that a search of a back-up drive quickly revealed it.

 The fellow from Australia turned in his essay, and one of the anecdotes he shared is as good an example as any of why I still miss the Man In Black, eight years after his death and counting.

The musician from Australia wrote: 

You may be interested to know that this concert was sold off as a fundraiser. It was outdoors, an extremely cold night and therefore poorly attended. Johnny told his manager, Lou Robin, to find out how much money [the event organizers] had lost. When Lou reported back that they had lost $10,000.00, Johnny instructed Lou to “write them a cheque.” It is a moment I will never forget.

And that is just one of the things that Johnny Cash means to me.

Finally, since I’ve posted everybody else’s favorite clip, I figure I’ll close with one of mine. As an added bonus, it also contains the show’s signature opening. If you’ve read this far, you will enjoy!