America and the world have lost one of our greatest treasures with the passing of Johnny Cash.
The first of Johnny's songs that caught my attention as a kid was "Folsom Prison Blues." To me, Johnny was the image of country music. It was years before I learned that when he began recording at Sun Records, along with Sam Perkins, Roy Orbison and the King, he was seen by the Nashville establishment as one of those wild "rockabillies" like Elvis.
And for the last years of his life, he found himself again left out by the corporate drones who make the national playlists for what passes for country radio these days. But Johnny continued to re-invent himself, one of the qualities that made him one of the most influential of popular musicians. He won new audiences and reamined a vital force in music until his death. One of my favorites of his is a 1996 version of the Louvin Brothers' "Kneeling Drunkard's Plea."
Johnny was also a good prose writer, as he showed in two autobiographies and an interesting novel called Man in White about the life of Saint Paul. In the introduction to that novel, he talked frankly about his own struggles with drug addiction. Perhaps that struggle was part of what gave him his well-known sympathy for the downtrodden, as we saw in his prison concerts and in songs like his signature "Man in Black."
Johnny was a friend of Billy Graham's, and shared a deep and abiding evangelical (conservative Protestant) Christian faith with him. From everything I ever saw, Johnny's faith was the kind that makes for an open heart and an open mind.
Johnny was in the news just this year with a new video. And he appeared on a beautiful duet with his daughter Rosanne, "September When It Comes," written in part as a tribute to him.
Someone once said that every life in is some sense unfinished at the end. And that was true of Johnny's, as well. He was a man with a great talent, a strong faith and a big heart. This world will miss him.
See also: Johnny Cash Unchained
Hearing: Johnny Cash, "The Battle of New Orleans" (Jimmie Driftwood)
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