Celebration: Cash

 "Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight." -- Johnny Cash

Happy birthday today to the Man In Black -- Mr. Johnny Cash (1932). Admittedly, my all-time favorite Cash record is Unchained, his second installment of the Rick Rubin helmed American Recordings. I love this record because Cash sounds strong and happy and mean on these tracks. Also, you've got Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as the backing band, which brings a tinge of sweaty swaggered rock-n-raw to Cash's gruff vocal performance. Unchained feels like the apex of America's musical evolution -- a signal of what's still possible when experience and expertise and patience collide sonically. It's encouraging to consider that the best music these men made -- arguably -- was in their latter years. While the industry exalts youth and the next flash-pan fad of aural anesthesia, on Unchained the old guard redefined greatness through the simplicity of good songs forged in time-honed talent and friendship. Amen and Selah to that. Cheers to a man who loved Jesus, his bride, his family, his friends and long hours on a quiet porch plucking a guitar near those above.

https://youtu.be/9CrBqRb3VGM

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 27, 2021 at 7:29 AM

    I really like several phrases you came up with in this piece. The “sweaty swaggered” and “patience collide sonically” were two of my favorites. I also like the way you honored him in the last line by pointing out the ones who meant the most to him. Well done, my love.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

READING TA-NEHISI COATES BY THE LIGHT OF A BURNING CITY

I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between The World And Me in the fall of 2016 and rejected both the text and its author. Coates’s tone felt too venomous to be constructive, roiling with an anger that frightened me, that set my hackles on the defensive. I much preferred the measured and cool voice of James Baldwin, whose anger translated into something far more cerebral, less poetic and visceral. Coates wrote from the heart. He opened his jugular ink well and released the terror held in his Black American body. The fact that Coates, like James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time , wrote his book as an instruction manual for a teenage boy on navigating the American experience shocked me all the more. It was too violent. Too reactionary. I highlighted one particular episode, somewhere towards the middle of the book, of Coates sharing beers on a New York City rooftop with friends as they watched the smoke from the Twin Towers rise. He explained his inability to feel sorrow for first responders on th
Read more

TWO PUGS BATTLE THE BRUNCH SQUIRREL

The squirrel keeps coming back. On the fence. He comes in the morning like clockwork. Like the frayed edges of burnt caffeine withdrawal. He comes and twitters his whiskers, whisks his tail like an egg beater into thin air, churning trouble with his beady little eyes and a no good maniacal laugh. And my pugs just lose their damn minds. Behind the glass doors they hollar and bay and cuss. Their eyes protrude further than usual: out to the edge of their snout, out where a glistening snot sprays with each snort. Even their tails uncurl and drop like punctuation digging into the dirt. Not to stop a sentence, but to start a new one. A new one that begins, “Die, motherscratcher.” Meanwhile the squirrel decides to chance it. He shimmies down the fence like a cheap dress after a dollar-menu meal. He shimmies down the fence and grabs an acorn. Then he turns towards the door, fully facing my pugs , who squeal like wrestlers circling the ring, and he just eats the acorn. Takes his time with it,
Read more