Johnny Cash Fans Lobby For "Bitter Tears" Rerelease

Now that Johnny Cash's final recordings have been released as American VI: Ain't No Grave, fans are calling upon Sony to rerelease the Man in Black's 1964 LP Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian, a protest album that dealt with the tribulations facing Native Americans at the time, Reuters reports. Cash was reportedly one-quarter Cherokee. While Bitter Tears is sold on iTunes and CD copies remain available on e-tailers, Cash fans led by author Antonino D'Ambrosio are calling on Sony, whose Columbia Records originally released Bitter Tears with little fanfare, to revisit the album.

"Nobody did concept albums back then," Cash's son John Carter Cash said of Bitter Tears, adding it was one of his father's favorite albums. "And this album solidifies my father's role as a humanitarian and a spokesman for the underdog. It's such an important historical record, and I'd love to see it get a proper rerelease." Columbia Records permitted Cash to record the album after he scored the hit "Ring of Fire," but the label did virtually nothing to promote it because of its subject matter, and the press largely ignored it when it was released.

At the heart of Bitter Tears is "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," which tells the true story of a Native American soldier who helped raise the American flag at Iwo Jima and returned home a war hero but suffered from alcoholism that ultimately killed him at the age of 32. Ira Hayes' story was also the subject of the film Flags of our Fathers. The song, and five of the eight songs on Bitter Tears, was penned by folk singer Peter LaFarge, himself a Native American descendant.

"I've met Johnny Cash buffs who have never heard of this album. While it is technically available, it's pretty buried," D'Ambrosio, who authored the book A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears, told Reuters. So far, Sony has no announced no plans to rerelease the album.

Related Stories:
• Hear Johnny Cash's "Ain't No Grave" From "American VI"
• Johnny Cash's Vault Opens
• Rick Rubin on Cash's Legacy

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'Star Trek' Is Crazy Good
• 
  TV 10 Shows to Watch This Summer
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter