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Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, John Mellencamp, Al Gore, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle, George Jones and Kris Kristofferson led a four-hour memorial tribute to Johnny Cash Monday night in Nashville that was equal parts reverence, grief and adulation.
Cash, 71, died on September 12th from complications from diabetes, four months after the death of June Carter Cash, his wife of thirty-five years. The memorial service, hosted by Tim Robbins and taped for a Saturday broadcast on CMT, marked the last jewel in the triple crown of Cash memorials. Crow, Kristofferson and Emmylou Harris were among those that performed at his September 15th funeral in Hendersonville, Tennessee. On November 5th, he was honored on the Country Music Association Awards, where Nelson, Hank Williams Jr., Travis Tritt, Crow and several others performed his songs. In addition, Cash's album, American IV: The Man Comes Around, won the CMA Album of the Year, while "Hurt" received Single and Video of the Year honors.
Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson and a very pregnant Kate Hudson, Government Mule's Warren Hayes, bluegrass great Earl Scruggs and Roy Orbison's widow, Barbara, were among the 2,300 in attendance at the historic Ryman Auditorium, the former home of the Grand Ole Opry, where a drug-fueled Cash was banned from the radio show after smashing the footlights across this very stage with a microphone stand in 1965. As his children lined the front row, the former outlaw was virtually canonized as a musical saint, a guitar-slinging Pied Piper who tried to lead the poor and suffering to a better place.
After the Fisk Jubilee Singers opened the show with "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," a subdued Rosanne Cash took the stage and, without saying a word, began singing "I Still Miss Someone" with palpable emotion.
In a video tribute, U2's Bono raised a pint of Guinness in honor of "Saint John." Bono said, "He was an oak tree in a garden of weeds. He is not in the garden of weeds now; he is in heaven with June, where all the saints are. To everybody here, he was all the more saintly because he kept telling us just how human he was."
The concert was possibly the hottest ticket of the decade. Although admission was free, tickets were awarded to the public through a lottery system. More than 20,000 people vied for fewer than 2,000 seats.
George Jones, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson delivered an upbeat, free-wheeling version of "Cry, Cry, Cry," Cash's first hit, which peaked at Number Fourteen on the country charts in 1955. They were followed by Travis Tritt (accompanied by former Cash son-in-law Marty Stuart), who sang a deeply soulful "I Walk The Line", set to a pace that was twice as slow as the original.
Marshall Grant, Cash's original bass player, said Tritt sang the song in the tempo Cash had intended. After performing a slow version for three takes, Sun Records' Sam Phillips asked Cash to do it faster just once. Phillips released the fast version to radio, which angered Cash. "Two weeks later, we played the [radio show] Louisiana Hayride," Grant said. "On the way home, we went one time across the dial and we heard it thirteen times." In 1956, "I Walk the Line" hit Number One on the country charts, sold more than one million copies, and became a pop hit.
When Cash joined forces with Grant and Luther Perkins (the "Tennessee Two"), all three men played rhythm guitar. Perkins borrowed an electric guitar and Grant bought a beat-up, upright bass for $25. "Johnny had the worst guitar in the world," Grant said. "He said, 'Marshall, if you're going to play bass, can I borrow this guitar?' I said, 'Sure you can.'" Grant then pointed to a CF Martin guitar onstage to his left, the guitar that Cash used for the first four years of his career.
Mellencamp, who helped induct Cash into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, sang, "Hey Porter," the first non-gospel song Cash wrote and played for Sam Phillips. In a raspy, somber monologue accompanied by just an acoustic guitar and mandolin, Mellencamp sang, "I'm gonna breathe that Southern air."
Hank Williams Jr. told the crowd of a photo taken in 1958, in which a then nine-year-old Williams, clad in a suit, stood next to Cash. His godmother, June Carter Cash, changed his diapers many times backstage at the Opry. "We loved Civil War and western history," said Williams, wearing a maroon shirt with his black pants tucked into his black boots. "We liked to shoot cannons off on Franklin Road (in Nashville) and knock people's boots off.
"He affected me a lot," Williams continued. "When you see old Hank Jr. with them pants stuck down in his boots, you know where it came from. I had the best teacher I could possibly have." After horns programmed on a synthesizer kicked off the song, Williams launched into an impressive Cash imitation in "Ring of Fire."
In addition to video tributes from Whoopi Goldberg, Ray Charles, Trent Reznor and the Rev. Billy Graham, Emmylou Harris and Dave Matthews performed a duet of "Long Black Veil" on video. Footage from performances over the decades was shown, including the legendary intro "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" and a snippet of a 1975 film of Johnny and June Carter Cash singing "Jackson." Carlene Carter, June's daughter and Johnny's stepdaughter, joined Brooks and Dunn for a steamy, rollicking version of the 1967 duet, before the country duo sang the 1979 hit "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky."
Ronnie Dunn wore a Cash armband on his right bicep and donned a black Manuel jacket that Cash gave him at the beginning of his career. Cash knew that since Dunn was broke, he probably wouldn't have anything nice to wear in his first photo shoot. "One day, this big black Mercedes pulled up to our house," Dunn said. "He said, 'Here, but don't tell June. She'll get onto me.' I feel the ghost of Johnny Cash so much tonight that it gives me goose bumps."
Kristofferson, who performed "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (which he wrote), recalled the first time he saw Johnny and June together, in 1966, at the Ryman. "I thought they were a magical match made in heaven," he said. "She was the bright, beautiful youngest member of the legendary Carter family, the shining center of attention . . . and he was a dark, dangerous force of nature, prowling like a panther, absolutely electric and absolutely unpredictable." While they were obviously "head over heels" in love with each other, few expected this showbiz romance to last. "A betting man would not have put money on theirs being a long-term relationship," Kristofferson said. "But despite the odds, they continued to be the answer to each other's prayers.
In what was the night's bravest feat, Sheryl Crow sang a very moving, pain-drenched rendition of "Hurt", Cash's final hit. "I had the pleasure of speaking with Johnny about two weeks before he died," said Crow. When Cash came to the phone, he was out of breath. "I said, 'Why are you out of breath?' He said, 'I've just been to the gym.' He said he was just trying to get his legs back working again." Crow also recalled Cash interviewing her about the inspiration and motivation behind "Redemption Day," a song she wrote that would be the last he ever recorded. "I realized after that, that's why we believe in Johnny Cash," she said. "When he gave his voice to something, he dedicated his heart and intellect."
Williams and Jones took the places of the late Waylon Jennings and Cash in the Highwaymen, joining surviving members Kristofferson and Nelson to sing "Highwayman." Wearing sunglasses and black hats, Williams and Kid Rock performed the 1978 duet "There Ain't No Good Chain Gang" to honor the friendship of Jennings and Cash. "I don't know Johnny as well as a lot of people have, but I've seen the whole family have to stand up show after show and hold themselves in a manner through this whole thing," said Kid Rock, who also sang a very simple, country version of "What Is Truth". "That really tells me more than the music what type of man that he was, by watching these kids go through this whole thing and how they're handling it."
Towards the end of the show, Rosanne Cash re-appeared to dance and smile as she sang her father's "Tennessee Flat Top Box," which she put at the top of the country charts in 1987.
"His heart was so expansive and his mind so finely tuned that he could contain both darkness and light, love and trouble, fear and faith, wholeness and shatteredness, addiction and enlightenment, old school and post-modern, Baptist and Jew, the sacred and the silly," she said. "But always and relentlessly with the backbeat and rhythm driving the paradoxes.
"I cannot count the times when we heard him say, 'Children, you can choose love or hate. I choose love.' Daddy, we also choose love . . . and rhythm."
BEVERLY KEEL
(November 11, 2003)