Even Harder Cash

Some have emailed me to ask what I think about the new Johnny Cash album, American V: A Hundred Highways, recorded just before Cash's death. I've reviewed it here over at the "Moore to the Point" commentary at my website.

The short version: the album is sung by a man so weak and sick that he can barely breathe. It's an album about death by a dying man. And that's precisely why this is the most Christian album Cash ever recorded. 

Comments

[Bobby Winters]

Johnny might have wandered every now and then from the straight and narrow, but he never claimed as so many do that there isn't one.

I just bought the album.

[Russell D. Moore]

Bobby,
I think you'll find the album well worth the purchase. It certainly seems to focus the mind on the things that cannot be shaken.

[GL]

I just read Dr. Moore's piece on Johnny Cash's last album.  At the end, he records the lyrics from one of the songs on the album:

Further on up the road Further on up the road Where the way dark and the night is cold One sunny mornin' we'll rise I know And I'll meet you further on up the road.

He then adds:

The lyrics were written by Bruce Springsteen.  And I know the Boss wrote them to say "one sunny morning."

Maybe it is just my imagination, but it sure sounds to me like I hear this dead man singing, "one Sunday morning," Sunday morning coming up.

It reminded me of another man who wrote about and sang of the Lord (e.g., I Saw the Light), yet also struggled mightily with sin and despair, Hank Williams, Sr.  (Minnie Pearl reportedly once asked Hank William if "he had seen the light.  He said he hadn't, but wouldn't it be wonderful?' . . .  She said in a wistful voice, 'I don't know if he ever saw the light.'")  I pray he did.  I hope he didn't die believing the words from his song Lost Highway:

I was just a lad, nearly twenty-two,
Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you,
And now I'm lost, too late to pray,
Lord, I've paid the cost on the lost highway.

Hopefully, before he died at 29, he realized that it wasn't "too late to pray" and that Christ "paid the cost" to save him from "the lost highway."

In one of his classics, I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry, the lyrics read, in part:

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he's lost the will to live
I'm so lonesome i could cry

I've listened to that song many times.  I believe Williams changed the words to the third line and sang:

Like me he's lost the will to live

Johnny Cash later recorded this Hank Williams classic.   Dr. Moore, have you ever listened closely to how Cash sang that line?  I have not, but I hope (and believe) that Cash did see the Light and, hopefully, that made a difference.

Only the Blues and Country give you that raw, unrefined honesty about the pain in life.  Cash and Williams combined the two genres better than any singers I know.

[Russell D. Moore]

GL,
I agree with you that Hank Sr.'s "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." I'm going to listen again to JC's version of it tonight when I get home.

That is a great anecdote about Minnie Pearl's reflection on Williams's Christianity. It is amazing how many funerals I've been to for men who lived lives of utter dissipation, one of whom died drunk leaving behind a wife and small children, at which "I Saw the Light" was sung.

[J.D.]

I think the power of those singers who have, as GL put it, "struggled mightily with sin and despair", is that they stand in stark contrast to both the vapid utopianism one often finds prevalent in the secular world, as well as the (unfortunate) tendency of many Christians (of all confessions) to portray Christianity as a sort of therapeutic quick-fix for angst.

That is, these people engage people regarding a facet of human existence that is largely shunned by all of us: Suffering.

I've always seen Mr. Cash as about as close to the ideal of the effective Christian artist as one could expect (in this world). I.e., he was obviously sincere and serious about his faith, and never tried to compartmentalize it-- yet he also never got carried away with being preachy or tried to beat people over the heads with his message.

I suppose it's the difference between using faith as an inspiration, and trying to use it as a sort of ideological roadmap by which to program people with a message. Johnny Cash on the one hand, Christian pop music on the other; perhaps the latter *has* done some good for people, I couldn't say.

But how much *more* good could the Christian-pop people do if they stopped reciting mantras set to bad music and instead sang about Reality?

[GL]

J.D.,

I couldn't agree more with you.

I volunteer at a men's homeless shelter once a month and have on a couple of occasion spoken at their worship service.  The last time I spoke, my Sunday School teacher said that he wanted to bring his 9-year-old daughter.  At the time, we were both attending an affluent, suburban mega-church.  I warned him that I was going to speak about the life I led before, by His grace, Christ lifted me out of the mire at the age of 25 and that I was going to also say that while Christ saved me, it was a lie from the pits of hell authored by the Evil One that if they came to Christ, all would be wealth and prosperity, with no problems.  I warned him that I was going to speak about the consequences of past sins even in the life of the saved and how life is still a struggle.  Men in homeless shelter don't want to hear all that "vapid utopianism" and have "Christianity [portrayed] as a sort of therapeutic quick-fix for angst."  They may not have the prosperity and wealth of suburban Christians, but they are a lot better at seeing through nonsense.  He brought her anyway and it apparently was a meaningful and edifying evening for her.

When I was at my lowest before Christ saved me, I spent hours wallowing in self-pity with Hank Williams "moaning the blues" on the record player.  I suspect that the "men who lived lives of utter dissipation" of which Dr. Moore spoke did the same thing.  I still love his music, but praise God, like Johnny Cash, I really did see the Light.  The men at the homeless shelter understand Williams and Cash.  My prayer for them is that their lives end with the latter's hope rather than the former's despair.

[J.D.]

"My prayer for them is that their lives end with the latter's hope rather than the former's despair."

I second that. In considering music (or literature, my own special interest) it strikes me that many if not most of the really potent works are the ones which have a tiny kernel of light against a backdrop of darkness.

The problem is that some (as in the work of Williams) get so carried away elaborating and building up the darkness to the point of losing the little kernel of light altogether.

(Naturally this doesn't necessarily tell us about the fate of the man himself.)

It's interesting: I was thinking not of the homeless, but of some of the pill-popping, alienated, poorly-parented, "lost generation" - type college kids I met while at graduate school.

For all their being immersed in the seedier parts of the post-modern world, I found many of them respond quite positively when they realize one is not a Ned Flanders-esque salesman with a smile stapled to one's face.

I suppose the lost generation and the homeless both respond to Cash simply because he went onstage as himself, his real self-- for better or worse-- rather than put on a slick mask and try to *sell* something or pretend to be somebody else.

[Bruce]

This CD will go down in history as one of his greatest. I'd like to share the song I was inspired to write and record after finding myself under the influence of Cash V: A Hundred Highways:

Here's to 100 Highways
words and music by Bruce L. Thiessen, aka Dr. BLT
(c)2006
http://www.drblt.net/music/ahundredhi.mp3

I first learned of the power of Johnny Cash's music when I performed his songs, as a prison psychologist, before hundreds of inmates at California State Prison Solano. That story is featured here:

http://www.tollbooth.org/2003/features/jcash.html

God bless!

Bruce
aka Dr. BLT
The World's First Blog n Roll Artist