Johnny Cash: a singer of songs, Chris Rice

March 16, 2007 at 5:59 pm (artist profile, redemption)

I consider it a terribly daunting task to talk about Johnny Cash and his music. Will Kimbrough has a spoken word song called “Pride” where, in a prophetic manner, he chastises those who pridefully use Jesus for their own war causes and says:

“I’m not bashing Jesus but how ’bout we read what Jesus said for once. I say for balance we take in a little Buddha–and Johnny Cash.”

In the pantheon of musical icons Johnny Cash is for our purposes what Hegel was to modernism, or Derrida to postmodernism. And yet, honesty dictates that we remember Cash as he was–a simple man. I must acknowledge that he had no patience for anyone who couldn’t communicate simply in a way that would serve the least educated. He’d had his fill of pompous exclusivists whether they be radio d-js, marketing execs, theologians, preachers, prison guards, or music critics.

There is a song on the posthumous American collection “Unearthed” titled “Singer of Songs” that I feel best describes how Cash viewed himself in this regard:

I’m not a savior, and I’m not a saint.
The man with the answers I certainly ain’t
I wouldn’t tell you what’s right or what’s wrong.
I’m just a singer of songs.

But I can take you for a walk along a little country stream.
I can make you see through lover’s eyes and understand their dreams.
I can help you hear a baby’s laugh and feel the joy it brings.
Yes, I can do it with the songs that I sing.
I’m not a prophet, and I’m not a priest.
I’m not a wise man who’s come from the East.
I wouldn’t tell you what’s right or what’s wrong.
I’m just a singer of songs.

But I can take you to a city where a Man was crucified.
I can tell you how He lived, and I can tell you why He died.
I can help proclaim the glory of this mighty King of kings.
Yes, I can do it with the songs I sing.
I’m not a great man. I don’t claim to be.
But when I meet my Maker and He questions me,
I won’t hang my head. I’ll stand proud and strong
and say, “I was a singer. Lord, I was a singer.
Yes, I was a singer of songs.

Cash’s styling of this song is breath-taking. With a solo guitar and piano joining in on the second verse we hear the power of this kind of song-singing. There can be no truer word spoken of John R. Cash than that until the day he died he loved song. This was the gift his mother told him he possessed as a child, and throughout his life he knew that he was at his best when he focused himself on that gift as his purpose. I think David is right about Cash being a lay theologian, but the beautiful thing about that was how his song stylings communicated whole volumes worth of material in simple and profound ways that he himself was just grateful to participate in.

In a 2003 NPR interview with Bob Edwards, Rick Rubin said of Cash:

“It was hard for him to sing a song that he didn’t relate to, but if he took time and really got inside what the song was about, for some reason his ability to convey emotion and tell a story really goes beyond sometimes what the original songwriter could do. He had an ability to convey messages and whatever he said, you believed him.”

Since 1994 so much song material has appeared from Johnny Cash, from reissues of his back catalog in extended form to the huge helping of new material from his American Recordings, that for the new collector it is quite daunting. Cash is a bard and song collector in the grand tradition of A.P. Carter of the Carter family. But Cash crossed all boundaries in pursuit of his songs and this can be seen early on in his interest in Bob Dylan. Johnny Cash saw all music stripped down to its bare form of voice, lyric, and notes. This is how he could become the song whether written by Paul Simon, Trent Reznor, or Nick Cave.

He seemed most interested in those songs that either allowed him to adopt a new personae or conveyed a transcendent state of being. Johnny embodied the art of self disclosure in Redemptive situations. When a song in the first person was honest, whether about killing or converting, he owned that song. Of course the closest songs to Johnny as we see on his album “Personal File” and the Unearthed disc “Mother’s Hymnbook” were songs of faith. Roseanne Cash referred to her dad as a “mystical Baptist” and one of Rick Rubin and Johnny’s favorite things was sharing communion together though they weren’t of the same religious background. Yet its very clear what kind of Christian Johnny Cash was. He has reintroduced the Christian gospel song back into the popular imagination in a way that regular churches could hardly do. He has shown how full of love for life Jesus is.

With his love for songs Johnny Cash embodies a relational Christology, a theologia crucis, and kenosis or God’s self-emptying. WH Vanstone wrote in The Risk of Love:

Theology, properly so called, is the record of a man’s wrestling with God. Wounded in some way or other by the struggle the man will certainly be, but in the end he will obtain the blessing promised to those who endure. The theologian in this respect is no different from the poet or dramatist.

This is why people relate to Johnny Cash on so many levels, whether as a Southern Gothic Man in Black “avatar of darkness,” as recovering drug addict, a hopeless romantic, or a home body-a family man. He loved life and shared it in so many ways in his songs. Did you know there is a Johnny Cash song for literally every stage of life from cradle to grave? It’s true. He cared about life and death and the afterlife because he knew that was important to God. He made his life an open book and had faith that God would use that. I believe He has and will for a long time to come.

See Also:

The Rolling Stone Johnny Cash Discography

Bill Friskics-Warren, “The Man in black and white, and every shade in Between: Johnny Cash is a complex, contradictory character. . . and “a pretty happy man”
No Depression, Iss. 42, November-December 2002.