For many people in the United Kingdom Johnny Cash was Country music. People who knew little or nothing about Country had heard of him, and could probably hum a few bars of "Ring of Fire" or "A Boy Named Sue" or "Folsom Prison Blues." Those who claimed not to like Country could still admire his music. And at a time when Country was at its least fashionable in the late 1960s and 1970s, it was still "hip" to like the "Country & Western" singer who dueted with Bob Dylan and performed in prisons. His death made the front pages of most of our national daily newspapers, and was a lead news item on most radio and TV stations. Cash's appeal was universal, and the world wide popularity of Country owes a lot to him.

Like other Country music legends such as Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, Hank Williams and Willie Nelson, in his formative years he was influenced by music and musicians from outside the genre. His earliest recordings were made with Sam Phillips at Sun Studios in Memphis. Sun Records was better known for its R&B and Rock'n'Roll, and the influence of these genres can be heard in Cash's early songs. "Rock Island Line" and "Goodnight Irene" were both written by the black singer Hudie Leadbetter (better known as Leadbelly), and his Sun recordings also show the influence of Gospel and Rock'n'Roll.

Right from the start, Cash was a crossover artist: Sun released a series of records aimed at both the Country and Pop markets, and he even had hits with songs aimed directly at the teenage market (for example "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" and "Straight A's in Love").

The stripped down sound of guitar and bass was a world away from the steel and twin fiddles of the 1950s Country mainstream. Cash never had much time for fashions in Country music, and later in the 1960s, he was one of the few who was able to resist the straitjacket of the Nashville Sound.

He was also showing himself to be a top class songwriter. Some of his most famous compositions were first recorded with Sun: songs such as "Folsom Prison Blues", "I Walk the Line", "Big River" and "Give My Love to Rose." At the same time, he was capable of producing excellent versions of classics written by the likes of Hank Williams, Leon Payne and Gene Autry. Versatile indeed, and with the good looks to match. In 1957, he made his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, wearing his trademark black.

It wasn't long before he outgrew Sun (just as Elvis Presley had done earlier). Sam Phillips' refusal to let him record a Gospel album was allegedly the cause of his dissatisfaction: profoundly and devoutly religious all his life, Gospel was always his first love. In 1958, he signed to Columbia records, where he was given unprecedented artistic control. (From the late 50s to the 70s, Columbia had an excellent record of allowing artists to record what they wanted how they wanted. This was the same label that in 1962 signed a young Bob Dylan and in 1973 allowed Willie Nelson to release "Red Headed Stranger" as his first album for them. It is also worth noting that top record producer Bob Johnston was responsible for albums by Cash, Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel on Columbia).
The development of his career through the 1960s has been well documented. His basic sound and instrumentation remained the same, as did his simple and direct lyrics, but he used these as a springboard from which he explored complex ideas and emotional truths. Sara Evans' 1990s hit "Three Chords and the Truth" could have been written about Cash.

Concept albums, gospel, albums recorded live in prisons, and records containing the highest quality music possible followed each other in dizzying succession. He continued to write excellent songs ranging from "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" from "Songs of the Soil" to "San Quentin." He helped to introduce new songwriters to the public: writers such as Kris Kristofferson, Shel Silverstein, Peter LaFarge and Glen Sherley. He rearranged traditional material, and reinterpreted the work of great writers from Country and other genres. He introduced Dylan to the Country fan, and was instrumental in Dylan deciding to record an album of country influenced songs in Nashville (Dylan's "Nashville Skyline" also features a duet with Cash, and there is a bootleg album available of Dylan & Cash having great fun dueting on various country, folk and blues songs).

One of my personal favourites from this era is on his "Blood Sweat and Tears" album: "Another Man Done Gone", an old song about the lynching of an escaped slave, on which Cash and June Carter duet unaccompanied:

"Another man done gone
He had a long chain on
They hung him in a tree
They let his children see
When he was hanging dead
The captain turned his head
He's from the county farm
I didn't know his name
Another man done gone."

Each line is repeated several times, with Johnny & June taking it in turns to lead and to follow. This method of singing was common among black slaves, and can still be heard in black churches in America today. It also has links to the form of singing traditionally used in Scottish Gaelic Protestant churches, and recently it has been suggested that the development of this black genre may have been influenced in part by the church music Gaelic Scots who moved to America and farmed land throughout much of the South Eastern states.

Johnny's and June's performance on this song is powerful, moving and committed. You can hear the anger and the sadness in their voices, and the listener knows that the singers abhor a system that can be so inhumane and the people who carry out such crimes. Cash was one of the first Country singers to take a stand (and a liberal stand at that) on social and moral issues. Whether it be blacks, native Americans, prisoners, the homeless, the dispossessed, the soldier made to fight in some else's cause, or just the ordinary working men and women, he sang and wrote about them with empathy, sympathy and sometimes with anger on their behalf.

This was also the period of his life when he was addicted to amphetamines and alcohol, wrecked hotel rooms, damaged land and in the process almost killed himself. Yet through it all he continued to produce music of the highest quality and, as Kris Kristofferson said in his spoken introduction to "To Beat the Devil" (a song he dedicated to John and June):

"He got himself a good woman."

The Kristofferson song could almost have been written by Cash himself. It describes a singer with a social conscience who is down on his luck. While drinking a beer in a tavern, he is approached by someone (the devil) who buys him a drink and suggests he just sings what people want to here. The singer tells him he's not interested, and that he's going to sing all about the things that need changing. The last lines before the final chorus are:

"I ain't sayin' I beat the devil,
But I drank his beer for nothin'
Then I stole his song."

With the help of June Carter and others, and with his own God given willpower, he beat the devil of addiction, and continued to sing and write about the dispossessed.

There is a general consensus among critics that his albums from the 70s and 80s were inferior to those from the 50s and 60s, and it is certainly true that he sold fewer records and had fewer hit. By his own admission, there were times when he began to lose interest, and some of his weakest material comes from this era (for example, the album "Gone Girl" in which he appears to be going through the motions). It is also true that he allowed others to produce arrangements that were sometimes unsympathetic, and on occasions his song selections were mystifying. However, he also continued to produce some excellent albums and individual songs. "The Man In Black", "One Piece at a Time", "The Last Gunfighter Ballad", "Silver" and "Rockabilly Blues" are right up there with his best albums of the 60s. The hits may have begun to dry up, but the music for the most part remained vibrant, honest and stirring. During this period his profound Christian faith found an outlet in work with Billy Graham; in a series of Gospel albums, and in the film "Gospel Road." His TV show continued well into the 70s. And in 1985 he was back on top of the charts with "The Highwayman" - in the company of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson,

Not bad for an artist who had supposedly lost his way! But none of this cut any ice with Columbia records who, in 1986, dropped him (just as they were to drop Willie Nelson three years later). It is hard to believe that Columbia could have taken this decision, and one can only assume that some accountant in a New York skyscraper surrounded by ledgers decided that the dollar entries were more important than the prestige of having the world's most famous Country singer on the company's roster.

After his departure from Columbia, he signed with Mercury, recording five albums of uneven quality, but all of which contained some highlights, in particular "Boom Chicka Boom". This album combined excellent versions of other people's songs - including Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle", Elvis Costello's "Hidden Shame" and Willie Nelson's "Family Bible" - with some new Cash compositions. The opening track "A Backstage Pass (to the Willie Nelson Show)" is one of the funniest things he has written.

In the 1960s, Cash began touring in the UK, and was a regular visitor to these shores for over two decades, until the early 1990s. Throughout the 60s and 70s he had a string of hits in the UK charts, most of them in the lower regions; but he had several Top 20 hits, including "Ring of Fire" and "One Piece at a Time", and two Top 10 hits: "A Boy Named Sue" and "A Thing Called Love" (both of which peaked at #4). By American standards, this may not seem that impressive, but it makes him the best selling Country artist in the UK singles charts. (It is worthy of note that Willie Nelson has had only one UK Top 20 hit: the duet with Julio Iglasias "To All The Girls I've Loved Before"; and that Merle Haggard, George Jones and Waylon Jennings have never registered on the charts. The only Country singers to come anywhere near Cash's record are Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers).

It is worth looking briefly at some reasons why even the most popular Country artists in the UK have rarely featured in the singles charts:

Firstly, the UK charts are based solely on sales of singles. It doesn't matter how often the song is played on radio or how many jukeboxes feature the song, if it doesn't sell sufficient copies in registered outlets in any one week, it will not feature in that week's chart.

Secondly, the outlets that have generally been used to collect the data have tended to be general record shops covering the whole spectrum of music, and especially those that have systems that safeguard against fraudulent returns. The failure to collect data from specialist shops has meant that not only Country, but also Jazz, Reggae, Folk and other "minority" musical tastes have been under-represented on the charts.

Thirdly, during the heyday of the Single (in pre-CD days: the 45rpm record) from the 60s through to the end of the 80s, the demography of sales helps to explain why some artists and some genres only feature spasmodically. Research demonstrates that singles were generally bought by two distinct groups: people in their early to mid teens and middle aged women. It is hardly surprising that the UK charts have often been dominated by music aimed at young people and by MOR crooners. As albums became of greater importance in the 60s, so more and more people who could afford the extra cost, bought albums rather than singles. Thus, from the late 1960s onwards, the album charts have been viewed as a better indication of musical taste and popularity.

Fourthly, there are no reliable specialist charts in the UK. Sales of singles have declined dramatically in the UK in recent years, and any attempt to produce a coherent singles chart for Country music would be subject to errors and would be meaningless. Specialist album charts are produced, but the make up of these can vary widely. For example, the UK's leading Country magazine "Country Music People" lists two UK Country album charts: The Official UK Country Chart and the UK Specialist Dealer Chart. In the October 2003 issue, there are only two albums that appear in both charts' Top 20 (Brad Paisley's "Mud on the Tires" and Brooks & Dunn's "Red Dirt Road"). In the Official charts, the Dixie Chicks have three entries, and Johnny Cash and Shania Twain two each. Artists missing from the Official chart who appear in the Specialist chart include Alan Jackson, George Strait, Vince Gill and Dwight Yoakam. It really is difficult to take such charts seriously!

Fifthly, all the charts (singles and albums) are based upon sales in any particular week, not on cumulative sales. It is quite possible, and does regularly occur, that a record (whether a single or an album) that never appears in the charts does over a period of time outsell a record that features in the higher regions of the charts.

In brief, in the UK neither the singles nor album charts can be used as a measure of a Country artist's popularity, and provide only the sketchiest guide to total record sales.

What is clear is that when it comes to name recognition, Johnny Cash is the single most well known Country singer in the UK, and is one of the most well known American singers ever. Last year, I was in Glasgow for a Willie Nelson concert, and I asked the receptionist at the hotel I was stopping at for directions to the concert hall. After giving me directions, she asked who was playing, and when I said "Willie Nelson", she told me she had never heard of him. I couldn't imagine that happening with Cash.

I was fortunate enough to see Cash perform twice. The first time was in the 1970s in London, with the Carters and Carl Perkins. He was larger than life: a preacher and a teacher, but with a cruel sense of humour; an entertainer who educated; a masterful and charismatic manipulator of emotions who never abused his power. His show included a screen on which was projected film to accompany some of the songs (this was in pre-video days), and particularly memorable was the film footage for "One Piece at a Time", during which Cash invites a dubious June to come for a trial run in the self-assembled car, and she discovers a snake in the boot!

The second time was in 1992, as part of the supergroup the Highwaymen, featuring Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings & Kris Kristofferson. It would have been all too easy for these four giants of the genre to have competed for the spotlight, leading to the whole being less than the parts (this has been the fate of so many so-called supergroups: am I the only who winces at the memory of concerts by the likes of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young?) Instead, we got four of the greatest singer/songwriters the genre has ever produced who had such confidence in their own and their fellow members' talents that they were able to subsume their own egos without losing an ounce of their individual charisma and abilities. They performed a combination of the songs that had made each of them famous, plus songs from outside their own repertoires. They performed as a quartet, as trios, as duos and solo, in every possible combination. No one artist stood out above the others: it was truly a case of the whole being more than the parts, and it remains one of the most memorable concerts I have ever had the privilege to attend.

His last appearance in the UK was in 1994, at the Glastonbury Festival. This festival has been held on an annual basis (with the occasional year without a festival to allow the land and the locals to recover) since 1970 at Worthy Farm, Glastonbury, Somerset, England, and continues to be organised by the farm owner Michael Evans. The festival has always included a diverse range of musical styles old and new, and is as much about raising awareness and raising money for good causes as it is about music, and each year large donations are made to organisations like Greenpeace, Oxfam and others. It continues to be the single most important outdoor pop festival in the UK, and although it is now highly and professionally organised, it has largely retained its ideological roots. It says a lot about the popularity of Cash that he was invited to perform. It also says a lot about the man himself that he agreed to play before a largely radical young audience.

The same year - 1994 - saw both the creative and commercial renaissance of Cash. His last album of new material had been 1991's disappointing "The Mystery of Life", and even though there had been high spots in the 1980s, it has to be acknowledged that for well over ten years his output had been uneven to say the least. All that was to change, as Cash began to produce the greatest music of his great career.

An article on Cash in "Country Music People" last year (2002) began:

"There is a darkness at the heart of Country music, and its name is Johnny Cash."

That darkness was there for much of his life. Growing up in a poor cotton farming family, and having to pick cotton from an early age (back breaking work for fit adults, never mind young children), he experienced the hardships of life at an early age. He was soon to experience tragedy when, in 1944, his older brother was killed in a work accident.

His much has always been dark. One of his earliest songs, "Folsom Prison Blues", contains the line:

"I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"

There can be fewer darker visions than this. This exploration of the underbelly of society continued throughout his career, and violent death is a feature of much of his music, in the process destroying lots of the myths that Western society has built up and surrounded itself with. In a few short verses "Don't Take Your Guns To Town" destroys the romantic Hollywood myth of the "Wild West." Songs like "Another Man Done Gone" and "Ballad of Ira Hayes" destroy the myth that we are all equal before the law. Songs such as "San Quentin" question the meaning of justice. And the gallows humour of "25 Minutes to Go" calls into question the death penalty.

Even his love songs have a dark side. In "Ring of Fire" he sings:

"Love is a burning thing,
And it makes a fiery ring,
Bound by wild desire,
I fell into a ring of fire.

I fell into a burning ring of fire,
I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher,
And it burns, burns, burns,
The ring of fire, the ring of fire."

Set against a jaunty, singalong tune, Cash sings words that are as much about hell and damnation as they are about human love.

In "I Walk the Line" we find a degree of ambivalence in Cash's expression of love:

"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine,
I keep my eyes wide open all the time,
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds,
Because you're mine,
I walk the line."

Not for Cash the cosy sentimentality of so many love songs. The heart needs watching; the eyes need to be opened; happiness can be lost "in a trite"; love is not an easy option, it requires the supreme effort of walking the line - and it is so easy to fall off.

Nowhere is this darkness more present and more apparent than in the four albums recorded with Rick Rubin, owner of American Records, and producer of some of the most avant-garde and left field Rock that's been recorded in the past 10 years or so. There is irony in the fact that it took someone like Rubin to get Cash back on track musically. Rubin appears to have had an empathy with Cash's music that would not have been immediately apparent from his work with the likes of the Beastie Boys and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. The source of the musical empathy between the two may always remain a mystery.

In "Cash: the Autobiography" he describes his first meeting with Rubin, and he wasn't impressed:

"Although the man knew my work and talked a good game...I really didn't take it seriously. He'd lose interest after a while, I thought..."

But Rubin wasn't giving up, and at a later meeting, Cash asked him what he'd do differently to others who had recorded him. Cash gives Rubin's reply:

" 'I won't do anything,' he told me, "You'll do it. You'll come to my house and sit down in my living room and take a guitar and start singing. At some point, if you want me to, we'll turn on a recorder and you'll try everything that you ever wanted to record, plus your own songs, plus new songs I might suggest...You'll sing every song you love, and somewhere in there we'll find a trigger song that will tell us we're heading in the right direction...'

Now he really had my attention."

The first result of the collaboration was "American Recordings", released in 1994. The tone of the album is set by the opening track - the traditional "Delia", with some additional lyrics by Cash:

"Delia, oh Delia, Delia all my life
If I hadn't have shot poor Delia I'd've had her for a wife."

This is a stark, bleak and bare song, in which the singer describes killing "poor Delia", shooting her twice, and in the final verse tells his jailor that he can hear the patter of Delia's feet. The song makes very uncomfortable listening. Like all the songs on the album the only accompaniment is Cash's guitar. The album ends with the deeply dark humour of Loudon Wainwright's "The Man Who Couldn't Cry", in which the man concerned gets his revenge after his death on all those who hurt him during his life. In between these two, we get a collection of bleak and uncomfortable songs, some written by Cash himself (including the Vietnam inspired "Drive On"), others written by people as diverse as Nick Lowe ("The Beast in Me"), Leonard Cohen ("Bird on a Wire"), and Tom Waits ("Down There By the Train"). Cash's own composition "Redemption" is a bleak song about redemption through the shedding of blood:

"From the hands it came down,
From the side it came down
From the feet it came down
And ran to the ground
Between heaven and hell
A teardrop fell
In a deep crimson hue
The tree of life grew."

One of the most harrowing songs on this harrowing collection is "Thirteen.":

"Got the number 13 tattooed on my neck,
When the ink starts to itch then the black will turn to red.
I was born in the soul of misery, never had me a name,
They just gave me the number when I was young.
Got a long line of heartache, I carry it well,
The list of lives I've broken reach from here to hell."

The album is a masterpiece and one of his greatest creations.

"American Recordings" was followed by three further collaborations between Cash and Rubin: "Unchained", "Solitary Man" and earlier this year his valedictory "The Man Comes Around." Although the instrumentation is fuller on these albums, all three remain dark, bleak and harrowing. All three make uncomfortable listening. All three are masterpieces: the work of a genius aided by the most empathetic producer he has ever had.

"Unchained" combines classic Country songs with music from the pen of contemporary Rock artists such as Tom Petty and Beck, plus three Cash compositions. Only someone with the power and confidence of Cash could breathe new life into songs such as "Sea of Heartbreak", "Memories are Made of This" and "I've Been Everywhere." Cash sings the words to the surrealistic hell of "Rusty Cage" as if his life depended on it. The song opens with a nightmare vision that could have come straight from the pages of Orwell's "1984":

"You wired me awake and hit me with the hand of broken nails"

On "Spiritual", Cash invests the truly sad words with a power that makes the song almost unlistenable to in certain moods.

"Jesus, I don't wanna die alone,
Jesus oh Jesus I don't wanna alone,
My love wasn't true,
Now all I have is you,
Jesus oh Jesus I don't wanna alone.

Jesus if you hear my last breath
Don't leave me here to die a lonely death,
I know I have sinned
But lord I am suffering,
Jesus Oh Jesus if you hear my last breath."

Cash's own Rockabilly influenced "Mean Eyed Cat" provides some light relief of sorts. It is the story of a man who loses his woman because he hates her "Mean eyed cat." After she has left, he spends the last of his money trying to find her, and eventually ends up curled up on the floor with her and "that mean eyed cat." "Meet Me In Heaven" - another Cash composition - asks:

"Should you go first, or if you follow me,
Will you meet me in Heaven some day?"

"I Never Picked Cotton" describes the son of a cotton farmer who leaves the farm as soon as he is able, by stealing money, and ends up in the city living by the gun. After killing someone in a bar, he is condemned to death. "Unchained" is a heartfelt plea for his spirit to be "unchained" - that is, separated from his body, in other words a plea for death.

"Solitary Man" provides a similar mix, with the opening track, Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" suggesting the theme of the album. Neil Diamond's "Solitary Man" has never sounded sadder. Once again, he breathes new life into classics like "That Lucky Old Sun", "Mary of the Wild Moor" and "Wayfaring Stranger." There are two songs in particular that stand out. "Nobody" is a song of loneliness in which he finds himself in a vicious circle: he won't do anything for anybody, because nobody has ever done anything for him. "The Mercy Seat" (written by Nick Cave) begins with the line:

"It all began when they took me from my home and put me on death row"

The song describes the colliding thoughts and emotions of a man on death row waiting for "the mercy seat", as his head his shaved and the wires are attached to him. We hear him singing "my head is glowing", "my head is burning", "my head is melting". References to God and "a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye" and his protestations of innocence are presented in a manic stream of consciousness. At times Cash hardly pauses to draw breath. This song is as close to seeing an execution as I have ever been - and ever want to be.

The final album in the quartet sounds like (and proved to be) his swan song. The album opens with the title track "The Man Comes Around", a new Cash composition which presents an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world, where "the man comes around taking names." He revisits some his earlier hits such as "Give My Love to Rose", the disturbingly cynical "Sam Hall" and the cowboy ballad "Streets of Laredo" - all of them about death. He returns to the Hank Williams songbook for a tortuous version of the powerful "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." He turns to Scottish folk singer Ewan MacColl for "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" - a song MacColl wrote for the love of his life, Peggy Seeger, and that Cash is clearly singing to June.

On "I Hung My Head" (written by English Rock star Sting), he returns to the theme of murder leading to the death penalty. As he waits to be taken to the gallows, he sees the person he has killed in the distance coming to fetch him. His version of John Lennon's "In My Life" sounds like Cash is reviewing his life before he dies. The album ends with the old Vera Lynn song, beloved by British soldiers during the 2nd World War: "We'll Meet Again." But this is no sentimental trip down memory lane. Cash turns it into the song of someone who knows he is facing death, and is saying goodbye to loved ones:

"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.
Keep smiling through, just like you always do
Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away...

They'll be happy to know, that as you saw me go
I was singing this song."

Throughout the album, his voice crackles and croaks, but rather than detracting from the music, this merely adds power to the songs he sings.

Johnny Cash may have gone, but in those last years, while he was suffering life threatening illnesses, often confined to a wheelchair, unable to read his beloved books because of his failing sight, he produced the best music of his entire career. Given the consistently high quality of his music throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, that is quite an achievement. In those last painful years, he left us four gifts - the American Recordings. Apparently, there are a batch of songs that he and Rubin recorded for a fifth album. I look forward to hearing them.

Thank you, John, for 50 years of some of the most powerful music ever sung.

Kevin Crowe, October 2003.