I confess: I am not a country music fan. Never was.
But as I grew up, that meant I needlessly allowed that “country” label to close the door to the remarkable music of Johnny Cash. What a fool I was.
In recent years I’ve tried to make up for lost time by exploring Cash’s music, and I still have a lot of catching up to do. Tony Blair of Eastern University offers an insightful discussion of Cash in the most recent edition of Prism magazine:
Johnny Cash was both a representative of the evangelical movement and a contrarian prophet to it. …
His view of the kingdom of God never fit comfortably within the contours of classic evangelicalism, and he had a persistent habit of singing, even writing, music that many evangelicals of his generation considered to be the work of the devil. He associated with people most evangelicals considered to be to be on the wrong side of the kingdom, supported social causes that were not popular among white evangelicals of his time, and embraced believers (and nonbelievers) who approached God sincerely in ways different from his own. …
And, finally, … he could be critical of his fellow believers. You’re so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good, he sang to them in one caustic song. Sinners loved him for it.
Cash’s life was ablaze in contradictions and personal failure, but as you listen to his music you realize how aware Cash was of those contradictions. Perhaps that’s why much of his great music identifies with others who are down and out — no more so than in “Man in Black”:
I wear the black for the poor and beaten down
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
but is there because he’s a victim of the times
I wear the black for those who’ve never read
Or listened to the words that Jesus said
About the road to happiness through love and charity
Why you’d think he’s talkin’ straight to you and me
Cash may have enjoyed great commercial success, but it was not because he wrote “safe” music that gave us the easy comfort of glossy platitudes. Songs such as “Folsom Prison Blues” drew their power from his identification with his characters, both in the horror of their actions and the depth of their sorrows. This dynamic also drove his choices of songs to cover in his stunning late-career “American Recordings” album, such as the song “The Beast in Me”:
The beast in me
Is caged by frail, fragile bars
Restless by day and by night
Rants and rages at the start
God help the beast in me
Many of the praise songs that waft through church services talk about sin, but they are pale, formulaic clichés compared to the stark honesty evoked by a song like “The Beast in Me.” Imagine singing this as a confessional at church on Sunday.
Cash wrestled with more than a few beasts, but he could confront them in song because he also was aware of the power of grace — which is why he also covered songs such as “Why Me Lord”:
Why me Lord
What have I ever done, to deserve even one of the blessings I’ve known?
Why me Lord
What did I ever do that was worth love from you and the kindness you’ve shown?
Lord help me Jesus
I’ve wasted it so, help me Jesus
I know what I am
Now that I know that I’ve need you so
Help me Jesus, my soul’s in your hands
Back in the mid-1990s, U2 closed out its oft-overlooked album “Zooropa” with a song called “The Wanderer,” not only written for Johnny Cash but sung by him. It was a perfect fit:
I went drifting through the capitals of tin
Where men can’t walk or freely talk
And sons turn their fathers in.
I stopped outside a church house
Where the citizens like to sit.
They say they want the kingdom
But they don’t want God in it. …I went out there in search of experience
To taste and to touch and to feel as much
As a man can before he repents.
After Cash’s death, U2 performed “The Wanderer” for a TV special. It was a fitting farewell.
Signs of Grace 