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A solid marriage doesn't guarantee career longevity, but Cash managed both. "We had more than one discussion about the ageism of country and rock," says rocker Tom Petty, who recorded and toured with Cash. "When something's gone past that demographic of appealing to people in their 20s, they don't think it's good anymore. Yet here was the perfect case of a guy who was growing older and his music was growing with him." It was Cash who took Bob Dylan to Music City to make the 1969 Nashville Skyline. Later, he guested on songs with Ray Charles, Emmylou Harris and U2. In the '80s, he teamed with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kristofferson for a sometime supergroup called the Highwaymen.
Cash was also loyal to old friends down on their luck. "Johnny always carried people who needed help," says Knox Phillips, Sam's son. "He hired Carl Perkins as part of his band and put him on his TV show, out of love. He did the same for Jerry Lee. No matter how down someone might be or how negative his reputation had become, Johnny always had a come-on-in-and-help-yourself attitude for them."
And in 1994 Cash found a sympathetic producer in Rick Rubin, co-founder of the rock-and-rap label Def Jam. It was Rubin's inspiration to return Cash to his roots: the voice, a guitar and the sparest backing. The result was the four American albums. These CDs didn't go platinum--they barely went rhinestone. But they validated Cash's status and towering stature. The latest one, The Man Comes Around, proves to be the perfect send-off for an artist who was failing in everything but artistry. It's Cash's own elegy, eulogy and last words.
The 15 songs include a mess of heartbreak and three wrongful deaths. Throughout, the gravity of Cash's voice lends something sepulchral to the fondest lyrics. When, in his version of Ewan MacColl's The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, he intones, "I know our joy would fill the earth," he could be singing from under it. And in Hurt (the song and the soul-whammingly evocative video) his performance synopsizes a lifetime of anguish. "I hurt myself today/To see if I still feel," he drones. "I will let you down. I will make you hurt." It is the testimony of a man apologizing for living while preparing for death.
On June's next-to-last album, Press On, she duetted with John on Terry Smith's Far Side Banks of Jordan--a song that Cash felt perfectly described their relationship. It's about two elderly people facing the end of their lives, and inevitable separation. June Carter Cash made that trip first, on May 15 of this year, after complications from heart surgery.
Cash was devastated. He knew that if he was to survive June's death, it would be through the thing he knew best: work. "About three days after June passed away," says country music star Marty Stuart, who toured with Cash for 24 years and was for a time married to Johnny's daughter Cindy, "John's son John Carter called me and said, 'Daddy wants to record.' It was the best news I heard in a long time. We all gathered around him and made close to 50 songs." The microphone seemed to be a source of healing and comfort.