Johnny Cash : Rest In Peace

All of my respect to "The Man In Black". Hearing Johnny Cash's voice has always made me smile, and I loved that he never compromised his beliefs or his art. That makes him a true icon. Rest in peace Johnny, you will be greatly missed.

 

I bought the Essential Sun Singles comp on Varese Sarbande yesterday at Best Buy, they did a GREAT job on this disc, highly recommended to anyone who like myself has been listening to this material on scratchy old vinyl up until today.

I could not get "Ballad Of A Teenage Queen" out of my head, so I bought the cd to listen to it until I got home to the vinyl (laughing).

 

Johnny Cash was a true American original; Who else could take such a disparate song such as a Nine Inch Nails tune and make it his own in the twilight of his life? When June Carter Cash passed on, I remember I said, "I hope this does not sap his will to live". I think it did. When my grandmother passed on, my grandfather died five months later. They had been married 55 years. This has been such a sad week. Warren Zevon and Johnny Cash were expected; John Ritter was a complete surprise. It just goes to show you, you can go at any time.

Johnny Cash, Rest In Peace. Now you and June are together again in eternity.

Evan

 

Well it's been over 24 hours since I first heard the news about Johnny Cash and John Ritter.

Johnny Cash as expected as it was, it is still very sad and hard to deal with. He left us so many great recordings and was every bit as influential to American music as Elvis was. What we call country music today can't even hold a candle to the quality of music that Johnny and the artists of that day gave us. It saddens me that country music radio has lost touch with it's roots and refuses to play Johnny, Merle, George, Waylon, Willie, Johnny Paycheck and the list goes on.

Johnny Cash was the first outlaw of country music. He lived a great and packed a lot of living into his 71 years on this earth. Everyone of us knows how much he loved June and the best thing about this is that he is back with the love of his life forever.

Rest in peace Johnny and thanks for the music and the memories.

 

How is country radio dealing with Cash's death? Did it take his passing to get some radioplay? I wish Cash would've lived long enough to see country radio restored to its former glory, that is, if ever does happen.

 

Well, they had a local TV news report featuring footage of a local country station DJ asking listeners to call in with their favorite Johnny Cash songs, and made note of how they were featuring Cash all day long.

The hypocritical thing of course is, this is the local Clear Channel country station that had never played Johhny Cash songs in the entire five or six years they've been in existance. By Monday, all the Cash content will surely be gone, and it'll be back to the usual adult contemporary soft rock with a steel guitar mixed in to disguise it as "country."

I was glad to go into a couple of record stores today, and hear that the clerks had, quite voluntarily, put some Cash discs on over the store PA. One even had made up a sign saying "RIP Johnny and Warren, we'll miss you."

 

Real Country has been playing Cash music a lot and they usually play his music on a regular basis anyway.

 

It truly is a disgrace that they ignored him in these last years when he was making some of his best music ever. If they had, his sales would have been as strong as they deserve to be.

 

"Hurt" is better than anything else Country Music Radio plays today.

Evan

 

As it should be (IMHO). Johnny Cash made good music period.