I think of Johnny Cash in the same way that many remember a favorite childhood teacher. Countless hours of Cash’s deep, plaintive, train-engine voice on long drives taught me much about the way of the world; he underscored my father’s lessons about manhood and my mother’s ideas about piety. The simple devotion of “Give My Love to Rose” and “I Walk the Line,” to name just two favorites, show more clearly than any philosophical argument the simple satisfaction of living for the good of others. Most of his oeuvre, pleasant as it is to listen to, is intended for more than pure entertainment. He rarely moralizes, but a Cash song inspires contemplation long after his voice trails off.
Cash also offers the love of country, though his patriotism is not merely didactic. His music is itself distinctively American; it cannot be loved without appreciating the nation that gave rise to it. It is perhaps because he lived such a typically American life: born to poor dirt farmers in Arkansas during the Great Depression, Cash learned to sing in the cotton fields before doing a stint in the Air Force and recording a breakout album with Sun Records. Once a star, he got addicted to drugs and got clean several times, got married twice, and performed for everyone from prisoners to Presidents. He experienced the turbulence of twentieth-century America as much as anyone, but he did not let its messiness consume him, as close as it came at times. Instead, he sang of the “Ragged Old Flag,” and in so doing offered a stirring defense of the virtues of American history. He sang of American myths like “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer,” and in train songs like “Hey Porter,” the nation’s very soil. He loved his countrymen, and in an America full of broken hearts and dark pasts he found and nurtured an irrepressible hope.
Despite his outlaw image, Cash believed in redemption rather than revolution.
He found the strength to do so in his faith. Few remember it today, but Cash initially attempted to begin his career as a gospel singer. Only after a producer at Sun told him that they would no longer produce gospel albums did he pivot to country. He found ample occasion to sing of Christ anyway, especially once his stardom afforded him more control over his own career. Whether through gospel standards like “Ain’t No Grave” or original compositions like “I Corinthians 15:55,”1 Cash found peace in the Good News and attempted to share it with his listeners.
Readers familiar with Cash’s work—and, more to the point, the contemporary conversation about his legacy—might be itching to point out Cash’s deviations from conservative thought. Indeed, while Cash’s political identification is unclear, he took plenty of stances that would not, on their face, be considered right-wing. One of his signature songs, “The Man in Black,” cites “the prisoner who has long paid for his crime” and, in a reference to the Vietnam War, the fact that “each week we lose a hundred fine young men” as reasons for his “somber” appearance. The song was written right in the middle of the Nixon Administration. Cash also clashed with Nixon in declining to play the anti-welfare tune “Okie from Muskogee” at a White House visit.2 Nor was “The Man in Black” Cash’s only commentary on the sad state of America’s prisons; some of his most iconic songs—like “Folsom Prison Blues”—and performances—like at San Quentin State Prison—focus on the issue. Capping off what one might call Cash’s social justice advocacy is his “Bitter Tears” album, which is a collection of protest songs highlighting the plight of Native Americans. Cash fought for years with radio stations that refused to play songs from the album.
Yet Cash’s critiques were far more palatable than similar sentiments expressed by less artful politicians and activists. This is certainly at least in part because of his profound musical skill; we must be wary of the “poets and storytellers” that Plato found to be “in error in matters of the greatest human importance.”3 But it is more so because his social criticisms were grounded and contextualized by his deep love for God and country. If he didn’t necessarily adhere to conservative orthodoxy, and whether he ever would have described himself as such, he certainly evinced a conservative disposition. In the same way that only Nixon could go to China, only Cash could write “Man in Black.” Inasmuch as he was a social critic, it was because he believed it was a service to the country he truly loved.
What is the conservative disposition if not a deep sense of love and gratitude for one’s cultural inheritance? Men without such sentiment, no matter how intelligent or well-intentioned they may be, cannot be trusted when it comes to social governance or reformation. Neither intelligence nor good intentions are sufficient to stave off disorder when the tethers of history are cast away. Men without this spirit cannot help but be revolutionaries, and despite his outlaw image, Cash believed in redemption rather than revolution.
This is the task of the honest reformer. It is comparatively easy and often dangerously attractive, necessary though it may sometimes be, to spend one’s time castigating that which is wrong. But Cash’s best songs find the kernels of goodness and truth in everyday life and magnify them. It is difficult to propose a positive vision for a community that both respects its nature and yet helps it to be better, but the music of Johnny Cash does just that, based as it is on an uncommonly deep understanding of the human condition. After all, Johnny Cash loved “songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God.”4 And America loved Johnny Cash.
MARCUS PORCIUS CATO
A version of this article originally appeared in Freeing the Muses, the October 2023 print issue of the Salient.
Original, that is, aside from his use of the eponymous Bible verse.
Cash tactfully claimed that he didn’t have enough time to perfect the song before his performance.
Plato, The Republic, 392a.
Johnny Cash, liner notes to Unchained, qtd. in Casey Cep, “Johnny Cash’s Gospel,” New Yorker, Feb. 9, 2020.