Roots of Rock: Sun Records & Johnny Cash

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Today we continue our archive series, RB, Rockabilly, and Early Rock and Roll. We start today's show with Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records.

Speaker 2 That's the Memphis-based label that launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash.

Speaker 2 We'll hear an interview with Cash in the second half of the show. Before Phillips started his own record label, he produced the first records of bluesmen B.B.
King and Howland Wolfe.

Speaker 2 As Peter Guralnik, the author of a biography of Sam Phillips and a two-volume biography of Elvis has said, quote, Phillips has left a remarkable legacy both of black blues and the wide adaptation of it which became rock and roll.

Speaker 2 He has written one of the most astonishing chapters in the history of American popular music, and for this we can only be grateful, unquote. Sam Phillips sold Sun Records in 1969.
He died in 2003.

Speaker 2 I spoke with him in 1997. We started with one of the first records he produced in his Memphis studio.

Speaker 3 It's one of the very early rock and roll records.

Speaker 2 Recorded in 1951, this is Rocket 88 featuring singer Jackie Branston with Ike Turner at the piano.

Speaker 6 You women have heard of Jalopis, you've heard the noise they make, but let me rentuce my new Rocket 88.

Speaker 6 dancing Dance straight just one way

Speaker 6 everybody likes my rocket 88 baby we'll ride in style move it all along

Speaker 8 part of your genius has been finding musicians who brought together black music and country music creating rock and roll and rockabilly i'm wondering how you were exposed to black music as a white man growing up in the segregated South?

Speaker 13 My interest in black music started at a very early age.

Speaker 13 I

Speaker 13 worked with black people in the fields. My daddy was a farmer and he grew cotton and of course cotton had to be picked and hoed.

Speaker 13 My father, incidentally, did not own the farm. He was a tenant farmer and he in turn would bring other people onto the farm to help them.
So

Speaker 13 we

Speaker 13 were able to be together an awful lot with black people because of the closeness of the type of work that we had to do on the farms.

Speaker 11 You started your producing career recording blues musicians and leasing the records to companies like RPM, Modern, and Chess Records.

Speaker 9 You recorded Helen Wolfe, Walter Horton, Bobby Bland, Little Jr.

Speaker 14 Parker, B.B.

Speaker 7 King, the very start of their careers.

Speaker 11 I'm wondering what it was like for you as a white man in the South in the late 40s and early 50s to be recording black musicians.

Speaker 18 Was it ever difficult to

Speaker 19 have rapport?

Speaker 20 I'm wondering if they saw you as the man because you were recording them and because you were white.

Speaker 13 It was

Speaker 13 a type of thing that I think most black people had some doubt as to what, quote unquote, we were up up to early on,

Speaker 13 because in many instances black people were taken advantage of, and

Speaker 13 maybe when they thought something was for free or for a certain price, it didn't turn out that way.

Speaker 13 I knew that

Speaker 13 the black people that I was going to record,

Speaker 13 most of which had never seen even microphones, let alone a little studio,

Speaker 13 that the psychology that would be employed by me

Speaker 13 to have them feel comfortable and to do the thing that they felt they wanted to do in the way of music, rather than to try to please or do the type of thing that a white man might want to do,

Speaker 13 have them do, because I was not looking for Duke Ellington or Count Basie or Nat King Cole or any of the outstanding black jazz and pop musicians.

Speaker 13 The people that I was recording were people that had to a great extent the feel for the things they had experienced and they loved and the way they spoke was to the people through their music.

Speaker 8 One of the great blues musicians that you discovered and first recorded was Helen Wolfe.

Speaker 8 I want to play the recording that you produced of him doing Moon In at Midnight in 1951.

Speaker 12 And this was something that you did for chess records.

Speaker 11 I think it made it to number 10 on the RB charts.

Speaker 18 Tell us about your first encounter with Holland Wolf.

Speaker 13 The Wolf, as I've said so many times, is one of my favorite artists. He was so individual in the things that he did.

Speaker 13 He had, number one, a voice that was so distinctive that there is nobody could mistake it for anybody else. That intrigued me.

Speaker 13 It was so absolutely untrained in so many ways but at the same time it was so honest that it was just

Speaker 13 it brought about a certain passion just by listening to him and there was one thing about the wolf that you never had to worry about

Speaker 13 when he opened his mouth in a recording studio and he would talk real low when he was talking to you and he was a big man about six feet four and weighed probably 225 or 30 pounds and nothing but muscle.

Speaker 13 But when he talked to you, you could barely hear him. When he sang to you, you hardly needed a microphone or an amplifier.

Speaker 13 But more than that, his ability to get lost in a song for two or three minutes or how long the song was was certainly

Speaker 13 as good. as anybody I ever recorded.
And when I say get lost in a song, I simply do mean that. And I think that is a good,

Speaker 13 unsophisticated term of saying that

Speaker 13 we all tried to get lost in what we were doing, and I think that was part of our success.

Speaker 8 Well, let me play this 1951 Howling Wolf record that you produced, Monet.

Speaker 13 I'm anxious to hear that one of my favorite records.

Speaker 6 Somebody calling me,

Speaker 6 calling me on my telephone.

Speaker 6 somebody calling

Speaker 6 over my telephone.

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 6 keep on calling,

Speaker 4 tell them I'm not at home.

Speaker 8 That's Hal and Wolfer Recording, produced in 1951 by my guest, Sam Phillips.

Speaker 11 Sam Phillips, you started Sun Records, your studio in Memphis,

Speaker 11 after recording for independent companies, other people's independent companies like Chess Records.

Speaker 18 Why did you want to start your own studio? Did you have a vision of what you wanted to do in your own studio?

Speaker 13 I actually never wanted to

Speaker 13 actually form a label as such, like Sun Records. I wanted to be strictly on the creative end of it

Speaker 13 because I believed so strongly in what I believed in and I wanted to prove to myself one way or the other that what I had felt apparently for an awfully long time was either

Speaker 13 something that was worthwhile or that the public, if it had the chance would would tell us that you know you're on the wrong track

Speaker 13 but after dealing with RPM and modern records and chess

Speaker 13 I guess I was disappointed in the way that I thought business was done and I don't like to speak disparagingly of people because these were these people were my friends but I

Speaker 13 had some difficulty and

Speaker 13 you know working with them from a standpoint of what I felt was fair and equitable in the things that we had agreed on.

Speaker 20 When Elvis first auditioned for you,

Speaker 10 I know that he sang in styles of his favorite performers from, you know, white and black, from Lonnie Johnson to Dean Martin.

Speaker 18 What did you do to try to get a sense from Elvis of who Elvis really was, of what his kind of own voice was?

Speaker 13 Well, Elvis Elvis being as young as he was, and of course I'm, gosh, I'm 12 years and three days older than Elvis, and he's 19, I guess I was 31 or whatever.

Speaker 13 But I can tell you, the only time that we possibly had what you might say

Speaker 13 a difference of opinion

Speaker 13 in what we were doing is that I really did not want to do some of the quote-unquote more poppish things that Elvis truly did like because Elvis, let's face it, had

Speaker 13 an absolute beautiful voice from the beginning. Trained or not, it was beautiful.
But at the same time, he also had a certain intrigue about his voice, and I knew that, and I knew that we needed to

Speaker 13 feel our way around between

Speaker 13 great gut bucket blues and country. I really, truly thought that.

Speaker 13 So I think Elvis, if he had had his way and he absolutely gave us no problem at all on it, maybe he wouldn't have put a country type thing on the backside of each R ⁇ B record that we put out on him.

Speaker 20 Do you have a favorite of the Elvis Sun sessions that...

Speaker 13 I really do. And I've kidded about it a lot because I wrote the song.
I really didn't. It was the song Mystery Train that Little Junior Parker really basically wrote it.

Speaker 13 And we did it by him on Sun and we did it in an entirely different tempo and approach and he had the idea for the song and came in and

Speaker 13 it wasn't quite like we thought it should be and so I worked with him a little bit because I really did love the idea of the song.

Speaker 13 So when we decided to do it on Elvis It is something that I think that we did so entirely different, although Little Junior Parker's record was Elvis' favorite of the two, I have to say that both of them were my favorites.

Speaker 13 Till this day, I'd have to say Mystery Train ranks way up there.

Speaker 7 Why don't we hear, since you produced Junior Parker's version of Mystery Train 2, why don't we hear both the Junior Parker and the Elvis version back to back?

Speaker 13 We're in for a treat.

Speaker 6 Train our ride,

Speaker 6 sixteen coaches long

Speaker 6 Train I ride

Speaker 10 sixteen coaches long

Speaker 10 Well that long black train

Speaker 6 carry my baby home

Speaker 6 Train train

Speaker 6 Coming round the baby

Speaker 6 Train train

Speaker 6 Coming right

Speaker 6 Well, it took my baby

Speaker 6 But it never whipped again

Speaker 12 This Junior Parker and Elvis Presley, both of their versions of Mystery Train, both versions produced by my guest, Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records.

Speaker 11 You gave up recording in about 1963.

Speaker 18 You gave up producing records.

Speaker 5 Why did you stop?

Speaker 13 I saw the handwriting on the wall when you would do what you did, had to do, and your distributors had to work with you.

Speaker 13 And then the major labels would come along and offer contracts that we couldn't even think about, guarantees,

Speaker 13 because we were still very,

Speaker 13 very limited on

Speaker 13 funds.

Speaker 13 So it was no use in me being a farm club, so to speak, for the major league club. And that's exactly what it came to be.

Speaker 13 So I decided I was not going to work because I was offered a job with RCA by Steve Scholz to go to RCA at the time I sold Elvis' contract.

Speaker 13 And I did not go because, number one, I knew I would not be of any value to RCA because I had to do whatever I did, be it right or wrong, I had to do it in the way that I felt was necessary to prove what I had set out to prove.

Speaker 13 I knew that that wasn't necessarily going to work well with

Speaker 13 a big company. It would be absolutely no percentage.
It would be only frustration. I would accomplish absolutely nothing.

Speaker 14 You must have, or I would imagine that you must have really missed recording people when you stopped and missed discovering people.

Speaker 13 I'll always miss it. I sure will.
There is nothing on the face of God's earth that gives us more solace in more different areas and more different ways than music.

Speaker 13 And you better believe that if I could stay around here another 74 years and I could start all over again and have my way with a major company or I would be recording people because there is nothing, there is nothing in this world that is more rewarding, whether you got a dollar out of it or not, than working with, I mean, absolutely untried, unproven talent and seeing it come to the forefront and entertain, I mean, even the hardest eared control man in the world behind that glass.

Speaker 11 Did you ever wish that you were the performer and you weren't behind the glass in the the control room, but you were in front of the microphone?

Speaker 19 Never.

Speaker 13 In front of the crowd? Never, never, never. And that's a good question.
That's probably one of the better ones, Terry, because

Speaker 13 I was never, ever jealous. I was a pretty good musician.
I've always said I wasn't worth a damn, but my bandmaster and everything at Coffee High School said I was good.

Speaker 13 I directed a band in the summer and this sort of thing. But no,

Speaker 13 that did not enter my mind. Oh, no, listen, I had the good job.
I had the good job.

Speaker 13 The boys out there on the floor, they had the tough job. They had to worry about one instrument.

Speaker 13 I had to worry about three, maybe, you know.

Speaker 26 I think you just answered one of my questions.

Speaker 11 You said you played tuba when you were younger.

Speaker 20 You had said at one place that your favorite composer was John Philip Sousa.

Speaker 22 Now, I mean,

Speaker 25 I love marching band music.

Speaker 9 I love band music and marches and stuff.

Speaker 26 But I was really shocked to hear that from you, the man who discovered Elvis Presley, John Philippe.

Speaker 13 Hey, you've been reading my record or something, girl.

Speaker 13 Let me tell you something about John Phillips Souser.

Speaker 13 What martial music is, is what I call stiff music. This man absolutely got more melody chords.
I'm not talking about necessarily harmony chords because

Speaker 13 let's face it, martial music is not made up just for a nice big blend of harmony. But you listen to this guy and the way that he handled it.

Speaker 13 He is a, this guy is a master at crafting music that if you can make people want to listen to it,

Speaker 13 and if you can make somebody want to listen to a good martial piece of music like the Washington Post

Speaker 13 March or a Symphony Fidelis and enjoy it, I mean, I'm going to tell you, you are a master musician.

Speaker 13 He is the best. He is the best at what he did.

Speaker 13 There's not a good second. You can't name one.

Speaker 13 And of course, the Boston Pops has always been one of my favorite. That Fideler was so crazy, I loved him, man.
He was scared of nothing. Absolutely scared of nothing.

Speaker 13 The criticism, he didn't give a damn. Give him a drink before he went out on stage, a half a pint, and you can forget it, honey.
You were going to have fun with music. I mean, you know, you know,

Speaker 13 don't get me started.

Speaker 24 No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 22 You mentioned giving, you know, that he'd have a little drink before.

Speaker 26 My understanding is that you wouldn't let your musicians have a drink in the studio, with the the exception of Helen Wolfe.

Speaker 19 That is right.

Speaker 13 Damn you, woman, I swear to God. Do you have my jail record up there, too?

Speaker 13 But honestly, that's a fact. And the wolf, I looked at him as big as he was, and then a half of a pint of Thunderbird wine, and actually that half pint was half gone already.

Speaker 13 And I said, you know, there can't be too much harm done if I permit him to break the rules around here. And besides that, if he stepped on me, I might be no more.

Speaker 26 Now, what about other people? Why wouldn't you let them drink?

Speaker 11 Because after all, you wanted them to be as relaxed and as natural and uninhibited as they could.

Speaker 13 I don't really know. I really honestly don't know, Terry.

Speaker 13 There was just something I wanted them to really get high

Speaker 13 on what we were attempting to do. And the one thing that I can tell you unequivocally, again,

Speaker 13 is that we did get high on our music. Even the cuts that we didn't feel that we had it on, we got high on it.

Speaker 13 And I want to tell you, there is no high in this world better than when you cut something that you didn't believe that you could do.

Speaker 13 You maybe said to yourself, I know I can do it, but you really didn't believe you could do it, and you do it. Now you tell me something that would be more potentially high.

Speaker 13 Now, that's high-octane stuff, so far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 2 Sam Phillips founded Sun Records. Our interview was recorded in 1997.
He died in 2003. One of the people whose careers he launched was Johnny Cash.

Speaker 2 We'll hear my 1997 interview with Cash after a break. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 Next, in our series of interviews on RB, rockabilly, and early rock and roll, we have my 1997 interview with Johnny Cash, one of country music's most influential performers.

Speaker 2 He's in both the country music and rock and roll halls of fame. Some of his best-known recordings include I Walk the Line, Ring of Fire, and Folsom Prison Blues.

Speaker 2 His early recordings were on Sun Records, which was owned by Sam Phillips, who we just heard from, and was the most influential label that produced Rockabilly.

Speaker 2 I spoke with Cash when his autobiography was published. In the book, he said that after his hits in the 60s, he didn't sell huge numbers of records, but he kept making music he's proud of.

Speaker 2 But in 1994, he hooked up with record producer Rick Rubin, who had produced many rap and rock hits.

Speaker 2 The recordings they made together included many cash covers of contemporary rock songs, including songs by Nine Inch Nails and Sting.

Speaker 2 And as the autobiography says, the Cash and Rubin collaborations transformed Cash's image from Nashville has-been to hip icon, and it gains him a new, young audience.

Speaker 2 Soon after we spoke in 1997, he announced that he had Parkinson's disease and was canceling the remainder of his book tour, which had just begun.

Speaker 2 His diagnosis was later changed to autonomic neuropathy, a disease affecting the nervous system.

Speaker 2 Cash died in 2003. Earlier that year, he won a Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for his new version, Give My Love to Rose, which he first recorded on Sun Records in 1957.

Speaker 2 Here's his 1956 recording of Get Rhythm, which was produced by Sam Phillips on Sun Records.

Speaker 6 Hey, get rhythm.

Speaker 5 When you get the blues, Come on, get a rhythm.

Speaker 5 When you get the blues, get a rock and roll feeling in your bones. But taps on your toes and get gone, get a rhythm.

Speaker 5 When you get the blues.

Speaker 5 A little shoeshine boy, he never gets slow down, but he's got the dirtiest job in town. Bending low at the people's feet on a windy corner of a dirty street.

Speaker 5 Well, I asked him while he shined my shoe, how'd he keep from getting the blues? He grinned as he raised his little head. He popped his shoeshine rag and then he said, get a rhythm.

Speaker 5 When you get the blues, come on, get a rhythm.

Speaker 11 You grew up during the Depression.

Speaker 11 What are some of the things that your father did to make a living while you were a boy?

Speaker 28 My father was a cotton farmer first,

Speaker 28 but he didn't have any land, or what land he had, he lost it in the Depression.

Speaker 28 So he worked as anthropsman, cut pulp wood for the paper mills, rode the rails on box cars, going from one harvest to another to try to make a little money picking fruit or vegetables, did every kind of work imaginable from painting to shoveling to herding cattle.

Speaker 28 He's always been such an inspiration to me because of the varied kinds of things that he did and the kind of life he lived. He inspired me so that

Speaker 28 All the things he did so far from being a soldier in World War I to being an old man in his patio sitting on the porch watching the dogs, you know,

Speaker 28 I think about his life and it would inspire me to go my own other direction. And I just like to explore

Speaker 28 minds and the desires of people out there.

Speaker 26 You know, it's interesting that you say your father inspired you so much.

Speaker 15 I'm sure you wouldn't have wanted to lead his life picking cotton.

Speaker 28 I did.

Speaker 28 Until I was 18 years old, that is.

Speaker 28 Then I picked the guitar and I've been picking it since.

Speaker 19 Right.

Speaker 7 Did you have a plan to get out?

Speaker 15 Did you very much want to

Speaker 29 get out of the town where you were brought up and get out of picking cotton?

Speaker 28 Yeah, I knew that when I left there at the age of 18, I wouldn't be back.

Speaker 28 And it was

Speaker 28 common knowledge among all the people there that when you graduate from high school here, you go to college or go get a job or something and do it on your own.

Speaker 28 And I haven't been familiar with hard work. It was no problem for me.
But first I hitchhiked to Pontiac, Michigan, and

Speaker 28 got a job working in

Speaker 28 Fisher Body, making those 1951 Pontiacs. I worked there three weeks, got really sick of it, went back home and joined the Air Force.

Speaker 9 You have such a wonderful deep voice.

Speaker 14 Did you start singing before your voice changed?

Speaker 28 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 28 I got no deep voice today. I've got a cold.
But when I was young, I had a high-tenor voice. I used used to sing Bill Monroe songs.
And

Speaker 28 I sing Dennis Day songs that I

Speaker 5 sang on the

Speaker 28 songs that he sang on the

Speaker 28 Jack Benny show.

Speaker 19 Wow.

Speaker 28 Every week he sang an old Irish folk song.

Speaker 28 And

Speaker 28 next day in the fields, I'd be singing that song if I was working in the fields. And I always loved those songs.

Speaker 28 With my high tenor, I thought I was pretty good, you know, almost as good as Dennis Day.

Speaker 28 But when I was 17, 16,

Speaker 28 my father and I cut wood all day long, and I was swinging that cross-cut saw and hauling wood.

Speaker 28 And when I walked in the back door late that afternoon, I was singing, everybody going to have religion and glory, everybody going to be singing a story.

Speaker 28 I sang those old gospel songs for my mother, and she said, is that you? And I said, yes, ma'am. And she came over and put her arms around me and said, God's got his hands on you.

Speaker 28 I still think of that, you know?

Speaker 24 She realized you had a gift.

Speaker 28 That's what she said, yeah. She called it the gift.

Speaker 25 Well, how did you feel about your voice changing?

Speaker 14 It must have stunned you.

Speaker 26 If you were singing like Dennis O'Day and then suddenly you were singing like Johnny Cash.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 28 I don't know. I guess when I was a tenor, I just, and when it changed, I thought, well, It goes right along with these hormones and everything's working out really good, you know.

Speaker 28 I felt like my voice was becoming the man's voice.

Speaker 19 Right, right.

Speaker 11 So, did you start singing different songs as your voice got deeper?

Speaker 28 Lucky old son.

Speaker 28 Memories are made of this.

Speaker 28 16 tons.

Speaker 28 I developed a pretty unusual style, I think.

Speaker 28 If I'm anything, I'm not a singer, but I'm a song stylist.

Speaker 18 What's the difference?

Speaker 28 Well,

Speaker 28 I say I'm not a singer, so that means I can't sing, but but

Speaker 28 doesn't it?

Speaker 16 Well, but I mean, that's not true.

Speaker 11 I understand you're making a distinction, but you certainly can sing.

Speaker 19 Yeah, go ahead. Thank you.

Speaker 28 Well, song stylist. It's like to take

Speaker 28 an old folk song like Dee D is Gone and do a modern white man's version of it.

Speaker 28 A lot of those I did that way, you know, I would take songs that I'd

Speaker 28 loved as a child and redo them in my mind for the new voice I had, the low voice.

Speaker 11 I know that you briefly took singing lessons and you say in your new book that your singing teacher told you, you know, don't let anybody change your voice. Don't even bother with the singing lessons.

Speaker 30 How did you end up taking lessons in the first place?

Speaker 28 My mother did that and

Speaker 28 she was determined that I was going to leave the farm and do well in life and she thought with the gift I might be able to do that. So she took in washing.

Speaker 28 She got a washing machine in 1942 as soon as they got electricity. And she took in washing.
She washed the school teachers' clothes and

Speaker 28 anybody she could and sent me for singing lessons for $3 per lesson. And that's how she made the money to send me.

Speaker 14 What was your reaction when the teacher told you, don't let anybody change what you're doing.

Speaker 15 Don't, you know, I'm not going to teach you anymore.

Speaker 28 I was pretty happy about that. I didn't really want to change, you know.
I felt good about my voice.

Speaker 24 You left home when you were about 18.

Speaker 10 And then then how old were you when you actually went to Memphis?

Speaker 28 Well, I went to Memphis after I finished the Air Force in 1954.

Speaker 28 I lived on that farm until I went to the Air Force. I was in there four years, and when I came back, I got married and moved to Memphis.
Got an apartment.

Speaker 28 Started trying to sell appliances at a place called Home Equipment Company. But I couldn't sell anything and didn't really want to.
All I wanted was the music.

Speaker 28 And if somebody in the house was playing music

Speaker 28 when I would come, I would stop and sing with them. Like one time Gus Cannon, the man who wrote

Speaker 28 Walk Right In,

Speaker 28 which was a hit for the rooftop singers.

Speaker 28 And

Speaker 28 I sat on the front porch with him day after day

Speaker 28 when I found him and sang those songs.

Speaker 11 When you got to Memphis, Elvis Presley had already recorded That's All Right.

Speaker 11 Sam Phillips had produced him for his label Sun Records. You called Sam Phillips and asked for an audition.

Speaker 9 Did it take a lot of nerve to make that phone call?

Speaker 28 No, it just took the right time. I was fully confident that I was going to see Sam Phillips and to record for him.
That when I called him, I thought I'm going to get on Sun Records.

Speaker 28 So I called him and he turned me down flat. Then two weeks later I

Speaker 28 turned down again. He told me over the phone that he couldn't uh sell gospel music, so

Speaker 28 it was independent, not a lot of money, you know.

Speaker 28 So I didn't press that issue, but one day I just decided I'm ready to go, so I went down with my guitar and sat on the front steps of his recording studio and met him when he came in.

Speaker 28 And I said, I'm John Cash. I'm the one that's been calling.
And if you'd listen to me, I believe you'd be glad you did. And he said, come on in.

Speaker 28 That was a good lesson for me, you know, to believe in myself.

Speaker 8 So, what did Phillips actually respond to most of the songs that you played him?

Speaker 28 He responded most to a song of mine called Hey Porter,

Speaker 28 which was on the first record. But he asked me to go write a love song or maybe a bitter weeper.

Speaker 28 So, I wrote a song called Cry, Cry, Cry, went back in and recorded that for the other side of the record.

Speaker 23 Well, why don't we hear Cry, Cry, Cry, which was on the first single that Sun Records released by you?

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 5 Everybody knows where you go when the sun goes down.

Speaker 5 I think you only live to see the lights uptown. I wasted my time when I would try, try, try.

Speaker 5 Cause when the lights have lost a glow, you'll cry, cry, cry.

Speaker 5 Soon your sugar daddies will all be gone.

Speaker 5 You wake up some cold day and find you're alone. You'll call for me, but I'm gonna tell you bye, bye, bye.

Speaker 5 When I turn around and walk away, you'll cry, cry, cry.

Speaker 5 You're gonna cry, cry, cry, and you cry alone.

Speaker 5 When everyone's forgotten and you're left on your own, you're gonna cry, cry, cry.

Speaker 2 We're listening to my 1997 interview with Johnny Cash. We'll hear more after a break.
This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 26 What was it like when you started to go on tour?

Speaker 19 You know, after coming from the cotton fields, it's true, I mean, you'd been in the Army and you'd been abroad, you know, with the Army, but what was it like for you in the early days of getting recognized, you know, traveling around the country?

Speaker 28 Well,

Speaker 28 when I started playing concerts, I went out from Memphis to Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, played the little towns there that I would go out myself in my car and set up the show or get the show booked in those theaters.

Speaker 28 And then along about three months later, Elvis Presley asked me to

Speaker 28 sing with him at the Overton Park Shell in Memphis. And I sang Cry, Cry, Cry, and Hey Porter.

Speaker 28 And from that time on, I was on my way, and I knew it, I felt it, and I loved it. So Elvis asked me to go on a tour with him, and I did.
I worked with Elvis four or five tours in the next year or so.

Speaker 28 And I was always intrigued by his charisma.

Speaker 28 You can't be in the building

Speaker 28 with Elvis without looking at him, you know.

Speaker 28 And he inspired me so with his fire and energy that I guess that inspiration from him really helped me to go.

Speaker 11 What were the temptations like for a young married man like yourself on the road, you know, slowly becoming a star?

Speaker 28 Fame was pretty hard to handle actually.

Speaker 28 The country boy and me tried to break loose and take me back to the country, but

Speaker 28 the music was stronger. The urge to go out and do the gift was a lot stronger.

Speaker 28 And

Speaker 28 the temptations were women,

Speaker 28 girls, which I loved, and

Speaker 28 then amphetamines,

Speaker 28 not very much later,

Speaker 28 from running all night, you know, in our cars on tour. And the doctors got these nice pills that give us energy and keep us awake.

Speaker 28 So I started taking those, and I liked them so much I got addicted to them.

Speaker 28 And then

Speaker 28 I started taking downers or sleeping pills pills to come down and rest after two or three days. So it became a cycle.
I was taking the pills for a while, and then the pills started taking me.

Speaker 17 I want to play what I think was your first big hit, I Walk the Line.

Speaker 28 That was my third record.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 21 you wrote the song.

Speaker 19 Tell me the story of how you wrote it and what you were thinking about at the time.

Speaker 28 In the Air Force, I had an old Wilcox K recorder, and

Speaker 28 used to hear guitar runs on that recorder going

Speaker 28 like the chords on I Walk the Line.

Speaker 28 And

Speaker 28 I always wanted to write a love song using that theme, you know, that tune. And so I started to write the song.
And I was in Gladewater, Texas one night with Carl Perkins.

Speaker 28 And I said, I've got a good idea for a song. And I sang the first verse that I had written.
And I said it's called Because You're Mine. And he said, I walk the line is a better title.

Speaker 28 So I changed it to I Walk the Line.

Speaker 22 Now, were you thinking of your own life when you wrote this?

Speaker 28 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 28 It was kind of a prodding to myself to play it straight, Johnny.

Speaker 30 And was this, I think I read that this was supposed to be a ballad.

Speaker 18 I mean, it was supposed to be slow.

Speaker 28 when you first wrote it. That's the way I sang it, yeah, at first.
But Sam wanted it up, you know, up tempo. And

Speaker 28 I put paper in the strings of my guitar to get that

Speaker 28 sound and with a bass and a lead guitar.

Speaker 28 There it was, bare and stark, that song was when it was released, and I heard it on the radio, and I really didn't like it.

Speaker 28 And I called Sam Phillips and asked him, please not send out any more records of that song. Why? But he laughed at me.
I just didn't like the way it sounded to me. I didn't know I sounded that way.

Speaker 28 And I didn't like it. I don't know.
But he said, let's give it a chance. And it was just a few days until that's all it took to take off.

Speaker 21 That's funny.

Speaker 25 I mean, you'd heard your voice before, hadn't you?

Speaker 21 So it was something in your own singing you weren't liking when you heard it?

Speaker 28 Well, the music and my voice together, I just felt like it was really weird.

Speaker 28 But I got used to it very quickly. I don't know if that I didn't, I didn't hate it, but I just didn't like it.
I thought I could do better.

Speaker 21 Well, let's hear our walking line. This was a great record.
It was great then, and it still is.

Speaker 11 This is Johnny Cash.

Speaker 5 I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.

Speaker 5 I keep my eyes wide open all the time.

Speaker 5 I keep the ends out for the tilt fine.

Speaker 5 Because you're mine,

Speaker 5 I walk the line.

Speaker 5 I find it very, very easy to be true.

Speaker 5 I find myself alone when each is through.

Speaker 5 Yes, I'll admit that I'm a fool for you

Speaker 5 because you're mine.

Speaker 5 I walk the line.

Speaker 2 We're listening to the interview I recorded with Johnny Cash in 1997. We'll hear more after a break.
This is fresh air.

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Speaker 32 For me, sometimes I just need to go and talk to somebody that is not going to judge me, right? It's going to be there and going to listen to me.

Speaker 32 And I can't start just saying, look, I'm not feeling right today. And it feels natural.

Speaker 16 I love it.

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Speaker 11 I think it was in the late 1950s that you started doing prison concerts, which you eventually became very famous for.

Speaker 29 What got you started performing in prison?

Speaker 28 Well I had a song called Folsom Prison Blues that was the hit just before I walked the line and

Speaker 28 the people in Texas heard about it at the at the state prison and got to writing me letters asking me to come down there.

Speaker 28 So I responded and then the warden called me and asked if I would come down and do a show for the prisoners in Texas. And

Speaker 28 so we went down and there's a rodeo at all these shows that the prisoners have there.

Speaker 28 And in between the rodeo things they asked me to set up and do two or three songs. So that was what I did.
I did Folsom Prison Blues, which they thought was their song, you know.

Speaker 28 And I walked the line, ring

Speaker 28 hay porter, cry, cry, cry.

Speaker 28 And then the word got around on the grapevine that Johnny Cash was all right and that you ought to see him. So the request started coming in from other prisoners all over the United States.

Speaker 28 And then the word got around. So I always wanted to record that, you know, to record a show.
Because of the reaction I got, it was far and above anything I had ever had in my life.

Speaker 28 The complete explosion of noise and reaction that they gave me with every song.

Speaker 28 So then I came back the next year and played the prison again, the New Year's Day show. Came back again the third year and did the show.

Speaker 28 And then I kept talking to my producers at Columbia about recording one of those shows.

Speaker 28 It was so exciting, I said, that the people out there ought to share that, you know, and feel that excitement too. So a preacher friend, a friend of mine named Floyd Gressett,

Speaker 28 set it up for us.

Speaker 28 Lou Robin and

Speaker 28 a lot of other people involved at Folsom Prison.

Speaker 28 So we went into Folsom on February 11th, 1968, and recorded the show live.

Speaker 11 Why don't we hear Folsom Prison Blues from your Live at Folsom Prison record?

Speaker 8 This is Johnny Cash.

Speaker 13 Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.

Speaker 34 I hear the trainer coming. It's rolling around a bend.

Speaker 34 And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when. I'm stuck in folsome prison and time keeps dragging on.

Speaker 34 But that train keeps rolling

Speaker 34 on down the sand and so on.

Speaker 34 When I was just a baby, my mama told me, son,

Speaker 34 always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns. But I shot a man in Reno

Speaker 34 just to watch him die.

Speaker 34 When I hear that whistle blowing,

Speaker 34 I hang my head and cry.

Speaker 18 That's Johnny Cash live at Folsom Prison, and Johnny Cash has a new autobiography that's just been published.

Speaker 11 I guess Merle Haggard was in the audience for one of your San Quentin concerts.

Speaker 26 Must have been pretty exciting to find that out.

Speaker 15 That was before he had recorded, I think, that he was in there.

Speaker 28 Yeah, 68 and 69, right on the front row was Merle Haggard.

Speaker 19 Yeah, and who knew?

Speaker 28 I didn't know that until about 1963 or 62.

Speaker 28 He told me all about it. He saw every show that I did there.

Speaker 28 And, of course, the rest is history for Merle. He came out and immediately had success himself.

Speaker 30 You know, it's interesting.

Speaker 10 You've always or almost always worn black during your career.

Speaker 17 And I was interested in reading that your mother hated it too.

Speaker 28 See, yeah.

Speaker 17 See, we have something in common.

Speaker 19 Our mothers don't like black.

Speaker 19 I love it. Me too.

Speaker 25 But you gave in for a while.

Speaker 26 She started making you bright, flashy outfits, even a nice white suit.

Speaker 19 What did it feel like for you to be on stage in bright colors or all in white?

Speaker 28 Well, that was 1956, and I hadn't been wearing the black for very long. Oh, it was okay.
I would wear anything my mother made me, you know. I just couldn't afford to turn her down.

Speaker 28 But before long, I decided to start with the black and stick with it because it felt good to me on stage that

Speaker 28 a figure there in black and everything coming out of his face. That's the way I wanted to do it.

Speaker 15 A few years ago, you started making records with Rick Rubin.

Speaker 24 Seemed initially like a very improbable match.

Speaker 15 He had produced a lot of rap records and produced the Beastie Boys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Speaker 26 You know, it would seem like a surprising match.

Speaker 12 It ended up being a fantastic match.

Speaker 9 How did he approach you?

Speaker 28 Lou Robin, my manager, came to me and talked to me about a man called Rick Rubin that he had been talking to that wanted me to sign with his record company. It was American Recordings.

Speaker 28 I said, I like the name. Maybe it'd be okay.
So

Speaker 28 he said, I would like you to go with me and sit in my living room with a guitar. and two microphones and just sing to your heart's content everything you ever wanted to record.

Speaker 28 I said, that sounds good to me.

Speaker 11 Why don't we hear Delia's Gone from Johnny Cash's American Recordings CD?

Speaker 18 And Johnny Cash, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Speaker 28 I want to say you're really good at what you do, and I appreciate you. Thank you.

Speaker 34 Delia,

Speaker 34 oh, Delia,

Speaker 34 Delia, all my life.

Speaker 5 If I hadn't shot poor Delia,

Speaker 34 I'd have had her for my wife. Delia's gone.
One more round.

Speaker 19 Delia's gone.

Speaker 2 My interview with Johnny Cash was recorded in 1997. He died in 2003.

Speaker 2 Tomorrow, we continue our archive series RB, Rockabilly, and Early Rock and Roll.

Speaker 2 We'll hear from Johnny Otis, who had the hits Harlem Nocturne and Willie in the Hand Jive, and discovered Little Esther, Jackie Wilson, Big Mama Thornton, Hank Ballard, and Eddie James.

Speaker 2 You'll also hear my interview with Etta James, who's now best known for her recording of At Last. Hope you'll join us.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Speaker 2 Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigher.

Speaker 2 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yucundi, Anna Bauman, and John Sheehan.

Speaker 2 Our digital media producer is Molly Sevi Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.
Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
I'm Terry Gross.

Speaker 34 But jailer, oh, jailer,

Speaker 34 jailer, I can't sleep.

Speaker 34 Cause all around the bedside, I hear the patter of Delia's feet. Delia's gone, one more round, Delia's gone.

Speaker 34 So if your woman's devilish,

Speaker 34 you can let her run.

Speaker 34 Or you can bring her down and do her like deal you got done. Delia's gone.
One more.

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