As I live in Nashville, I was fortunate that a friend of mine got the gig slapping upright in the Tennessee Three with Johnny Cash for the last six years or so that he gigged (he finally quit playing dates about two years ago). It was a most prestigious and almost historic gig, and Cash treated his three musicians most graciously. He was one of them, not a hint of the usual band-as-hired-help crap that most artists pull on their musicians.
In a town chock-full of horror stories regarding the boys in the band at the mercy of some ego'd out nut, this was my yardstick for who the great artists were. For that time on stage, they were in it together, playing MUSIC, not just slammin' out the hits, grab the check, hit the bus.
Cash refused a bus, only charter flights to each gig, separate rooms in four and five star hotels, and little gigs like the Kennedy Center, for instance.
He was one classy man. And a real man. I knew after his wife passed, he would not be long for this world. I hate that I was right. But he'd been in miserable health for the last two years, and he'd lived hard the rest of it.
His music was like the best blues: He could make you touch achingly lonesome, lost spots in your soul, and realize the transcendence of the human spirit to live though it, cry through it, fight through it, and live to tell about it. Then dust off and go on.
J o e y
