Johnny Cash has died

I can remember the first time I heard a Johnny Cash song.

It was the summer of ’71; I was eleven years old. I remember because I’d just got my own room after my still-at-home uncle had finally got married and moved out of the house we lived in with my grandparents.

It was a small room at the back of the house. South facing, in the summer it would heat up to oven temperature during the day and bake you in your bed at night. So I used to sleep with the window wide open. On the other side of the railway line that ran along the back of the house, there was this club that used to play music late into the night.

On hot summer evenings they’d have their back doors wide open and the music would carry loud and clear across the tracks. They used to play a lot of country tunes and they'd always finish up with Crystal Chandeliers. I still know all the words to that song.

Anyway, one night I’d given up trying to sleep and I was leaning out of my bedroom window, listening for the start of the next song, when this strong deep voice comes in over the guitar and he’s singing about some kid whose father left him at the age of three with nothing but a godawful name. Bingo! It was the first time I’d ever heard A Boy Named Sue. I was crying before he’d finished the first verse and smiling through tears by the end.

I’ve been a fan ever since.

I’m one of the vinyl generation and I only have one Johnny Cash CD to listen to while I’m blogging but it has a lot of great songs on it, including some of my favorites: Folsom Prison Blues, The Gambler, Let There Be Country and, Mac’s favorite, Long Black Veil.

I’d post a link to the play list but oddly enough I have no idea what the album's called. I got the CD as product during my stint in the music industry. I thought I was getting Plastic Surgery Disasters by the Dead Kennedys. That’s what it says on the case and the disc, but when you play it, it’s solid Cash.

Tonight, I’m grateful.