I was listening to the new and excellent Vince Mira CD of Johnny Cash covers (some of them in an elegant Spanish), when Yana asked me to explain Johnny Cash to her. "Does he sing about the South?" was a tough question to answer. I place the center of his moral and musical universe somewhere between Little Rock, Arkansas and Oklahoma City. (How about Fort Smith?) That locale rules out neither trains nor cattle. That allows him to straddle the South, West, Midwest, and Texas, while retaining the option of a rail connection to the North. The town even has a prison. (For the underinformed, here is a list of Johnny Cash songs.) Is there a more appropriate center?
Addendum: I now discover that Vince is only fifteen years old!
Here is Vince performing "That’s All Right"; phenomenal. Here is the overall YouTube listing.
Really, between Little Rock and Oklahoma City, and you *don’t* pick Muskogee?
Locations are way to temporal for Cash
Instead of north or south, I’d say somewhere in between heaven & hell, day and night, black and white… good and evil
Perhaps even… ‘if Milton = father & Blake = holy ghost, then Cash = son’
Huh… how does Oklahoma enter into it? Considering he got his start in Nashville and Dyess is right on the border of Tennessee, I think that your question has a pretty clear answer. Maybe you’re playing up the Indian thing with Oklahoma. But, I don’t think that Native American issues were central to his worldview, even if Bitter Tears was a successful concept album.
To directly answer your question: The center of his moral universe was his childhood home in Dyess.
I generally can’t stand country music, but Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash transcend genre in a way only great artists- and great characters, which Willie and Johnny both are- can.
As for the center of his musical universe, I don’t think you can really give it an exact point. Really, he covered all of Arkansas and the immediately surrounding areas- eastern OK, the Arklatex, the Delta, Southern Missouri, and a little bit of Memphis and Mississippi blues. I think he had a stronger Delta influence than is being admitted here, too. That’s where he grew up. I might be a little biased, though, seeing as how I live near Pine Bluff.
As much as it pains me, given the current state of “country” music, the answer is Nashville. Nashville is the home of country music. Johnny Cash married into the royal family of country music and his appropriate center is Nashville. Go drink some whiskey in Tootsies Orchid Lounge, head out the back door to the Ryman Auditorium and I think you will agree….
Without knowing too much about Cash, I was thinking a little further east than Tyler has it. I see that Wiki has him from very near TN. And yet not from TN. Maybe he had a Southwest Conference POV?
Where is the geographic center of Johnny Cash’s moral and musical universe?
Sun Studio.
Before I got married, every Sunday morning I listened to Johnny Cash while making pancakes. I also once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
I think y’all have him placed about right. I grew up right on Crowley’s Ridge (Harrisburg, AR), and “low, wet, and hot” about sums the area up in the summer. Add several billion mosquitos from the rice fields and you have quite a mixture. But I enjoyed growing up there, and maybe that’s why a lot of Cash’s music sounds so natural to me.
His song characters appear to spend a lot of time in prisons (probably for decking people who deserved it), on the road (probably running from the law), and reflecting. I picture his characters at home in the settings of No Country for Old Men, but longing for acceptance in Nashville.
Just to be clear, I don’t live *in* Pine Bluff. Drive 20 minutes in any direction from the Jefferson County Courthouse and you’re out of the ghettos and into good ol’ boy territory. That’s where I live- White Hall, to be specific.
Here’s guaranteed family fun! My daughter and I have discovered the delights of dueting Mr Cash’s ditties in rich pirate accents. But I may have told you that before. There again, it’s a new year.
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