However, some loose ends are tied up in a coda with Johnny and production legend Rick Rubin at work on Cash’s acclaimed final recordings, including the Will Oldham song that provides the book’s title.īefore that, there’s a busy four decades packed into two hundred pages. The main story ends as the show takes place. This use of a storyteller acts as a disclaimer – this is not empirical truth, just what Sherley has picked up from newspapers and magazines. This familiarity with struggle perhaps explains Cash’s lifelong empathy for those who never had the chances he did – exemplified by his song Folsom Prison Blues, which frames this book.Ĭash played shows at Fulsom, and Kleist finds his angle in this – an inmate with his own song about the prison. When Glenn Sherley hears about the upcoming shows he tries to get a tape to Cash, and by way of explanation, tells his cell-mate Johnny’s story. It’s no simple rags to riches story though, the title itself signals the inner struggles that dogged the self-styled ‘man in black’. Reinhard Kleist shows all of this in his thorough biography. Teenaged Johnny left the family farm for opportunity in the city, played with Elvis, earned the admiration of Bob Dylan, and went on to sell millions of records. Johnny Cash grew up loving country music, and it became his way out of poverty.
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