[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 126 (Monday, September 15, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11483-S11485]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 68--HONORING THE LIFE OF JOHNNY CASH
Mr. ALEXANDER (for himself, Mr. Frist, Mrs. Lincoln, and Mr. Pryor)
submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was ordered held
at the desk.
S. Con. Res. 68
Whereas Johnny Cash was one of the most influential and
recognized voices of American music throughout the world,
whose influence spanned generations and musical genres;
Whereas Johnny Cash was born on February 26, 1932, in
Kingsland, Arkansas, and moved with his family at the age of
3 to Dyess, Arkansas, where the family farmed 20 acres of
cotton and other seasonal crops;
Whereas those early years in the life of Johnny Cash
inspired songs such as ``Look at Them Beans'' and ``Five Feet
High and Rising'';
Whereas Johnny Cash eventually released more than 70 albums
of original material in his lifetime, beginning with his
first recording in 1955 with the Tennessee Two;
Whereas Johnny Cash was a devoted husband to June Carter
Cash, a father of 5 children, and a grandfather;
Whereas Johnny Cash received extensive recognition for his
contributions to the musical heritage of the Nation,
including membership in the Grand Old Opry; induction into
the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Country Music
Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; and his
receipt of numerous awards, including Kennedy Center Honors,
11 Grammy awards, and the 2001 National Medal of Arts;
Whereas Johnny Cash embodied the creativity, innovation,
and social conscience that define American music;
Whereas Johnny Cash was a vocal champion of the
downtrodden, the working man, and Native Americans; and
Whereas the Nation has lost one of its most prolific and
influential musicians with the death of Johnny Cash on
September 12, 2003, in Nashville, Tennessee: Now, therefore,
be it
Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives
concurring), That Congress--
(1) honors the life and accomplishments of Johnny Cash;
(2) recognizes and honors Johnny Cash for his invaluable
contributions to the Nation, Tennessee, and our musical
heritage; and
(3) extends its condolences to the Cash family on the death
of a remarkable man.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I am introducing a concurrent
resolution honoring Johnny Cash.
Johnny Cash died on Friday in Nashville. The man whose singing voice
sounded like a big freight train coming, is gone. The concurrent
resolution I introduce today is on behalf of my colleague, the majority
leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Senators from Arkansas,
Mrs. Lincoln and Mr. Pryor, and the distinguished Senator Roberts, who
probably knows the words to ``I Walk the Line,'' as do most of us all
over the world.
Johnny Cash lived a little bit outside of Nashville. I was in his
home one time and I asked him: Johnny, how many nights do you perform
on the road?
He looked at me with some surprise. He said: Oh, about 300 a year.
Why do you do that, I asked him in amazement?
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He looked back at me equally amazed. He said: That is what I do.
All weekend the radio stations have been playing the songs of the man
who performed 300 times a year for all of us, the ``man in black.''
Stores all over Nashville and all over the world were stocking up on
Johnny Cash memorabilia this weekend.
So much has been said in newspapers and on TV that one wonders what
else we Senators might say about Johnny Cash. I mean, what could I say
better, for example, than what Steven Greenhouse wrote on Johnny on
page 1 of the New York Times on Saturday:
Beginning in the mid-1950s, when he made his first record
for the Sun label, Mr. Cash forged a lean, hard-bitten
country-folk music that at its most powerful seemed to erase
the lines between singing, storytelling and grueling life
experience. Born in poverty in Arkansas at the height of the
Depression, he was country music's foremost poet of the
working poor. His stripped-down songs described the lives of
coal miners and sharecroppers, convicts and cowboys, railroad
workers and laborers.
``Foremost poet of the working poor.'' Mr. Greenhouse was not the
only one who wrote beautifully about the foremost poet of the working
poor. So did Louie Estrada and David Segal in the Washington Post. So
did Craig Havighurst and several other writers in the Tennessean in
Nashville, as well as John Sparks in the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
I have no doubt that in Wichita, Topeka, and important cities all
over the country and world there were writers who were writing as best
they could about the music and the sound of Johnny Cash.
Why do we wait until Johnny Cash dies to write of his poetry? John R.
Cash is not the only such poet who ever lived in Nashville, TN. Bob
Dylan, Johnny's friend, once said that Hank Williams was America's
greatest poet. At last count, there are several thousand songwriters
living in Nashville struggling to write poetry, some of which will be
known and remembered everywhere in the world one day.
Alice Randall, a Nashville songwriter, a writer of songs and books,
once observed that it is odd that there is so little serious literary
criticism of the poetry of Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and other
country music songwriters. The outpouring of articles that accompanied
Johnny's death this weekend suggest that most of the serious criticism
of the poetry found in country music is done by pop music critics in
our major newspapers.
But why is there not a department or a chair or at least a conference
occasionally dedicated to criticism of the poetry or at least the
literature of country music? Literary criticism is a fundamental part
of the departments of English in universities all across America. Some
of the most famous of these were among the ``Fugitives'' who met during
the 1920s at Vanderbilt University. Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren,
Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Andrew Lytle were some of those
literary critics who began their careers then.
If Vanderbilt University, my alma mater, is such a center of literary
criticism, then why has Vanderbilt University not done more about the
literature that is country music? Or why does Belmont University in
Nashville or the University of Tennessee or the University of Memphis
not do it?
These Nashville and Memphis songwriters are certainly among the most
famous poets in the world. But why do we wait for the New York Times
and Bob Dylan to tell us that Johnny Cash and Hank Williams are also
among the best poets when Vanderbilt University, among others, lives
right there among them?
There are hundreds of good English professors in dozens of
northeastern universities writing thousands of pages of criticism about
average poets, while our Tennessee universities are doing almost
nothing to write about poets who others say are among the best in the
world. We have had a habit in Tennessee of not being willing to look
right in front of our own noses to celebrate what is special about us.
We sometimes worry about producing only average Chopin when right down
the block lives the best harmonica player in the world.
I am all for Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. I have played their
music on the piano with symphonies all across Tennessee, but I have
also performed with those symphonies some of the most beautiful of the
unique American music we call country music.
The death of our friend Johnny Cash, the poet of the working poor, is
a good time for our Tennessee universities to consider whether they
might want to celebrate our excellence by encouraging literary
criticism of some of the best known poets in the world: Our
songwriters. Our universities might discover what others have
suggested, that some of our songwriters are also among the best in the
world.
Mrs. LINCOLN. Madam President, I rise to join Senators Alexander,
Frist, and Pryor to introduce a resolution in honor of a great
American, and one of our greatest Arkansans--Johnny Cash, who passed
away on Friday, September 12, at the age of 71.
John R. Cash was born in Kingsland, AR on February 26, 1932. When he
was just 3 years old, his father moved the family to Dyess Colony, a
New Deal program that set up new farming communities on uncleared land
near the Mississippi River. The family had 20 acres upon which they
farmed cotton and other seasonal crops and from the beginning, John was
taught to work for a living. It was this time spent farming and living
in Northeast Arkansas, that inspired songs such as ``Look at Them
Beans'' and ``Five Feet High and Rising.'' At the age of six, he was
hauling water for a road crew. At twelve he was chopping cotton. When
he reached high school he was singing on the radio in Blytheville.
Still, John didn't pick up a guitar until he was stationed in West
Germany as a soldier in the Army. The instrument was so cheap, he said,
that ``it didn't even have a brand name.''
When he returned from Germany, John moved to Memphis, determined to
make it in the music industry. He sold appliances door-to-door and went
to broadcasting school on the GI bill, playing music whenever he could.
Finally, he managed to get an audition before Sam Phillips, the owner
of the legendary Sun Records studio. The first time Phillips heard Cash
sing, he turned him down, saying that he sounded ``too country.'' John
returned with a more rockabilly sound and Phillips began to send his
group out with another artist on the Sun Records label, Elvis Presley.
Phillips also began to refer to John as Johnny, a name Cash disliked
because he thought it made him sound too young. Johnny would go on to
record some of his most cherished songs for the label, including such
classics as ``Cry, Cry, Cry'' and ``I Walk the Line''.
Over the next 5 decades, Johnny Cash recorded over 400 albums, with
48 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and over 130 hits on the Billboard
country music charts. In the process, the boy from Dyess Colony managed
to sell over 50 million records. He is part of a distinguished group of
musicians from Arkansas including: Conway Twitty, Sonny Boy Williamson,
Glen Campbell, and Charlie Rich. Even though Johnny Cash and these
other distinguished artists found fame outside of Arkansas, the
experience of growing up in Arkansas gave them a unique perspective on
the feelings of the common man and woman, working hard to just get by,
a perspective which came through in their music.
The number of artists he has influenced is immeasurable. He has been
inducted into the Country & Western Hall of Fame, the Nashville
Songwriter's Hall of Fame, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He
received 11 Grammy Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and
has been honored by both the Kennedy Center for his contribution to
American Culture and the United Nations, receiving the Humanitarian
Award. The last two awards illustrate how Johnny Cash became so much
more than a musician.
His songs shined a light on aspects of American culture that are
integral to our Nation's history but too often overlooked. He never
forgot where he came from and the people he met along the way. He told
stories about people who worked hard just to survive, people so poor
they couldn't afford a car so they snuck out the parts to build one
from the plant where they worked, ``One Piece At A Time''. And he told
it all with a voice that once was described as ``the perfect voice for
a man of his spirit. It's unmistakable. It doesn't sound like anybody
else. And it sounds like the real thing, which is what he is.''
I ask that all my colleagues in the Senate join me in honoring a true
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American original, a prodigiously talented musician, with a conscience
that matched those gifts. Our deepest condolences go out to his family
and friends.
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