Posted 6:23 AM by Gene

Johnny Cash has died, just a few short months after his wife. He was the truth-teller of music, and if that sounds like an instant cliche, consider this: at their best his songs were simple, forceful, unadorned, and direct, all the better for the country singer to sing his stories. He did many dumb things, and like so many popular-music stars (and like the nation) he lost his moorings around the sixties, but you can't take ever take from him that sound, and that conviction, and if the conviction occasionally lapsed into self-parody, at least it was real, and his. That we no longer appreciate his sound may be gleaned from the utter condescension which greeted him in his swan song at the Sumner Publicity Festival recently, where the vast array of one-hit wonders and tuneless tyrants no doubt saw some grizzled old drunk who sang prison tunes and only got his start because of Elvis. They wouldn't understand even if they were smart and talented: Johnny Cash was country.

Which reminds me, one of my favorite cultural figures, the great Goddard Lieberson, signed him to his Columbia contract, which further underlines their essential motherlode of talent -- even if Lieberson did sign The Nose.