Johnny Cash: Cocaine Blues
There is so much out there about Johnny Cash that it doesn’t make sense to discuss it much here. The main reason, of course, was that he was an American original. It doesn’t hurt that he hosted a television show from 1969 to 1971, which produced a mountain of video. Much of it is with folks you wouldn’t associate with Cash.
Here is the song Cocaine Blues. It’s amazing that a song by that name, based on a drug-induced murder, was featured on a network television program. In any case, it’s a song that pops up, in one form or another, all over the place. Check out Little Sadie by John Renbourn. There also is an apparently separate song by the same name done by many artists, including Keith Richards. Wikipedia, of course, has chapter and verse.
Two Cash videos are worth mentioning: Hurt, a song written by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, has been voted the best video ever in some polls. God’s Gonna Cut You Down is equal parts brilliant and weird.
One of Cash’s biggest hits was A Boy Named Sue. Believe it or not, the song was written by Shel Silverstein, the author or The Giving Tree and A Light in the Attic. Here are the two playing the song together.
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