Post by Jim on Feb 23, 2019 10:25:20 GMT -5
I was asked to do 3 songs at a benefit show for a local group, The Greenwood Coalition. This is a group I really love and am proud to have in our community. It is a group that tries to assist the less fortunate folks in our community and to integrate them into the community. It is a cause where I never say, "Oh no, it's a benefit. Not another benefit!" (to quote Marie-Lynn Hammond's song).
I like Johnny Cash fine, but when I was asked to take part, I realized that I don't have any Cash songs in my repertoire. I took a while making a choice of songs and all the more familiar ones were already taken by other performers. When I looked at a list of songs that had been recorded by Johnny Cash, I realized just how versatile this guy was.
Johnny Cash Songs
I decided on The Old Gospel Ship, a song popularized by his mother-in-law's group, The Carter Family. The version I found was Johnny singing with Joan Baez, Loudon Wainwright III and Earl Scruggs.
I followed that with Passing Through, a song where Johnny introduces it with a spoken, "It's a mighty world we live in, but the truth is, we're only passing through." The comic strip Pogo expressed the same thing by saying, "Don't take life so serious Son. It ain't no how permanent."
I wanted to get Maggie to do a Johnny & June duet with me, but somebody already had dibs on Jackson, so we took the flip side, Pack Up Your Sorrows, a song written by Richard Farina and Pauline Baez.
I was also asked to play some guitar with my friend Ted Staunton while he played slide and sang Billy Joe Shaver's Georgia On A Fast Train.
I heard many songs last night that I'd never heard and that I'd never have guessed that Johnny Cash had done.
