The best performer Johnny Cash had ever seen: “He had that charisma”
What Johnny Cash didn’t know about the music industry could fit on the back of a postage stamp; the country icon spent the better part of four decades within the music realm, playing on stages across the known world, rubbing shoulders with a litany of fellow songwriting legends, and continuing to write and record material up to his untimely death in 2003.
Going right back to the beginning of Cash’s career, collaboration was always incredibly important to the songwriter. It was, after all, through those onstage collaborations that Cash first grew close to his eventual wife, June Carter Cash. Over the years, he would go on to share stages with everybody from Bob Dylan to Tom Petty, and even formed country music’s greatest supergroup in the form of The Highwaymen.
Even during the days when Cash’s career was marked by solitude, though, he still found himself on the kinds of star-studded bills that now form the envy of music fans across the world. These billings allowed the songwriter to witness the rising stars of the music industry and, in many cases, find some influence in their output. Never was that fact more evident than when Johnny Cash ended up touring with a young Elvis Presley.
Although he was no stranger to country music himself, the sound of Elvis Presley was worlds apart from Johnny Cash and his outlaw image. Perhaps more so than anybody else back in the 1950s, the slicked-back quiff of the hip-shaking performer signified the birth of an entirely new age – the age of rock and roll rebellion.
Despite his comparatively advanced age and musical differences, Cash could see the appeal of this first generation of rock stars more than most. In fact, throughout his extensive career in music, he always affirmed that he had never seen a better performer than Elvis Presley, even though ‘The King’ was still very much in the early days of his career when he ended up appearing on the same billing as Johnny Cash.
During one appearance on The Late Late Show back in 1988, Cash was asked which performer had impressed him most, to which he responded, “Probably Elvis Presley. I don’t think anybody could touch him.”
“He had a lot of rhythm, he was a very good singer, and he was a fabulous performer in the way he moved the people.”
Johnny Cash on Elvis
Cash went on to hark back to the time when the pair toured together, and Cash was given the kind of opportunity that most people could only dream of: seeing a young Elvis Presley at the peak of his revolutionary power.
“When he was 19 years old was when I toured with him at first, and not only the girls loved Elvis, but every man backstage was standing in the wings watching Elvis,” he remembered. “He had that charisma, that magic, you know, that a great performer needs to get the people right here. Elvis always did that.”
Cash did point out, during that same interview, that he never got the chance to see his ultimate hero, Hank Williams, perform live, but, as a legendary performer in his own right, it is difficult to dispute the idea that Elvis Presley was the greatest he ever encountered. After all, very few performers have ever been able to boast the same impact as ‘The King’.
