The last-ever recording made by Johnny Cash
In the late 1950s, Johnny Cash broke out as one of the eminent names on Sun Records’ country repertoire. His first recordings, ‘Hey Porter’ and ‘Cry! Cry! Cry!’, released in 1955, gave him leverage in the scene that he would capitalise upon with ‘I Walk the Line’, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, and his 1957 debut album, With His Hot and Blue Guitar.
As a rising talent of the mid-west, Cash had the honour of joining the circuit with the likes of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and future wife June Carter. As the ‘Man in Black’ and a prison gig pioneer, Cash built up a reputation as an outlaw. This image was compounded by his hedonistic lifestyle of drug and alcohol abuse, which saw him arrested on a couple of occasions over the early 1960s.
An uneasy patch prevailed through most of the ’60s, as Cash struggled between his failing marriage to first wife Vivian Liberto and his muse on the road, June Carter. By 1966, Cash had divorced Liberto, and in March 1968, he finally got remarried to Carter, who helped placate Cash’s inner outlaw.
In 1997, after four decades of prolific performance, Cash retired from touring as he became increasingly frail. Over the remaining six years of his life, Cash remained active in the studio, most notably working on American III: Solitary Man and American IV: The Man Comes Around at the turn of the millennium. The popular releases included immortal reimaginations of songs by Nine Inch Nails, Nick Cave, Neil Diamond, Depeche Mode and Paul Simon, among others.
June Carter passed away in May 2003 following a heart complication. She had implored her husband to continue with his music after her death, and as a distraction from heartbreak, he duly complied. In the final four months before his own death, Cash recorded 60 songs and even managed to perform a run of surprise concerts at the Carter Family Fold near Bristol, Virginia.
During his last-ever live performance, on July 5th, 2003, Cash read a statement that he had written shortly before taking the stage: “The spirit of June Carter overshadows me tonight with the love she had for me and the love I have for her. We connect somewhere between here and Heaven. She came down for a short visit, I guess, from Heaven to visit with me tonight to give me courage and inspiration like she always has. She’s never been one for me except courage and inspiration. I thank God for June Carter. I love her with all my heart.”
“When June died, it tore him up,” Cash’s producer Rick Rubin told Q in 2009. “He said to me, ‘You have to keep me working because I will die if I don’t have something to do.’ He was in a wheelchair by then and we set him up at his home in Virginia… I couldn’t listen to those recordings for two years after he died, and it was heartbreaking when we did.”
While Cash adhered to covers for much of his conclusive material, his final, posthumous album, American V: A Hundred Highways, included two original compositions: ‘I Came to Believe’ and ‘Like the 309’. The latter of the two tracks marked the final song Cash ever wrote and recorded.
In true Cash style, ‘Like the 309′ teems with western imagery as he sings morbidly of having his final ride on the 309 train: “Well, I’m not the cryin’, nor the whinin’ kind / ’til I hear the whistle of the 309, of the 309, of the 309 / Put me in my box on the 309”. Listen to the song below.
