“I didn’t think anyone would like it”: the song Johnny Cash never wanted to hear again
It is easy to get sick of certain songs, whether through a genuine hatred of a certain melody or the simple fact that they are played to death. Over the years, countless musicians have even grown to hate their own work, and country hero Johnny Cash is certainly no exception.
Discographies don’t come much more diverse than that of Johnny Cash. From the early days of his classic country output, the ‘Man In Black’ built a vast musical empire that spanned the spectrum from rock and roll-inspired singles to novelty records and, of course, the gut-wrenching melancholy of late-period masterpieces like ‘Hurt’. With that all-encompassing output, though, it is somewhat inevitable that Cash himself would grow to despise certain efforts.
After all, during the peak of his career back in the 1950s and 1960s, Cash was balancing his music career with a wealth of personal troubles, largely revolving around his descent into the bowels of drug addiction.
Inevitably, a worsening mental state coupled with a dependence on illicit substances and an exhaustive touring schedule made the Johnny Cash of the late 1950s and early 1960s rather irritable, and cast something of a shadow over the material he recorded during that period.
Even before the claws of addiction dug into Cash, though, when his career was still very much in its infancy, the country singer was far more critical of his own work than most of his contemporaries. Bizarrely, in fact, the songwriter once claimed to have hated his 1956 single ‘I Walk The Line’, which not only formed his first major chart hit, but remained a fan-favourite throughout his entire career.
Talking to CNN’s Larry King back in 2002, he recalled his detest of the breakout track, theorising, “It was in my head too long, I just didn’t think it was that good of a song.” Adding, “I just didn’t think anyone would like it. I didn’t like the arraignment. I didn’t like the sound I had on the record.” Thankfully, though, the music-buying public disagreed with Cash’s view of the song, quickly making it a colossal success.
“First time I heard it on the radio I was on tour in Florida,” Cash remembered. “I called Sam Phillips and Sun Records and I said, please don’t make any more of those records. Please don’t send out any more to the radio stations. I begged him not to. I said, don’t send out ‘I Walk The Line’ to the radio stations. I don’t want to hear it any more.”
It was down to the Sun Records boss to break the news that the single was already on its way to the charts: “He said, ‘Well, you’ll have to keep your radio off because it’s playing everywhere.’ And he said, ‘Let’s give it a chance. Let’s give it a chance and see what happens.’ Well, what happens is another week or two it was – zoom – number one.”
Perhaps as a result of that success, or the fact that the single seemed to resonate with a vast audience across the globe, Cash soon warmed to his 1956 triumph, continuing to perform the single throughout his career and influencing the entirety of the performer’s future sound.
