‘Hobo Bill’s Last Ride’: the song that made a three-year-old Johnny Cash want to be a singer
Singers like Johnny Cash almost feel like they were born to be up onstage.
Although ‘The Man in Black’ wasn’t the same kind of engaging presence that someone like Freddie Mercury was onstage, no one could take their eyes off him when he sat back with an acoustic guitar and told those dark stories about people from the wrong side of the tracks. But whereas most artists find their calling over time, Cash knew that he would be a musician before he was even out of diapers.
Then again, Cash was never strictly concerned with singing about depressing topics or anything. Sure, his most famous album was about him singing for hardened criminals, but in between songs like ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, hearing him sing ‘Give My Love to Rose’ was a look at the more vulnerable side of himself. That’s before even getting into the spiritual side of his music as well.
Despite being looked at as a dark figure in the world of country music, you weren’t going to find a more faith-filled person in the music industry. Cash always knew to give thanks to his higher power whenever he could, and given his history of making gospel records, there was no doubt that his tone of voice when singing ‘How Great Thou Art’ all came from being raised with the Christian values that his parents instilled in him.
But there was always something more captivating about hearing about the less virtuous members of society for Cash. He knew that not all people were born to be horrible, but every so often, they get dealt a rough hand in life or have to make extremely tough decisions that end with them in a blink or end up affecting them for the rest of their days.
That kind of storytelling could have easily been reserved for folk music, but Cash saw the appeal of country music from the minute he heard the song ‘Hobo Bill’s Last Ride’, saying, “It was just an acoustic guitar and a singer. I don’t remember if it was Jimmie Rodgers. I think it was somebody else, a little later than Jimmie. But I memorised the song when I was three, and by the time I was four, I was singing that song for all the neighbours who would come over to the house. My mother would play it on her guitar, and I’d sing it. I knew then that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”
The entire idea of picturing a tiny Johnny Cash singing this kind of song is probably one of the wholesome images to come from him, but the lyrical content feels like it was made for his adult voice. Cash was never about singing about the simple pleasures of life, and a song all about Bill’s struggles to survive from day to day and the pain inside his soul could be any number of characters in Cash’s songs.
Cash already had a wealth of songs to choose from when working on his own material, but listening to him talk about this tune on his TV specials is one of the most intimate performances that he ever gave. He probably sang a lot of songs better than this, but hearing him talk about his daddy’s job before going right into the tune is a lot more interesting, almost like you’re seeing that same three-year-old kid with the twinkle in his eye for a split second.
And while Cash did eventually go back to some of his favourite artists when working with Rick Rubin, perhaps returning to this song would have felt almost too obvious. It’s one thing to have a signature tune that you wrote, but the reason why a song like this was left may be because it felt way too close to home most of the time.
