The one singer Bob Dylan called the heart and soul of America: “What the land and country is all about”
No one could have scripted a better representative for America than Bob Dylan back in the 1960s.
He may not have claimed to be the voice of anyone but himself, but when listening to all of his songs from the early 1960s, his folksy approach to protest music was saying what a lot of people were thinking as the country prepared to go into the Vietnam War. There was tension in the air whenever he opened his mouth during his prime, but there were far greater artists worthy of being the father of Dylan’s country a lot more than he did.
After all, he was only following in the footsteps of what Woody Guthrie couldn’t do anymore. The folk icon had talked about using his guitar as a machine that killed fascists, and while Dylan took that to heart whenever working on his own masterpieces, it’s not like he wasn’t afraid to switch things up from Guthrie’s model, either. The folk community would have been disgusted seeing someone embrace rock and roll like Dylan could, but he was never going to cower to what his fans wanted for the hell of it.
He was always walking to the beat of his own drum, and it was bound to piss a few people off half the time. Even when he was in his prime making one hit album after another, there had to be more than a few people scratching their heads wondering what the hell he was on about when listening to Self Portrait. Then again, maybe he was trying to take that ‘voice of a generation’ off of his music at the time.
For him, he never belonged on a soapbox for that long, and some of the greatest names in music were doing a much better job speaking for their respective generations. Bruce Springsteen had picked up the mantle when Dylan started fading from the limelight, and even rock and roll bands like Aerosmith were great examples of what American music could do, but Dylan always felt the best American music came from country.
The sounds of Hank Williams and George Jones were examples of someone sharing all the values that America holds dear, but there was something different about listening to Johnny Cash. ‘The Man in Black’ still sang about those same values, but there was a vicious streak to him, and that sense of danger is what endeared him to nearly everyone that came in contact with his music. This was someone with a story to tell, and Dylan was more than willing to listen.
Even up until the day he died, Dylan felt that Cash was one of the fixtures of what the country stands for, saying, “Truly he is what the land and country is all about, the heart and soul of it personified and what it means to be here; and he said it all in plain English. I think we can have recollections of him, but we can’t define him any more than we can define a fountain of truth, light and beauty. If we want to know what it means to be mortal, we need look no further than the Man in Black.”
Others might claim to know Cash’s music better than Dylan did, but the true appeal of the country legend was how undeniably human he was. There were parts of his catalogue that may as well be etched in stone until the end of time, but the fact that he could make such authentic music right up until the end was a perfect example of what every musician should strive for, never mind one that came from the US.
But that’s really a testament to the American spirit that Cash always was so good at. He was a little frayed around the ends and was open about his fair share of internal problems, but he still had that heart of gold, and that was never to be forgotten no matter what generation heard his music.
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