The tragic story of the Stevie Wonder song Johnny Cash never got to sing
The mark of Johnny Cash was that although he lived out a career blazing his own path, many of his final days were spent turning his spotlight of power onto other people.
The most obvious example of this was his startling cover of ‘Hurt’ by Nine Inch Nails, of course, but really, this only represented the tip of the iceberg in terms of the musical library that Cash lent from in his twilight years. With the guiding hand of Rick Rubin leading the Man in Black towards a far more diverse songbook than he might have ever imagined laying his vocals to at any point in the decades previous, it was only natural that the producer in the helm would have some pretty grand ambitions.
He undeniably succeeded in most of these ventures while only failing in certain others, but it was clear throughout it all that Cash was no easy customer to please. Every proposed cover tune went through a meticulous, and sometimes wearisome, process of interrogation and persuasion before the man in question could be lured to the recording studio. It proved that, on top of his mantra of dreaming big, Rubin also possessed the patience of a saint when it came to his old school country recruit – but this ultimately never served either of them far wrong.
Of course, by the standard of Cash’s natural proclivity for the more melancholic side of life, his myriad choices of cover tracks were all specially hand-picked for his ability to turn what was otherwise a fairly brash number into something far more tender and devastating. While this came to be an expected asset, what may have caught people by surprise was Rubin’s plans for the country star to take on something completely outside his usual comfort zone, this time in the form of Stevie Wonder.
When Wonder uttered the upbeat words, “there’s a place in the sun/ Where there’s hope for everyone,” back in 1966, he could never have anticipated that over three decades down the line, a man like Cash would consider turning it for his own heartbroken persuasions. But according to Rubin, ‘A Place in the Sun’ was exactly the song they had in their sights – although the tragedy of life made it that the plan never came to fruition.
“One song I really was excited about Johnny singing that we never got to record was Stevie Wonder’s ‘Place in the Sun’,” Rubin explained to Rolling Stone in 2016. “I imagined it as a sad, slow yearning piece. More wanting than Stevie’s hopeful rendition.”
Certainly, as much as Rubin had worked up a notoriety for spinning perceptions of Cash on their head, the challenge he chased was the equivalent of turning day into night; not that a legend like Wonder wouldn’t have been open to the interpretation, but it was the one boundary the Man in Black may never have been able to push.
In the end, the world is left to speculate on what a Cash cover of Wonder would really sound like, because the devastating conclusion of his life came all too soon before he could venture into that new realm. Overall, Cash’s final years were a potent combination of extreme reinvention and looming endings, the forces of which came together to be so powerful but equally tragic in terms of the roads not taken. The true extent of those sights are only for Rubin to know privately – but if the case of the Wonder cover is anything to go by, there were many more heights to soar to.
