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Johnny Cash would have been 74 years old this past Sunday. One by one, the musical legends of this greatest generation are crossing the River for a better land. Janette Carter, June Carter Cash's cousin and member of the original Carter Family Fold, passed away this January. (Marianne Ebertowski interviewed Janette in 2002 Rockzilla World - Marianne shares Johnny's birthday; if you see anything she writes, read it). I am a bit of a traditionalist, conservative in my tastes and habits, yet in our modernist society I find myself a rebel for sticking to tradition. I am certainly contrary. I don't like media or industry telling me who or what or when or where.

Johnny Cash & friends were nothing if not contrary. The Carter Family hit the road touring when there was no road. I won't even go into the scandal of ladies in the band, smoking cigarettes and cavorting with mixed races, good Methodists that they were! These men and women brought an original sound down off the mountain and out of the delta, at a time when the popular music industry had exhausted itself. Sound familiar?


Kate Campbell and Cris Cuddy are filed in the box on either side of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. In many ways the are two sides of the music flowing thru the Carter/Cash clan. Cuddy is a Canadian who is a long time part-folky, part-punk/modern rock artist up Toronto ways, was part of Jeremy Dormouse, Max Mouse and the Gorillas and an old associate of Mickey Newbury.

Kate Campbell is a Southern belle and a hero for everybody who wanted to chuck a good professional position for the dream of making music. When I turned 30, I moved back to the mountains to fish, but couldn’t bring myself to give up the day job. Kate left her University history professorship and took up her guitar. As one would expect, she writes smart, insightful songs that actually mean something, except when she doesn’t want them to. Think Emmylou Harris meets the old Oxford American. Everything I know about Southern culture (a small bit yes) is colored by Kate’s many and varied approaches to her home, from modern commentaries (Monuments) to 70s am country flashbacks (Twang on a Wire).

The rest of the Top 10:
* Nancy Apple: memphis singer-songwriter, a little bit folk, alot of great twang
* Waylon Jennings: JR Cash's partner in crimes against the Nashville Sound
* ZZ Top: Los Super Seven got me to dig ZZ out of the back of the box
* Los Lobos: olé from this Ole
* Tom Adler: Santa Fe artist
* Tom Russell: El Paso desert rat-- "Ballad of Edward Abbey" should be required listening before anybody crosses the Rio Grande. New album out 21 March on Hightone.
* Eric Westbury: Canadian songwriter
* Kevin Deal: Texas alt.country hack and carpenter extraordinary
* Shooter Jennings: what I wanna know after watching him in Walk the Line, where EXACTLY does he want to put that "O"? My guess is up somebody's backside on 16th Avenue, Nashville, Tennnesee.

God Bless Johnny Cash, and may each generation find him again for ourselves.

-jc