Look Again to the Wind Johnny Cashs Bitter Tears
A Special Release Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Cash'southward Landmark Album
Look Again To The Air current: Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears Revisited
Of all the dozens of albums released byJohnny Cash during his near half-century career, 1964'sBiting Tears: Ballads of the American Indian was amongst the closest to the creative person's heart. A concept album focusing on the mistreatment and marginalization of the Native American people throughout the history ofthe U.s., its eight songs—among them "The Carol ofIra Hayes," a #3 hitting single for Greenbacks on theBillboard land chart—spoke in frank and poetic linguistic communication of the hardships and intolerance they endured.
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Now, l years afterward it was recorded, a collective of top Americana artists has come together to reimagine and update these songs that meant then much to Cash, who died in 2003.Expect Again To The Wind: Johnny Cash'due south Bitter Tears Revisited (Sony Music Masterworks,August xix), produced byJoe Henry (Bonnie Raitt,Aaron Neville), features American music giantsKris Kristofferson,Emmylou Harris,Steve Earle,Neb Miller,Gillian Welch andDavid Rawlings, andNorman and Nancy Blake, also as up-and-comers the Milk Carton Kids andRhiannon Giddens, interpreting the music ofBitter Tears for a new generation. As his project was for Cash, the new collection is a labor of love with a stiff sense of purpose fueling its cosmos.
"Prior toBitter Tears, the conversation well-nigh Native American rights had non really been had," says Henry, "and at a very significant moment in his trajectory,Johnny Greenbacks was willing to draw a line and insist that this exist considered a human rights outcome, alongside the ceremonious rights result that was coming to fruition in 1964. But he also felt that the record had never been heard, so at that place'due south a real sense that we're being asked to comport it forward."
Bitter Tears, widely acknowledged for decades as ane of Cash'due south greatest artistic achievements, did not realize its stature as a landmark recording easily and quickly. At the time that Cash proposed the anthology, he was met with a nifty bargain of resistance from his record label. They felt that a song bicycle revolving around the Native American struggle equally perpetrated by the white man took him besides far afield of the country mainstream and Cash'south core audience. Cash still released the album and although information technology did non perform as well as he had hoped, he remained extremely proud of the album throughout his life.
Ironically, at the same time that his own label was balking considering it felt he would alienate the country audience with his Native American tales, Cash was finding a new prepare of admirers amongst the burgeoning folk music crowd that had recently made stars of Bob Dylan,Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary. Cash's debut operation of "Ira Hayes" at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival had earned him rave reviews. His appeal was undeniably expanding beyond the country audience, and for those who did connect withBitter Tears, amongst them a 17-year-onetime aspiring singer-songwriter namedEmmylou Harris, its music was revelatory and of import. "The record was a seminal work for her as a teenager," says Henry. "She bought the album brand new and realized at that moment thatJohnny Greenbacks was a folk vocaliser, non a country singer, and was involving himself politically and socially in a mode that she had identified with the slap-up folk singers at that moment."
Henry'south sensation of Harris' amore forBitter Tears led him to invite her to contribute toLook Again To The Wind:Johnny Cash'due southBiting Tears Revisited. Following the ballsy, nine-minute album-opener "Every bit Long as the Grass Shall Grow," written by Peter La Farge—a folk vocalist-songwriter with Native American bloodlines who Cash had befriended—and sung hither by Welch and Rawlings, Harris takes the lead song on the Cash-penned "Apache Tears," which also features sweet, close harmonies by the Milk Carton Kids, the duo comprisingKenneth Pattengale andJoey Ryan. For Henry, advisedly matching artist to song was integral to the integrity ofLook Again To The Wind. For some of the tracks, that process required a great deal of consideration. Simply when it came to deciding who would translate "The Ballad ofIra Hayes," Henry quickly zeroed in on Kristofferson.
Another of five songs on the original anthology written by La Farge, "The Ballad ofIra Hayes" is based on the truthful story ofIra Hamilton Hayes, a Pima Indian who was i of the six Marines seen raising the flag at Iwo Jima in an iconic World War II photograph. Hayes' moment of glory was followed upon his return to civilian life with prejudice and alcoholism—Cash, moved past Hayes' story and La Farge'due south recounting of it, vowed to tape the song. When planning outLook Again To The Wind, Henry knew that only a few living singers could evangelize the vocal the way he wanted to hear information technology. He called Kristofferson, utilizing Rawlings and Welch to sing groundwork.
"I wanted somebody whose relationship withJohnny Cash was not only musical simply personal," he says. "I'd worked with Kris on a couple of other things and I thought why not ask? Who else has a voice with that kind of power and potency?" That aforementioned sense of intuition guided Henry to choose the other participants and the material they would render. For La Farge's "Custer," the album'southward third vocal, the producer knew instinctively thatSteve Earle was the right man for the job. "Steve is an upstart, and there are very few people I can imagine working right at present who could deliver a song that is that pointed in that particular style and do it authentically without cowering from information technology or making information technology feel a little as well curvation," Henry says. "He really could embody the kind of swagger that that song insists upon."
Similarly, Henry choseNancy Blake (with Harris and Welch on bankroll vocals) for the Greenbacks-written "The Talking Leaves,"Norman Blake to sing "Drums," the Milk Carton Kids to lead "White Girl" (both of those authored past La Farge) and the powerhouse vocalistRhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops for the original album's finale, "The Vanishing Race," written by Greenbacks'southward good friendJohnny Horton. To bolster the anthology (the original, typical of mid-'60s vinyl LPs, ran just over a half hr), Henry fills out the track listing ofLook Again To The Current of air with reprises of "Apache Tears" and "As Long Equally the Grass Shall Grow"—both sung past Welch and Rawlings—and ends the set with the championship rails, a La Farge tune that did not appear on the originalJohnny Cash album but instead on the songwriter's ain 1963 releaseEqually Long every bit the Grass Shall Grow: Peter La Farge Sings Of The Indians. Here information technology's sung byBill Miller, withSam Bush providing mandolin andDennis Crouch upright bass, a fine and fitting coda to the collection.
From the start, Henry looked at the project equally i that would crave neat personal delivery and responsibleness on his own part. Approached as potential producer of the projection past the man who first envisioned information technology, Sony Music Masterworks' Senior Vice PresidentChuck Mitchell (who'd been in conversations with Antonino D'Ambrosio, author ofA Heartbeat and a Guitar, a book about the making ofBitter Tears), Henry immediately understood the importance of the assignment. "Johnny Cash was my first musical hero and I feel a profound debt to him as an artist, and as a courageous one," he says. "How could I say no to that?"
He likewise realized that theBitter Tears album held a special place in Greenbacks's canon, and that in many ways the problems it raised even so resonate today—this had to exist credible in the new versions. "Mr. Greenbacks knew that if he took this on, even if his indicate of view was not adopted, he had the power to be heard," Henry says.
The album was recorded in three sessions: the commencement ii inLos Angeles andNashville and, lastly, one at the Cash Cabin, in Cash'due south hometown ofHendersonville, Tennessee, whereBill Miller cut his contribution. Providing the instrumental bankroll for almost of the album areGreg Leisz (steel guitar, guitars), Keefus Ciancia (keyboards),Patrick Warren (keyboards for the L.A. sessions),Jay Bellerose (drums) andDave Piltch (bass).
TRACKLIST:
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As Long as the Grass Shall Grow – feat.Gillian Welch &David Rawlings
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Apache Tears – feat.Emmylou Harris w/The Milk Carton Kids
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Custer – feat.Steve Earle west/The Milk Carton Kids
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The Talking Leaves – feat.Nancy Blake westward/Emmylou Harris,Gillian Welch &Dave Rawlings
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The Ballad ofIra Hayes – feat.Kris Kristofferson due west/Gillian Welch &David Rawlings
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Drums – feat.Norman Blake w/Nancy Blake,Emmylou Harris,Gillian Welch &David Rawlings
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Apache Tears (Reprise) – feat.Gillian Welch &Dave Rawlings
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White Girl – feat. The Milk Carton Kids
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The Vanishing Race – feat.Rhiannon Giddens
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As Long as the Grass Shall Grow (Reprise) – feat.Nancy Blake,Gillian Welch &Dave Rawlings
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Look Again to The Current of air – feat. Neb Miller
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Source: http://billmiller.co/look-again-to-the-wind/
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