YouTube Originals has produced a documentary about Johnny Cash called, The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash (2019). Director Thom Zimny — who also made Elvis Presley: The Searcher and Springsteen on Broadway, tells the story of the Man in Black. The title is inspired for a term Cash’s mother used to describe Cash’s voice, “the gift.”
With cooperation from Cash’s estate, Zimny uses archival footage, home movies, and audio interviews to help tell the story. The film focuses on major invents in Cash’s life, such as the death of his brother as a child and the singer’s Folsom Prison concert.
The documentary is currently streaming for free on YouTube. Check it out in its entirety below.
What do you think of The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The Mavericks are paying tribute to some of their influences with a new album of covers, The Mavericks Play the Hits (2019). One of the tracks featured in a new video is their cover of Waylon Jennings’s “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?”
The album, which celebrates the band’s 30th anniversary, also features versions of songs like Freddy Fender’s “Before the Next Tear Drop Falls,” John Anderson’s “Swingin’,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” and Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain.” Martina McBride joins the band on a version of “Once Upon a Time,” which was made famous by Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells.
On the Waylon Jennings song, The Mavericks ramp up the beat with the help of some horns. While it may not sound like any Hank Williams song, lead singer Raul Malo on a party bus does make a nice tribute to Waylon Jennings. Check out “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?”
Jennings released “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” on his 1975 album, Dreaming My Dreams. The song went to number one on the country charts. It has been covered by a number of other artists, including Alabama, Uncle Tupelo, Jack Ingram, and Hank Williams Jr.
On Ringo Starr’s new album What’s My Name, he includes a recording of one of the last songs written by John Lennon, “Grow Old With Me.” The touching track also features another Beatle, Paul McCartney, playing bass and singing backing vocals.
Ringo Starr recently explained to Billboard how Jack Douglas, who produced Lennon’s Double Fantasy, approached him about a tape of demos Lennon had made in Bermuda in 1980. Starr said that listening to the tape was “very emotional” for him. And it was on that tape he found one song that Lennon had never released, “Grow Old With Me.”
So Starr called McCartney, who agreed to help out. One final additional touch was that Douglas added a string section to the song. And unknown to Starr, Douglas added a brief musical riff from George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” (listen closely at around the 1:40 mark). Thus was created a bit of a Beatles reunion of sorts.
The lyric video below for Starr’s recording of “Grow Old With Me” includes Lennon’s handwriting to help display the lyrics. Check it out.
The recording touched Starr. As he explained to Billboard, “It moved me. I did my best and it’s very me, but you know, [Lennon] wrote those words and he’d written songs for me before, so I thought, ‘No, I’m gonna do it.'”
If you listen closely, in addition to the Harrison reference in the music, you may hear Starr’s message to Lennon. At around the 3:02 mark, you can hear in the background, Starr saying, “God bless you, John.”
John Lennon and Yoko Ono originally planned to include “Grow Old With Me” on Double Fantasy (1980). But the song was not ready when they wanted to release the album, so they saved it for what they hoped would be their next album.
Lennon’s demo of “Grow Old With Me” with Ono was released after his death. Lennon’s version appears on the 2010 posthumous album, Milk and Honey. You may hear Lennon’s version below.
One of the best parts of the recent Ken Burns series Country Music was not even a part of the broadcast. One of the extras that was edited out of the final version of the series was a detailed segment about “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the George Jones classic that many consider the greatest country song of all time.
The segment features stories from many of the people behind the song. Unfortunately, George Jones passed away in 2013, but we get the story from songwriters Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman as well as from producer Billy Sherrill and others. Below are 11 things we learned about “He Stopped Loving Her Today.
1. “One of the songwriters had a reputation for killing off characters in his songs. Songwriter Bobby Braddock started writing the song and then took it to Curly Putman for help in finishing the song. Putman was known for writing songs where someone dies, such as “Green, Green Grass of Home.”
2. The song took a long time to write. Braddock and Putman started working together during the Spring of 1977, then took a break. They finished the first version of the song in Fall of 1977.
3. Braddock initially was not too impressed with the song or the character. When they finished the song, Braddock wrote in his journal that on a scale of one to ten, the song was a seven. One thing he never liked about the song was that the main character was not a good role model because he could never move on.
4. Someone recorded the song before George Jones. Johnny Russell recorded the song for two different labels, but it was never released.
5. The song as originally written revealed the main character’s death too early. Braddock and Putman wrote the song with the chorus about the character being dead occurring after the first verse.
6. Producer Billy Sherrill got the songwriters to change the song. Producer Billy Sherrill had Braddock and Putman rewrite the song to move the disclosure of the character’s death until nearer the end. And he also got them to add a verse about the woman coming to the funeral.
7. George Jones initially did not like the song and kept singing the wrong music. During early recording sessions, Jones kept singing the song to the music of Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”
8. The song took a long time to record. Between the recording of Jones’s opening line of the song and the recording of his final words, nearly a year had passed. The takes were never right, and then one day Jones came in and said he had it figured out. And then he nailed the recording.
9. The recording gave the producer goosebumps. When Jones finally recorded the spoken recitation, it gave Billy Sherrill goosebumps.
10. Backing vocalist Millie Kirkham knew what the song needed. Vocalist Millie Kirkham was known for her ability to hit extremely high notes, and Sherrill originally planned for her to sing really high on the song. But she realized that the song needed something more subtle, so she forwent her trademark high notes and did something more moving and haunting, stunning everyone in the recording session.
11. The song was song of the year for two years. “He Stopped Loving Her Today” won the Country Music Awards Song of the Year for 1980 and for 1981. And it also helped Jones win his first Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Our song of the day features Merle Haggard covering an Iris DeMent song that appeared on one of his overlooked albums from the 1990s. In “No Time to Cry,” the singer begins by remembering his father’s funeral from a year before, moving into a meditation on live, it’s joys and it’s pains.
When I first heard Haggard’s version from his album 1996, I though he might have wrote it or that it had been written for him. The song perfectly fits his weathered voice at the time of an older person. Although Merle Haggard was only in his late 50’s when he recorded “No Time to Cry,” he always seemed much older than his age.
The singer looks back through the years, realizing life is full of pain. But in the end, you cannot stop the pain or cry for everyone.
Now I sit down on the sofa and I watch the evening news: There’s a half a dozen tragedies from which to pick and choose; The baby that was missing was found in a ditch today; And there’s bombs a’flying and people dying not so far away; And I’ll take a beer from the refrigerator, And go sit out in the yard and with a cold one in my hand; I’m going to bite down and swallow hard, Because I’m older now: I’ve got no time to cry.
Iris DeMent’s Version
In Haggard’s version, he sounds weary. He sounds hardened by what he has seen. By contrast, in Iris DeMent‘s original version from her album My Life (1993), her haunting voice sounds like someone barely able to keep from crying. Her version reveals the raw emotions nearer to the surface than the old man in Haggard’s version. She takes longer
Listen to just the way Haggard adds “it’s true” near the end at around the 3:45 mark. It is as if the singer is reminding himself that he cannot cry. DeMent’s version does not add that declaration, perhaps because the singer does not quite believe it is true.
DeMent’s recording clocks in at nearly seven minutes, while Haggard’s song takes just four and a half minutes. He is making a declaration, telling you his story, while DeMent takes longer because she is trying to convince herself of her strength in the wake of everything. Both versions are wonderful. Here is DeMent’s take on her song “No Time to Cry.”
Haggard’s choice to cover the song reveals his great taste in music that fits him. But he also admired DeMent’s work, having earlier praised DeMent’s version of his song “Big City” on the Haggard tribute album, Tulare Dust.
Which version of “No Time to Cry” do you like best? Leave your two cents in the comments.
