Rosanne Cash on the gift her father, Johnny Cash, gave her

Fresh Air

In this 2009 Fresh Air episode, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash reflects on a deeply personal gift from her father, Johnny Cash: a list of 10

Key takeaways

• The list was not just about country music but a comprehensive guide to American roots music, including blues, gospel, folk, and protest songs.

Main topics

• Johnny Cash's influence on Rosanne Cash

Notable quotes

"It took me, I think until now, to realize that he was really giving me himself, a part of his heart and soul."

Conclusion

Rosanne Cash's journey with her father's list reveals how music can serve

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) This message comes from Glass Half Full with Craig Melvin. In this podcast, the Today Show anchor talks with A-listers and athletes about the moments that shaped them. Listen, and you might get a fresh perspective. Search Glass Half Full wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:15) This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. This Labor Day, we're going to revisit a 2009 interview Terry Gross recorded with singer and songwriter Roseanne Cash. Back in 1973, when she was 18, her father Johnny Cash gave her a list of 100 essential country songs he thought she needed to know. At the time, she was more interested in writing her own songs than interpreting the songs of others. But decades later, she returned to her father's list and recorded 12 of the songs on it. The 2009 album is called, naturally, The List. Terry's interview started with Cash's version of Sea of Heartbreak. Bruce Springsteen sings with her on this one. Speaker 6 (1:50) Roseanne Cash, welcome back to Fresh Air. Well, thank you, Terri. Tell me why you wanted to record this record. We'll get to the whole list in a second, but of all those songs on the list, why CF Heartbreak? Speaker 4 (2:03) It's kind of a perfectly constructed country song, and it was on the list, so that gave me permission. Speaker 1 (2:13) And it embodies that longing that is in so much of country music. Really, really well. And beyond that, it takes a metaphor and carries it to the very end without breaking that narrative about the metaphor, without becoming kitschy, which a lot of songs do. Speaker 1 (2:37) And that's kind of perfect to me. And it's also, it makes it a bit of a period piece because you don't hear many modern songs that do that. And there's also some language in it that's not modern. You know, when he says divine and my dear, these are kind of old school ways of talking. And I really enjoy that. So it's like stepping into a period piece. At the same time, it has the hallmark of every great song, which is that it transcends time. It has a timeless quality to it. And it feels very modern. It's amazing. Speaker 6 (3:10) The lyric was written by Hal David, who wrote the lyrics for so many Burt Bacharach songs. So he's not exactly Mr. Country Music, Mr. Nashville. Speaker 1 (3:17) No. And, you know, I myself thought that Don Gibson had written it because he had the early definitive version of the song and then found out that Hal David and Paul Hampton wrote it in New York. It was a huge Speaker 4 (3:29) surprise. Your father has a good recording of this. He does. You know, not being disloyal, but I have to say I still prefer the Don Gibson version. And, you know, my dad recorded his version with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on Unchained. Speaker 1 (3:48) And he might have been a little too energized from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Speaker 6 (3:55) Now you have Bruce Springsteen singing with you on this one. Is he a friend? Speaker 1 (4:00) No, I couldn't call him a friend. I've met him. a few times over the years, but it would be presumptuous to say he's a friend. Why did you ask him to do it on this song? Because he's just a dream date, Terry. Speaker 4 (4:16) We knew we wanted to do a duet. So I did my part on Sea of Heartbreak. We were like, God, who's the perfect person to ask to sing on this song? Who's like the embodiment of... American romantic male voice. Well, that would be Bruce Springsteen. So we asked him. And he said yes. Speaker 1 (4:35) He said yes. I thought, oh, there's a 50-50 chance Bruce will do it. And then, you know, he knew the song. He got the concept of the list. He's so steeped in country music anyway and roots music. So it was an easy thing for him, I think. So let's get the story of the Speaker 6 (4:52) list. Your album's called The List, and there's a story behind it. So would you tell the story? Speaker 1 (4:58) Yeah. When I was 18 years old, I went on the road with my dad after I graduated from high school. And we were riding on the tour bus one day, kind of rolling through the South. And he mentioned a song. We started talking about songs. And he mentioned one, and I said, I don't know that one. And he mentioned another. I said, I don't know that one either, Dad. And he became very alarmed that I didn't know what he considered my own musical genealogy. Speaker 1 (5:29) And I was very steeped in pop and rock music, and I grew up in Southern California. So he spent the rest of the afternoon making a list for me. And at the end of the day, he said, this is your education. And across the top of the page, he wrote 100 essential country songs. The list might have been better titled 100 Essential American Songs because it was very comprehensive. He covered every critical point in Southern and American music. Early folk songs, protest songs, delta blues, southern gospel, early country music, Appalachian, everything that fed into modern country music was on that list. So his overview was really of a musicologist, but formed by his instincts, you know, and just the rhythm in his own blood. So I realized when he gave me the list at the age of 18 that this was an important document, and I set about learning these songs. Speaker 1 (6:34) But it took me, I think, until now to realize that he was really giving me himself, a part of his heart and soul. Speaker 1 (6:44) When you Speaker 6 (6:45) say you went about learning those songs, did you get the sheet music or get the records? All Speaker 4 (6:50) I had to do is get my dad, because he had them all at his fingertips. You could say, well, how does this one go? And Speaker 1 (6:57) he'd pick up a guitar and sing it to me. And then some I knew the records, you know, like I had known Ray Charles' Take These Chains From My Heart since childhood. I had known Patsy Cline's She's Got You since childhood. Others I found the records for. So Speaker 6 (7:12) you finally realized later in life that your father had given you a piece of himself and a piece of his own kind of genetic makeup when he gave you this list of 100 songs. But when he gave you that list, did you immediately think, thanks, Dad? Or was it more like, thanks, Dad? Like an 18 Speaker 4 (7:29) -year-old would do? Speaker 6 (7:30) Yeah. Speaker 4 (7:32) No. You know, if Speaker 1 (7:35) he had given it to me even a couple years earlier, I might have said, oh, yeah, eye roll, thanks, Dad. I wanted this. I wanted him. You know, my parents were divorced. I was just stocking in this great time with my dad, who was clean and sober. So I wanted that experience of loving what he loved and learning about his life. Also, I was just starting to write songs. So this was a template for me. These are excellent songs. He wrote the list as a songwriter. So I had that template for great songwriting. It was exciting to me. Now, do you still have that piece of paper that the list was on? I do. I found it again in late 2005 when I was writing the narratives for my last record. It was Black Cadillac. And I wrote narratives for the show. And I found the list in 2005. And I thought, well, this will make a nice subject for a narrative for the Black Cadillac show. Never thinking anything more than that. And I wrote this narrative and it started when I was 18 years old. My dad gave me this list. Well, everybody started coming up to me saying, where's that list? When are you going to record that list? It became funny. Speaker 6 (8:50) So what do you do with a piece of paper now? Is it framed? Is it preserved? Speaker 4 (8:55) Where do you keep it? Speaker 6 (8:56) I Speaker 4 (8:56) keep it in my files. It's not framed. You know, I Speaker 1 (9:02) want to do the right thing with the actual list at some point, but I don't want to just publish it on the Internet or give it away yet, partly because I want to Speaker 4 (9:14) do volume two. Speaker 4 (9:18) And I don't want anyone else to do volume two. Speaker 6 (9:20) Well, I want to play another song from the list. And this is a great song. I love this song that Patsy Cline made famous. It's called She's Got You. And of all the songs on the list, why did you want to do this one? Speaker 4 (9:32) Well, it's a classic country song. Anyone who knows country music knows this song. Unfortunately, they also know Patsy Cline's version, which is so iconic that I had some trouble getting past that to actually record it myself. But you know what's great about this song, too, is that it's a list. In the song is listed all the things that the other woman has. So it's a list within the list. Speaker 6 (9:56) Oh, right. Speaker 6 (10:00) Yeah. And I guess, what do you do to put yourself in the mood to feel the song? Speaker 1 (10:06) I Speaker 6 (10:06) mean, you're married, you know what I mean? Like you're not, you're not a teenager anymore. You're, you're married. So. Well, maybe that's a presumptuous question. Maybe I should just drop that. No, Speaker 1 (10:18) I know what you're saying. But, you know, passion is not reserved for young people. And I think that my sensitivity to music has actually deepened and expanded as I've gotten older. You add more life experience, you know, the music gets filtered through all of that. And that's beautiful. When I started singing this song, like I said, I had to get Patsy Cline off my shoulder a bit to... to even approach the song. So once I started singing it, and it kind of dawned on me, oh, this is why this song has been covered so many times. This is a great song. Speaker 6 (12:27) That's my guest, Roseanne Cash, singing She's Got You, a song made famous by Patsy Cline, a song featured on Roseanne Cash's CD called The List, which is a song selected from the list of 100 essential songs that her father, Johnny Cash, gave to her when she was 18. When