Walk the Line, the new Johnny Cash movie, opens this Friday,
November 18, in theaters nationwide. A few titles are noted here to
capture and enhance the interest of moviegoers.
Cash: The Autobiography (HarperSanFrancisco, $7.99, 0061013579), written with Patrick Carr, a veteran music industry writer, is one of the best music biographies ever written. Told in Cash's voice--Bob Dylan said it "comes from the middle of the earth"--the book gives us the full story from his humble beginnings as an Arkansas share-cropper's son listening to a pre-teen June Carter on the radio to his later struggles with fame, god, drugs and alcohol.
Music fans (and yes, not just country music fans) will tell you that Cash's Folsom Prison album is still considered by many to be one of the greatest live albums ever recorded. In the previews of the movie, we see the scene in which Cash, about to perform at Folsom, is asked by a prison official to "refrain from playing any songs that will remind the inmates that they're in prison." An utterly cool Cash replies, "You think they forgot?" Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece (Da Capo, $15.95, 0306814536) is a riveting account of that day and the story that surrounds it.
We're hearing Oscar buzz for Reese Witherspoon who plays June Carter Cash and does all of her own singing in the movie. For a deeper understanding of June and her family, often named the first family of American music, I highly recommend the bittersweet saga Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music (S&S, $15, 074324382X).
Finally, Cash by the Editors of Rolling Stone (Crown, $29.95, 140005480X) takes us a bit further in Cash's story. Published posthumously, it features many moving essays by his friends and family that remind us why the world is slightly less colorful without our "man in black." In its wonderful introductory essay comes this gem: " 'Johnny Cash was out of line all his life,' Merle Haggard said during the late years of Cash's life. ' "I Walk the Line" was kind of a ludicrous song for him to sing: "I walk the line." He never walked any line.' Which is true. But Cash was good for one promise he made in that first hit: He kept a close watch on his heart. He had to. After all, he knew what it was capable of."--Jenn Risko
Cash: The Autobiography (HarperSanFrancisco, $7.99, 0061013579), written with Patrick Carr, a veteran music industry writer, is one of the best music biographies ever written. Told in Cash's voice--Bob Dylan said it "comes from the middle of the earth"--the book gives us the full story from his humble beginnings as an Arkansas share-cropper's son listening to a pre-teen June Carter on the radio to his later struggles with fame, god, drugs and alcohol.
Music fans (and yes, not just country music fans) will tell you that Cash's Folsom Prison album is still considered by many to be one of the greatest live albums ever recorded. In the previews of the movie, we see the scene in which Cash, about to perform at Folsom, is asked by a prison official to "refrain from playing any songs that will remind the inmates that they're in prison." An utterly cool Cash replies, "You think they forgot?" Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece (Da Capo, $15.95, 0306814536) is a riveting account of that day and the story that surrounds it.
We're hearing Oscar buzz for Reese Witherspoon who plays June Carter Cash and does all of her own singing in the movie. For a deeper understanding of June and her family, often named the first family of American music, I highly recommend the bittersweet saga Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music (S&S, $15, 074324382X).
Finally, Cash by the Editors of Rolling Stone (Crown, $29.95, 140005480X) takes us a bit further in Cash's story. Published posthumously, it features many moving essays by his friends and family that remind us why the world is slightly less colorful without our "man in black." In its wonderful introductory essay comes this gem: " 'Johnny Cash was out of line all his life,' Merle Haggard said during the late years of Cash's life. ' "I Walk the Line" was kind of a ludicrous song for him to sing: "I walk the line." He never walked any line.' Which is true. But Cash was good for one promise he made in that first hit: He kept a close watch on his heart. He had to. After all, he knew what it was capable of."--Jenn Risko