Free Cash: The Autobiography by Johnny Cash, Jonny Cash, Patrick Carr Page B

the fish were jumpin', where the cotton grew high. Question Three is simple: Why do I always wear black? Strictly speaking, I don't. When I'm not in the public eye I wear whatever I want. I still wear black on stage, though, for a couple of reasons. First there's the song “Man in Black,” which I wrote in 1971. I had my network TV show at the time, and so many reporters were asking me Question Two that I saw an opportunity to answer with a message. I wore the black, I sang, “for the poor and beaten down, livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town.” I wore it “for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, but is there because he's a viaim of the times.” I wore it for “the sick and lonely old” and “the reckless whose bad trip left them cold.” And, with the Vietnam War as painful in my mind as it was in most other Americans', I wore it “in mournin' for the lives that could have been. Each week we lose a hundred fine young men. I wear it for the thousands who have died, believin' that the Lord was on their side.” The last verse summed it up: Well, there's things that never will be right, I know, And things need changin' everywhere you go, But until we start to make a move to make a few things right, You'll never see me wear a suit of white. Oh, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day, And tell the world that everything's okay,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back, Till things are brighter, I'm the Man in Black. By John R. Cash, © 1971 House of Cash, Inc. Apart from the Vietnam War being over, I don't see much reason to change my position today. The old are still neglected, the poor are still poor, the young are still dying before their time, and we're not making many moves to make things right. There's still plenty of dark- ness to carry off. My other reasons for wearing black date to my very first public performance, in a North Memphis church before I'd made any records or even gotten in the door at Sun Records. I'd already hooked up with Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins, though, so in theory at least we were a band, and we thought we ought to look like one. Unfortunately, none of us had any clothes a “real” band would wear—I didn't own a suit, or even a tie—but each of us did have a black shirt and a pair of blue jeans. So that became our band outfit, and since the folks at the church seemed to like us and musicians are deeply super- stitious—if they tell you otherwise, don't believe them— I suggested we stick with the black. Marshall and Luther did so for a while; I did forever. My mother hated it, though, so after my first couple of hit records, I gave in and started wearing the bright, flashy outfits she made for me—I remember one particu- larly festive white suit trimmed in glittering blue—but that didn't feel good at all, so I went back to black. And ultimately, everything else aside, that was the real deal: it just felt right. I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion—against a stagnant sta- tus quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.

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 Unit One hums through the night, leaning gently into the curves of the hill road from Santa Cruz back to San Francisco. Yes, I'm thinking, I've got a great little crew on this bus. There are just two of them, Bob and Vicki Wootton, and they take very good care of June and me. They know what they're doing, and we know they know. Bob's been my guitar player since 1968, when he showed up at a date in Oklahoma and began filling the hole Luther Perkins left among us that year. Vicki, his wife, is newer to our little gang, but she drives as well as Bob does, and better sometimes—which he knows and doesn't mind too much. She's coolheaded, very smooth. You need two drivers if you're serious about travel by private bus. There are all kinds of regulations about how far and how long one person