April 14, 1999

JOHNNY CASH TRIBUTE: RING OF FIRE, RING OF FRIENDS

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

No one who watches TV Sunday night, or any other night, for that matter, is likely to see anything lovelier or more moving than June Carter Cash singing "Ring of Fire."

Gone are the Tex-Mex brass and train-ride rhythms of her husband Johnny Cash's famous version of the same tune; instead, it’s just June, in a shawl with her long chestnut hair falling down, playing autoharp while a fiddler and an acoustic guitarist chime in. Turns out she co-wrote the song, and here she certainly reclaims it for her own - a piece of melody steeped in dignity and sorrow old as the hills.

TNT's "All-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash" (8 p.m. EDT Sunday) runs a good two hours and, as such, naturally contains a somewhat languid stretch or two, but June Cash's moment in the spotlight isn't one of them.

Same goes for another offering later in the show, with Sheryl Crow, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Emmylou Harris and Marty Stuart singing "Flesh and Blood." Again, it couldn't be simpler - Harris and Carpenter on acoustic guitars, Stuart on mandolin and Crow on accordion, with Harris singing lead - but it's hard to imagine music more radiant.

These artists are just the tip of the iceberg. The program, taped in New York on April 6, is filled to overflowing with appearances by Willie Nelson, Chris Isaak, Kris Kristofferson, U2, Bob Dylan, the Mavericks, Lyle Lovett and Dave Matthews, all introduced by host Jon Voight.

The occasion - paying homage to Cash as one of the monumental figures of post-war American music, as his struggle with a debilitating chronic illness continues - at least gives the very popular alt-music hero Dave Matthews a chance, for once, to refrain from over-singing. He teams with Emmylou Harris on the solemn, scary old song "Long Black Veil" and proves that he is (despite the evidence of his hit records) capable of letting great material speak for itself.
      
The evening gets off to a not very promising start with Crow and Nelson doubling up on the old Cash-and-Carter marital discord chestnut, "Jackson," in which the two singers seem to be fighting with the backing band as much as they are with each other's characters. A bit later, a rendition of "Big River" by Nelson,
Lovett and Kristofferson standing in a gargoyle row really brings home the fact that country-music greatness, male division, is no beauty pageant.

Cash's fellow legend, Bob Dylan, delivers a special video performance of "Love Train." Not much known as a people pleaser, Dylan is so captivated by the occasion and his feelings for his old pal - whom he thanks "for standing up for me way back when" - that he actually does a little dance while strumming and moaning in his inimitable, semi-intelligible fashion.

The all-star tunes are interspersed with mini-documentary slide shows about the great man's origins, early years, various triumphs and devotion to gospel music. Watching all this, you would think Cash never lived an adverse or wicked day in his life, except when his daughter, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, makes a passing reference to his "bouts with illness and addiction."

When Cash finally appears in person toward the end of the show, you have no trouble at all seeing evidence of both illness and addiction in his famous physiognomy. As far back as 30 years ago it was axiomatic with writers that Cash's face was a "ruin." Today, with uncountable additional miles of turbulent water under that sagging bridge, the word is even more apt. He looks pretty smashed up. But he also looks fantastic. Seeing him in this program is like watching Marlon Brando in "The Godfather" - he's magnificent and uncanny; you can't take your eyes off him.

In all, the program represents two hours' worth of evidence of a vast American conspiracy to make music that means something. "I come from this family," June Carter Cash says, "that plays honest, sincere music that's not very fancy."

In show-biz terms, this tribute demonstrates that such honesty and sincerity have legs.

Roger Anderson is arts and entertainment editor at Scripps Howard News Service.

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