{"id":5555,"date":"2015-01-10T20:00:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-10T20:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=5555"},"modified":"2015-02-04T16:39:52","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T16:39:52","slug":"up-there-in-the-wind-youll-hear-johnny-cash-his-voice-courage-and-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=5555","title":{"rendered":"Up there in the wind, listen for Johnny Cash — his voice, courage and vision"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"18\"<\/p>\n

Edward Curtis’s remarkably humane portrait of a young Mohave woman named Mosa helped inspire financier J.P. Morgan to underwrite the photographer’s documentation of the plight of Native Americans at the turn of the 20th century. Johnny Cash did similar cultural work in the latter part of the century. Courtesy Museum of Wisconsin Art.<\/em><\/p>\n

Once the hunters and their tribes and families roamed and thrived through the plains and deep woods of America. Then the white man came, and eventually, after many bloody physical and political battles, would come what Johnny Cash called “bitter tears.”<\/p>\n

I gained a graphic sense of this in 2013 when I saw, at the Museum of Wisconsin Art In West Bend, the stunning and heroic work of the great photographer Edward S. Curtis. He documented the demise of America’s native culture from a governmental genocide that led to a tribe reservation system largely segregated from American society.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0powerfully transporting exhibit revealed indigenous peoples all across America still hanging on to their natural habitat and way of life, before it was\u00a0destroyed and partitioned out by the white man.
\nBelow is a portrait Curtis took of\u00a0a warrior named Bear’s Belly or Arikara, wearing a bearskin that served perhaps as camouflage in\u00a0battle with cowboys and soldiers. Then,\u00a0in\u00a01908\u00a0he\u00a0re-enacted\u00a0the Ceremony of the Bear Medicine Fraternity, for Curtis’s camera.\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

“Bear’s Belly — Arikara” by Edward L. Curtis, Courtesy Museum of Wisconsin Art.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Curtis photo exhibit prompted me to read Timothy Egan’s fascinating biography of Curtis,\u00a0Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher.<\/em>\u00a0His life story provided great insights into Curtis’s accomplishment and what our Native Americans endured, lost — and sustained as a society and culture — despite all odds.\u00a01<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"cash<\/p>\n

In 2014, I read Robert Hilburn’s powerful and probing biography Johnny Cash: The Life. <\/em>It told of how Cash became\u00a0the first major popular music artist of the era to address the ongoing plight of Native Americans, in his pioneering 1964 concept album, Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian.\u00a0<\/em>It was partly inspired by Cash meeting songwriter Peter LaFarge, a man with mixed Native American blood, who was writing “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” and other compelling songs. Hayes was the Native American who was among the Marines who hoisted the iconic American flag at Iwo Jima in\u00a0World War II. Then, after a celebratory return home, Hayes died in tragic circumstances. \"Ira_Hayes_WW2_Flag\" Native American Marine Ira Hayes is on the far left in Joe Rosenthal’s famous photograph of the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima, near the end of World War II. Courtesy californiaindianeducation.org<\/em><\/p>\n

The album’s cutting-edge emerged almost immediately in the lack of promotion from Columbia Records whom Cash termed “gutless.” In his biography, Robert Hilburn captures Cash’s own bitterness: “They found a lot of resentment from country DJs over the subject matter; they feared their conservative listeners would tune out, so they buried the record, and Columbia just rolled over.” 2<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In a way, Cash was my generation’s Edward S. Curtis, telling the truth in songs with their own images.<\/p>\n

Since his death in 2003, many roots musicians have extolled Cash’s vision and artistic power notably in the live album and DVD,. We Walk the Line: A Celebration of the Music of Johnny Cash<\/em>, a high-spirited, poignant and sometimes magical live concert evocation of the man’s legacy\u00a0, which was my choice for No. 2 roots music album of the year in 2012, both on this blog and on NoDepression.com<\/em>. 3.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then last summer, 50 years after the original release, came the deeply moving tribute album, Look Again to the Wind: Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears Revisited,<\/em> on Sony Legacy. That label has belatedly redeemed the reticence of Columbia Records when the original album essentially disappeared\u00a0at its birth, like a small Indian burial mound, standing alone and windswept in a remote prairie. \"wounded \"cashJohnny Cash (upper) touring the site of the 1890 massacre of\u00a0Native Americans at Wounded Knee with survivors, in December of 1969. \u00a0And Cash (lower) near the time that he recorded “Bitter Tears.”\u00a0Courtesy (respectively) of salon.com and latimes.com<\/em><\/p>\n

As it happened, this year I experienced, especially in an October road trip to San Francisco and the world-class SF Jazz Center, a focus on the pan-cultural vitality of America’s original art form, jazz. So I didn’t write about Look to the Wind,<\/em> in any detail. But I heard its solemn power and stirring pertinence, and chose it as my number seven roots music album of the year, without comment.<\/p>\n

So I’m grateful that my former colleague at The Capital Times,<\/em> John Nichols, and The Nation’s<\/em> Washington correspondent, assessed the album as succinctly as anyone could in his recent “2014 Progressive Honor Roll” in the January 12\/19 issue of The Nation.<\/em> Here’s what Nichols wrote:<\/p>\n

Most Valuable CD:\u00a0<\/strong> Look Again to the Wind: Johnny Cash\u2019s Bitter Tears Revisited<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"There\u2019s an argument to be made that Johnny Cash sang the most adventurous protest songs of the 1960s. Exhibit A: his 1964 concept album\u00a0Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian<\/em>. Cash was a top-of-the-charts singer, but radio wouldn\u2019t play it. So he bought a full-page ad in\u00a0Billboard<\/em>, decrying a \u201cgutless\u201d music industry for refusing to consider the plight of Native Americans and linking it to broader questions raised by civil-rights campaigners and a then very small antiwar movement. Yes, he declared, his songs were \u201cstrong medicine\u2026. So is Rochester, Harlem, Birmingham and Vietnam.\u201d That strong medicine would influence a new generation of singers who jumped at the chance to reintroduce Cash\u2019s\u00a0Bitter Tears<\/em>\u00a0to America. Steve Earle captures the spirit of the project\u2019s demand for a rethinking of history when he sings, \u201cI will tell you, buster, that I ain\u2019t a fan of Custer\u2026.\u201d Bill Miller, who heard the original album as a kid growing up on the Stockbridge-Munsee-Mohican reservation in Wisconsin, offers a brilliant take on the project\u2019s title track (written by the late Peter La Farge). And Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings capture the passion of one of the greatest protest songs ever written, \u201cThe Ballad of Ira Hayes.\u201d Fine music. Fine politics.<\/p>\n

\"bill<\/p>\n

Native American flutist Bill Miller,\u00a0Courtesy billmiller.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Miller, a guitarist and master of the Native American flute, underscores Nichols praise: “It has a deeper respect for Native Americans than any other project I’ve been involved in,” he says in the album’s promotional video (below).\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tAEuN_j_cnM<\/a><\/p>\n

Sony contacted Miller and he left his mother’s deathbed in Shawano, Wisconsin to do this project. “We are people with gifts and blessings and we can still bless this world, something that history and Hollywood has overlooked,” he says.<\/p>\n

A tour of artists involved in recording the album is in the works, Miller says.<\/p>\n

“It’s meant to happen,” he says.<\/p>\n

\"Earle\"<\/p>\n

\"Gillian-Welch-Look-again--008\"<\/p>\n

Singer-songwriter-author Steve Earle (upper photo) and singer-songwriter Gillian Welch (lower) are among an all-star group of musicians who reinterpret Johnny Cash’s 1964 “Bitter Tears” album as “Look Again to the Wind.” The lineup also includes Mohican flutist Bill Miller,\u00a0Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson, Norman Blake, and Carolina Chocolate Drops’ lead singer Rhiannon Giddens and others.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

________<\/p>\n

1\u00a0Edward S. Curtis preserved America\u2019s Vanishing Race for Posterity,<\/em> art exhibit review:https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=2133<\/a><\/p>\n

2\u00a0Johnny Cash: The Life,<\/em> by Robert Hilburn, Little, Brown and Company, 2013, 265. See book review:http:\/\/nodepression.com\/article\/robert-hilburns-johnny-cash-life-reads-definitive-biography<\/a><\/p>\n

3. We Walk the Line: A Celebration of the Music of Johnny Cash, album\/DVD review:\u00a0https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=1134<\/a> <\/em> 4. Here is John Nichols’ complete article on his “2014 progressive honor roll::http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/193617\/zephyr-teachout-hands-united-and-john-oliver-made-our-2014-progressive-honor-roll-who<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edward Curtis’s remarkably humane portrait of a young Mohave woman named Mosa helped inspire financier J.P. Morgan to underwrite the photographer’s documentation of the plight of Native Americans at the turn of the 20th century. Johnny Cash did similar cultural … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-1rB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5555"}],"version-history":[{"count":48,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5690,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555\/revisions\/5690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}