Johnny Cash at SPAC Has ‘Message for All’

by Victor Stewart, The Knickerbocker News, June 26, 1972

The Johnny Cash Show was a story, an epic, a pleasant evening of entertainment and a revival meeting rolled into one.

When the entertainers came to the stage, as they did before more than 8,000 people at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) Saturday night, the message transcended age and class alike.

The audience was made up of young and old 一 long haired hippies and straights. They came to hear a man talk and sing about hard work, prison reform and the good a little religion can do for every man. The applause was sometimes deafening.

FIRST, there was Carl Perkins. Remember the original “Blue Suede Shoes” in 1956? The audience delights in that memory.

This was the uptempo warm-up for what came later.

The Carter Family, called America’s first family of folk and country music, follows. The original “Wildwood Flower,” Mother Maybelle and her three daughters sang a selection of songs that had a distinct blend of the old English madrigals and classic harmony. There was no twang, traditionally associated with modern country music.

The Statler Brothers came next with a blending of four voices pleasant to the ear, and each of their more well-known numbers was greeted by applause.

And then “the man” arrived. He introduced himself singing “A Boy Named Sue.”

THE SINGER was dressed in black — a subtle reminder that as long as some people are held back — ” up front there ought to be a man in black.”

Johnny Cash is a tall man with a crannied face, born of sharecropper parents in Dyess, Ark.

He sang of farming—”Pickin’ Time”; of hard times—”Sunday Morning Coming Down”; of home religion—”Life’s Evening Sun.”

Then it was on to a grim subject. Cancelled in Harrisburg. Pa. he said it’s hard to sing about a flood you’ve just seen. He remembers a flood in Dyess when he was five. “I wrote this when I was 25.” — “How High’s the Water Momma — Two Feet High and Risin!”

The lonesome wail train whistle rescues the family. He tries for a job in the north — “Detroit City.” He came back on “The Orange Blossom Special,” harmonicas afire.

HIS WIFE, June Carter, joined him. They sang of love and his favorite “Jackson.”

Then to the nitty-gritty. “More people ought to come back to the family and to church.” He implied the church need not be of the four-walls, once-a-week kind.

The volume rose. There were songs and narration from “The Story of Jesus” filmed in Israel for Christmas 1972 television.

The finale was two gospel songs with everybody joining in. Voices called out, “Jesus Reach Down and Touch Me—I Want to See Again,” and *”Children Go Where I Send Thee.”

There was a standing ovation and two encores. It lasted two solid hours — with no intermission. The audience went home happy.

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