Which brings us to the piece de resistance of Press On, a total June original written for her granddaughter "Tiffany Anastasia Lowe." She wrote and performed an exceptionally good classic Carter family song, primarily accompanied by her autoharp- which really turns out to be mostly about Quentin Tarantino. It's hard to communicate the freakiness of the effect of the combination of old and new.
Besides being one of her catchiest compositions, this song rates high in the entire Carter family pantheon particularly on grounds of the exceptional emotional nuance. She's working out a fairly unique, complex emotional statement, nominally warning her granddaughter very strongly off of hanging around this guy who "makes his women wild and mean." Of course though, it took a woman at least a bit that way to ride herd over ol' slewfoot Johnny.
Grandma is obviously totally fascinated by Quentin. One might surmise that she was seeing some kind of younger version of her beloved bad boy Johnny. Of all things in his work, June was apparently particularly tickled by Uma Thurman's famous overdose from Pulp Fiction. There are these different emotional strains of humor, a hint of sexual arousal and grandmotherly concern that come out combined like nothing else. Indeed, this song's good enough to be a worthy finale as the last original composition on her last album released in her lifetime.
June Carter
Born June 23, 1929
Married to singer Carl Smith 1952-1956
Their daughter Rebecca Carlene Smith aka Carlene Carter born 1955
Married to policeman Edwin Nix, 1958-? One daughter, Rosey Nix Adams
Married to Johnny Cash March 1, 1968
Their son John Carter Cash born 1970
Passed May 15, 2003
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Kisses thrown your way Al. Appreciate the June knowledge connection since I had very little.
2 - Al Barger
Thank you so much Temple. I only hope that I'm doing her justice. I'm still tinkering with this slightly. I want to add in just a couple of little bio details.
3 - todd
Ol' Johnny had himself a good hoss there, yessiree bob.
4 - Bill Madon
Wish I could get a copy of the CARRYIN' ON album, just to get the original recording of JACKSON. This song is represented in several of Johnny's later compilations, but it's never the original, maybe he lost the rights to the original. I have fond childhood memories of the 45 rpm single playing on my dad's hi-fi.
5 - Al Barger
Bill, there's an Amazon link for the 1967 Carryin' On album right here, listed as "original recording remastered." I've only ever heard one studio recording of the song, unless they re-recorded it somewhere so faithfully that I can't tell the difference.
6 - mick
was june carter all there??