"Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."
When I met Johnny Cash while working in the record industry in Los Angeles during the early nineties, he actually uttered those famous words as he extended his hand to greet me. It's a story that to this day I never tire of telling. Because of all the entertainers I ever met during that time — and I met quite a few — none left me both starstruck and dumbstruck quite like the Man In Black did.
Johnny Cash was, and is, simply larger than life. And even as the somewhat seasoned music industry veteran I fancied myself to be at the time, there is something about being in the presence of a true icon like Johnny Cash that just sticks with you. It's something you never forget.
The first time I ever heard those famous four words though, was on a Saturday night parked in front of my parents television as a boy in 1969. That was when — during the short, but turbulent period from 1969 to 1971 — ABC's The Johnny Cash Show came into the living rooms of America. Cash's weekly variety show was in many ways a reassuring fixture during those otherwise troubled times. As weird as this may sound now, for that one hour on Saturday night, Johnny Cash was something that most of America could agree on.
The TV variety show was of course, at the time, a staple of network television. But never before had a variety show focused so exclusively on music.
While Ed Sullivan's variety show on CBS had been instrumental in breaking the likes of the Beatles and the Stones in America, you also had to suffer through an hour-long parade of jugglers, acrobats, and Topo Gigio, just to get to the payoff — usually during the last few minutes of the show. Sullivan's censors were also notorious for everything from refusing to shoot Elvis from the waist down, to forcing artists like the Rolling Stones to alter questionable song lyrics. Later versions of the variety show model like the Sonny & Cher Show also featured top music names, but emphasized sketch comedy bits.
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