On the night of November 10, 2003, more than 2,000 people filled the pews of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville for the Johnny Cash Memorial Tribute. Tickets were free and handed out by lottery. Johnny Cash had died on September 12, at 71, from complications of diabetes. Less than two months later, the first Johnny Cash song anyone heard that night came from his eldest daughter.
After the Fisk Jubilee Singers opened with a gospel prologue, “Ain’t No Grave,” Rosanne Cash stepped forward and sang “I Still Miss Someone.” She stood beneath a large portrait of her father. Behind her there was only a Fender Telecaster and an upright bass. On the stage sat a guitar Johnny had played early in his career.
The title alone said why she was singing it.
A 1958 B-side, written with his nephew
Johnny Cash wrote “I Still Miss Someone” with his nephew, Roy Cash Jr. He cut it for Columbia in Nashville in the summer of 1958, with Luther Perkins on electric guitar and Marshall Grant on bass. It was released as the B-side of “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” and included on The Fabulous Johnny Cash that November.
Johnny Cash came back to it again and again. He sang it at Folsom Prison in 1968, and it turned up in most of his live shows from then on.
When he first recorded it, Rosanne Cash was three years old. Forty-five years later, it was the song that opened the night the music world said goodbye to him.
A voice that had almost been taken away
There was another reason that moment carried weight. A few years earlier, Rosanne Cash could not sing at all.
In 1998, while she was pregnant and just beginning work on a new album, a polyp formed on her vocal cords. For about two and a half years she could barely speak, and on some days she could not speak at all. The polyp finally began to shrink in 2000. With help from a vocal therapist, her voice came back.
“It was such a revelation losing my voice, and getting it back.” (Rosanne Cash, to Voice of America, 2003)
The album she finished, Rules of Travel, came out in March 2003, her first studio album in seven years. Its centerpiece was “September When It Comes,” a song about facing a parent’s mortality, written with her husband and producer John Leventhal. Rosanne hesitated to ask her father to sing on it because of his health. Leventhal encouraged her to ask. Johnny Cash agreed and recorded his part at his home studio in Nashville.
At the Ryman tribute, that duet came back. The Cash family put together a montage of photos from their private collection, many never shown to the public before, and set it to “September When It Comes.”
A year of goodbyes
The family had already lost June Carter Cash in May. Johnny followed four months later. Carlene Carter, June’s daughter, spoke for the family that night.
“This is truly a tribute. It’s a way for us to celebrate the music they brought to the world.” (Carlene Carter)
Rosanne Cash told reporters, “Dad would have loved it.” She also remembered how he taught his children music on the road, sitting with them on the tour bus from the time she was about 10 years old, passing along songs by Bob Dylan and others. “He really educated us about music,” she said.
What the room heard
The writers in the Ryman that night agreed her song set the tone. The Washington Times called her vocal somber and said it set up an evening of standing ovations. A No Depression reviewer wrote that her version was slow, true and so full of loss that it had already put into words much of what everyone in the room was feeling.
The setting added to it. The Ryman was where Johnny Cash first met June Carter, and where he taped his network TV show starting in 1969.
Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and George Jones sang “Big River.” Sheryl Crow sang “Hurt.” Hank Williams Jr. sang “Ring of Fire.” Actor Tim Robbins hosted, and the show aired on CMT a few days later as Johnny Cash Memorial Tribute: A Celebration of Friends and Family.
From “I Still Miss Someone” to “We’ll Meet Again”
The evening closed with the whole Cash family on stage, singing “We’ll Meet Again” with the audience. Johnny had recorded it as the last track on his final album released in his lifetime, American IV: The Man Comes Around.
So the night began with a daughter singing that she still missed someone. It ended with his family and more than 2,000 people singing that they would meet again.
Where were you the first time you heard Johnny Cash sing “I Still Miss Someone”?