Cash recorded songs about cowboys and gunfighters, about the sound of a far-off train rumbling toward San Antonio. But he had a long and deep connection with Texas – and certainly, Texans have connected to his music. To the little dark-haired boy that played the Tennessee Flat Top Box Were slippin’ away from home and puttin’ jewelry in hock In a little cabaret in a South Texas border town “He was there expressly for that lick, which was the selling point of that particular song,” Western says. So he brought in Roy Nichols – who wasn’t well-known at the time but later played with Merle Haggard. One of the songs featured a guitar lick Cash had written, but couldn’t actually play. “This thing worked like a well-oiled clock,” Western says. Johnny Western played rhythm guitar on a lot of them. That summer, Stielper said Cash would pull out one of the songs he’d written on a yellow legal pad, his band would run through it once or twice and then they’d record. “And he was looking for something that was going to click.” “His sales had not been too good after 1959,” Stielper says. Mark Stielper is a music historian who’s helped keep the Cash family archives. He’d had some hits like “I Walk the Line” and “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”. By 1961, Johnny Cash’s career had hit a bit of a lull.
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