Jefferson Airplane -- "Comin' Back to Me" (1967)

A transparent dream 
Beneath an occasional sigh

Most of the time, I just let it go by

The Jefferson Airplane were the first of the San Francisco-area psychedelic bands to have a real impact on the musical world.  

Their second album, Surrealistic Pillow, was "a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia, and it hit – literally – like a shot heard round the world," according to reviewer Bruce Eder of Allmusic.com.  "Every song is a perfectly cut diamond."

The only better American album from that era is the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and both records share many of the same virtues.   The production of Surrealistic Pillow is sophisticated without being slick, and imposes discipline on the musicians – there's none of the self-indulgent excess that mars many albums of this era.  The songs are innocent and sincere.  

The result in both cases is utterly beautiful music that comes from the heart and speaks to the heart.

"Comin' Back to Me" is calm and quiet, but packs an emotional punch.  I first heard this song well over 40 years ago, but it still takes hold of me when I hear it.  The song seems to slow time down to a crawl, and you can almost forget to breathe when you listen to it.

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The Jefferson Airplane was put together by 23-year-old singer Marty Balin to be the house band at The Matrix, a rock-folk-blues club he opened in San Francisco in 1965.  (When I lived in San Francisco in the early 1980s, my apartment was four blocks west and eight blocks south of where The Matrix was located, but it had closed long before.)  Steppenwolf, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Doors, and the Velvet Underground were among the groups that recorded live albums there.

So was the Great Society, an early acid-rock band that featured a lead singer named Grace Slick.  Signe Anderson was an original female singer of the Jefferson Airplane, but left the group after giving birth to a daughter.  Slick left the Great Society – whose members included her husband and his brother – because she felt that the Jefferson Airplane was run in a much more professional manner.  

Slick contributed two songs to Surrealistic Pillow:  "Somebody to Love" (which was written by her brother-in-law and had been recorded previously by the Great Society) and "White Rabbit."

But Surrealistic Pillow really belongs to Marty Balin.  He wrote or co-wrote five of its songs, including what I think are the four best songs on the record.  We think of Grace Slick as the Jefferson Airplane's lead vocalist because she sang on the two hit singles from Surrealistic Pillow, but Balin was the singer on the lion's share of the songs on that album.

Marty Balin

By the way, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia played guitar on several songs on Surrealistic Pillow, including "Comin' Back to Me," which Balin said he wrote in a single setting after smoking some topnotch marijuana given to him by famed blues singer, Paul Butterfield.  (That's Grace Slick playing recorder on the song.)

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Influenced by the success of "heavier" musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Cream, the group changed musical direction after Surrealistic Pillow.  Paul Kantner, who had a child with Grace Slick, became the band's primary songwriter.  (The couple eventually formed Jefferson Starship.)  Bandmembers Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, who had gotten their starts as blues musicians, launched Hot Tuna. 

Marty Balin eventually became the Airplane's odd man out.  He had been a close friend of Janis Joplin, and abstained from drugs and alcohol after her death, which further isolated him from his bandmates.  He left Jefferson Airplane in 1971.

Grace Slick

The records that the Airplane released after Surrealistic Pillow contain some very good songs, but the group sort of jumped the shark after its release.  Nothing Jefferson Airplane did later compares to that glorious album. 

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That's six great music cities down – Memphis, Nashville, New York City, Los Angeles, Detroit, and San Francisco – and one to go.  What do you think the seventh city will be?

Seattle?  Atlanta?  Philadelphia?  Minneapolis-St. Paul?  Boston?  Cleveland?  Chicago?  Washington, DC?

All worthy contenders, but the seventh city I've picked PONES all these cities!

Stay tuned to 2 or 3 lines . . . the answer will be revealed tomorrow.

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Click here to hear "Comin' Back to Me."  But first, turn off your phone, find a comfortable chair, and close your eyes – then LISTEN!  It's not everyday that you get to experience musical perfection.  But thanks to your friends at 2 or 3 lines, today is one of those days.

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Supremes -- "Where Did Our Love Go?" (1964)

You came into my heart (baby, baby) 

So tenderly

With a burning love (baby, baby) 

That stings like a bee (baby, baby)

Detroit is the fifth of the seven cities 2 or 3 lines is honoring in this year's "29 Songs in 28 Days" for its contributions to American pop music.

In the early sixties, New York City had the Brill Building songwriters, Los Angeles had surf music, and Detroit had Motown – a record company that seemed to crank out hit records as fast as GM, Ford, and Chrysler cranked out gas-guzzling, V8-engined cars.

"Hitsville U.S.A." was the
home of Motown Records

Motown was a hit-record-producing machine.  Its recording studios were open 22 hours a day, and the company maintained a deep bench of songwriters, producers, and studio musicians (who were known as "The Funk Brothers") to support their stable of artists.  

Many of those artists started out as poor teenagers raised in Detroit housing projects, but were transformed by Motown's artist development department into polished professionals who appealed to both black and white Americans.

Motown's founder, Berry Gordy, was a businessman par excellence – the company would have made a great Harvard Business School case study.  Gordy presided over a weekly "quality control" meetings, vetoing the release of any records that didn't meet his standards.  (Gordy was tough.  He even rejected the original Marvin Gaye recording of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine.")

The most successful of Motown's many successful acts was the Supremes, who had 12 number one singles.  Their first chart-topping hit was "Where Did Our Love Go?" (written by Motown's Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team), which was the first of five consecutive Supremes' releases to reach #1 on the Billboard "Hot 100."  

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I once heard a comedian attribute Barack Obama's appeal to some people this way: "He's black, but not too black."

Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard

The Supremes were black, but not too black.  They were immaculately made up and coiffed, and appeared onstage in long, elegant gowns.  Their dance routines were smooth and graceful, and they never seemed to break a sweat when they performed.  (I don't recall them shaking their moneymakers even one time.)  They appealed to teenagers, but they didn't scare parents.  

One critic had this to say about them:

An adult can understand nine out of every 10 words they sing.  And, most astounding, melody can be detected in every song they sing.

"Where Did Our Love Go?" was originally written for the Marvelettes, but they rejected the song.  Holland-Dozier-Holland next offered it to the Supremes, who had previously released nine singles, only one of which cracked the top 40.  The Supremes weren't that enthusiastic about the song either.

Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland

Because the song had been written for a singer with a lower vocal range, Diana Ross's voice sounded more sultry than usual.  Despite Motown's assembly-line-like reputation, there was considerable improvisation in the recording studio.  "Where Did Our Love Go?" begins with an unusual rhythmic effect – the sound of feet stomping on a hardwood floor.

If you're looking for tricky syncopation or off-beat accents, "Where Did Our Love Go?" will disappoint you.  It's strictly on the beat, 1-2-3-4 – every beat is stressed to the same extent.  You'd think that the record would quickly become repetitive and boring, but that ain't happenin' – whoever decided to structure the rhythm that way knew what he was doing.

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Click here to listen to "Where Did Our Love Go?"

Click below to buy the record from Amazon:

Jan and Dean -- "Surf City" (1963)

And there's two swingin' honeys for every guy

And all you gotta do is just wink your eye

It's a long way from New York City to Los Angeles -- which is city number four of the seven that are featured in this year's "29 Songs in 28 Days."

There's quite a bit of overlap between the two cities when it comes to pop music.  For example, Phil Spector -- he was born in the Bronx, the grandson of an immigrant Russian Jew -- moved to Los Angeles when he was a teenager, and many of his great "girl group" records were recorded in Los Angeles, not New York City.  ("River Deep, Mountain High" was written by Brill Building songsmiths Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, but Tina Turner recorded it in Los Angeles.)

But the songs about surfing and hot rods that dominated AM radio just prior to the "British Invasion" belonged to Los Angeles alone.

"Surf City," the first surf-rock song to reach the #1 spot on the Billboard "Hot 100," was a collaboration between the two greatest surf-rock groups: the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean (Jan Berry and Dean Torrence).

Jan and Dean do a little sidewalk surfin'

That's kind of like saying that the two greatest "Merseybeat" groups were the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers: mentioning those two groups in the same breath seems almost blasphemous today.

But at the peak of Jan and Dean's popularity, they were certainly the equals of the Beach Boys.  That was partly due to the fact that Brian Wilson collaborated with Jan Berry to write about a dozen songs for Jan and Dean -- including "Surf City."

Jan and Dean were so popular that they were chosen to host the 1964 concert movie, The T.A.M.I. Show, which featured the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, the Supremes, James Brown, the Beach Boys, and many others -- arguably the greatest collection of pop music talent ever assembled in one place at one time.

Jan's wrecked Corvette

Jan and Dean's wildly successful career essentially ended in 1966, when Jan crashed his Corvette Sting Ray into a parked truck on the way to a business meeting.  The accident occurred a short distance from the site of the fictional crash in "Dead Man's Curve," Jan and Dean's 1964 hit single.

Click here to read the 2 or 3 lines post featuring "Dead Man's Curve" and The T.A.M.I. Show. 

"Surf City" begins with this line: "Two girls for every boy!"  It's the quintessential teenaged boy's fantasy -- although if you were a teenaged boy growing up in Joplin, Missouri (which was even further from the beaches of southern California than the map indicates), you might have believed it was the literal truth.

I was very familiar with "Surf City" when I was a teenaged boy.  One of the first LPs I owned was Jan and Dean's Surf City and Other Swingin' Cities -- which included not only "Surf City" but also covers of Bobby Bare's "Detroit City," Wilbert Harrison's "Kansas City," and Freddy Cannon's "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans" and "Tallahassee Lassie."  (It also included a cover of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," which was not really a good choice for Jan and Dean.)

The quintessential middle-aged man's fantasy may be having two women at the same time.  That's not what "Two girls for every boy!" is all about.

If you were a teenaged boy in 1963, you couldn't have really wrapped you head around the concept of a threesome.  Just getting one girl to make out with you was a daunting enough task.  The attraction of a place like Surf City -- which existed only on Jan and Dean's record, alas! -- was that there were so many girls and so few boys that you figured you would certainly end up with one of them.

Welcome to "Surf City"

Today, the Orange County town of Huntington Beach -- where Dean Torrence moved in 1991 -- is the official "Surf City."  But in 1963, there were any number of places that might have claimed the name: Venice Beach, Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, and especially Malibu.  (Surfrider Beach in Malibu was the birthplace of the southern California surfing culture.) 

Unfortunately, none of those places features two girls for every boy.  "Surf City" exists only while the  record is playing -- and only in the mind of the listener . . . dammit!

Here's "Surf City":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

Beyoncé (feat. Jay-Z) -- "Crazy in Love" (2003)

Got me lookin' so crazy right now 

Got me hoping you page me right now

SuperBowl halftime shows ain't what they used to be.

From 2005 through 2010, SuperBowl audiences were entertained by classic-rock geezers like Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Bruce Springsteen, and the Who.

In the last few years, the SuperBowl halftime shows have featured more contemporary performers.  We had the Black Eyed Peas in 2011.  We had Madonna (with M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj) in 2012.  And this year, we have R&B superstar Beyoncé Knowles and hip-hop superstar Jay-Z -- who happens to be her husband.

Beyoncé Knowles got her start in show biz at the age of seven, when she entered and won a talent show, besting much older performers.  

She joined an all-girl singing and dancing group called Girl's Tyme shortly thereafter.  Beyoncé's father -- a Xerox salesman -- quit his job in 1995 to manage the group, which had been renamed Destiny's Child.  

Beyoncé with her father, Matthew Knowles

His decision cut the family's income in half and forced his wife and him to move into separate apartments, but it paid off in spades: Destiny's Child became one of the biggest-selling groups in history.  (Their third album, Survivor, has sold over ten million copies.)

Destiny's Child went on hiatus in 2001, and Beyoncé became the group's third member to release a solo album.  Dangerously in Love debuted at #1 on the Billboard album chart and has sold almost five million copies to date.  

"Crazy in Love" was the first single from that album.  It made it to #1 on the Billboard "Hot 100" and four other Billboard charts.  It was also a #1 hit in the UK and made it to the top ten in Canada, Australia, and virtually every major country in Europe -- with the exception of France.  (What exactly is your problem, France?)

Beyoncé and Jay-Z
(a/k/a "Beauty and the Beast")

"Crazy in Love" was described by the critics as "deliriously catchy" and a "stunning pop masterpiece."  According to Beyoncé, Jay-Z was a last-minute addition to the track.

"Crazy in Love" was another one of those classic moments in pop culture that none of us expected.  I asked Jay to get on the song the night before I had to turn my album in -- thank God he did.  It still never gets old, no matter how many times I sing it.

As everyone knows, Jay-Z and Beyoncé got married in 2008.  They are without a doubt the most successful couple in the music industry -- each is a huge star.

But Beyoncé is much, much more than a recording artist.  She's a movie star (Austin Powers in Goldmember, Dreamgirls, Obsessed), has a fashion line, and endorses world-class brands (like L'Oréal, Pepsi, Tommy Hilfiger, and Vizio).  In 2010, Forbes magazine ranked her #2 on its list of the "100 Most Powerful and Influential Celebrities in the World" (trailing only Oprah).

The pregnant Beyoncé Knowles

Beyoncé gave birth to a daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, on January 7, 2012.  Barely one year later, she is headlining the SuperBowl XLVII halftime show.  Don't be surprised if Jay-Z shows up to help her perform "Crazy in Love."

If he does show up, he probably came in on the couple's $40 million Bombadier Challenger 850 business jet, a $40 million Father's Day present from Beyoncé to Jay-Z.

The Challenger 850 is a business-jet variant of Bombadier's CRJ200 regional jet, which seats 50 passengers.  The 850 is usually configured to seat 15 to 19 passengers -- it must have excellent legroom -- and has a cruising speed of 500 mph and a maximum range of over 5000 miles.

Here's the award-winning music video for "Crazy in Love."  In the words of one newspaper reviewer, Beyoncé "shakes every inch of her famously photogenic goddess frame" in the video.  (You can say that again.)

Click here to buy "Crazy in Love":

Ike and Tina Turner -- "River Deep, Mountain High" (1966)

When I was a little girl, I had a rag doll

The only doll I've ever owned

The third of the seven American cities that made the cut for this year's "29 Songs in 28 Days" is New York City, and the first of the four New York City songs to be featured is "River Deep, Mountain High."  

(There are a lot of numbers in the previous sentence.  The sum of those numbers is 72.  The product of those numbers is 68,208.)

Ike and Tina Turner each grew up near Memphis and later moved to St. Louis, where they met.  So why is "River Deep, Mountain High" a New York City song?

Entrance to the Brill Building

Because it was written by one of the many great songwriting teams that inhabited the famed Brill Building, which was located on Broadway just north of Times Square.  

By 1962, the Brill Building (which is eleven stories high) was home to 165 different music businesses, including many of the most important record companies and music publishers of the era.

Dozens of legendary songwriters worked in the Brill Building -- Burt Bacharach and Hal David (who wrote "Walk On By," "What the World Needs Now," and "The Look of Love," just to name a few), Neil Diamond ("I'm a Believer" and "Sweet Caroline"), John Kander and Fred Ebb ("New York, New York," Cabaret, and Chicago), Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller ("Hound Dog," "Poison Ivy," "Stand By Me"), and Laura Nyro ("Eli's Coming" and "Wedding Bell Blues").

The Brill Building was also home to three remarkable husband-wife songwriting teams: Gerry Goffin and Carole King ("Will You Love Me Tomorrow," "Up on the Roof," and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"), Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil ("On Broadway," "Kicks," "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"), and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich.

Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry in 1964

Barry and Greenwich -- they married in 1962 and divorced in 1965, but continued to write music together after their divorce -- collaborated with Phil Spector, the brilliant record producer, on many of the classic "girl group" hits:  "Chapel of Love," "Leader of the Pack," "Be My Baby," "Da Doo Ron Ron," and many others.

But the trio's greatest accomplishment was "River Deep, Mountain High," which was recorded by Ike and Tina Turner in 1965 and released the next year.

"River Deep, Mountain High" was the quintessential example of Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" production technique -- and his almost insane perfectionism.  He hired 21 session musicians and 21 backup singers for the record, and made Tina do take after take after take until he felt he had a perfect one.

Phil Spector with Ike and Tina Turner

"I must have sung it 500,000 times," Tina told an interviewer.  "I was drenched with sweat.  I had to take my shirt off and stand there in my bra."  

Spector also reportedly paid Ike Turner $20,000 to stay away from the recording session.  

"River Deep, Mountain High" made it to #3 on the UK singles chart -- George Harrison called it "a perfect record from start to finish" -- but it bombed in the U.S., stalling at #88 on the Billboard "Hot 100."

Tina Turner

That is inexplicable.  What in the hell was wrong with people in 1966?  

Spector was so embittered by the failure of what he considered his best record ever that he didn't set foot in a recording studio for a full two years, and produced only intermittently afterwards.  (He did produce Let It Be, George Harrison's The Concert for Bangladesh, and John Lennon's Imagine.)  After an almost-fatal car wreck in 1974, Spector became increasingly reclusive.  

Years later, Spector was arrested and charged with murdering actress Lana Clarkson.  A 2007 trial ended in a hung jury.  (Ten of the 12 jurors voted to convict, but the other two held out.)

Phil Spector in the courtroom

Spector was retried in 2008 and convicted of second-degree murder.  He was sentenced to 19 years to life, and will not be eligible for parole until 2028 -- when he will be 88 years old.  

Here's "River Deep, Mountain High":

As a bonus, here's a 1971 black-and-white video of Ike and Tina performing live on television.  Just watch the first minute or so, which features some fabulous dancing by Tina and the Ikettes -- I didn't know it was possible to dance so fast.

Here's a link you can use to buy "River Deep, Mountain High" from Amazon:

George Jones -- "The Race Is On" (1964)

My Heart's out of the runnin'

True Love's scratched for another's sake

The race is on and it looks like Heartaches

And the winner loses all

The second stop on our tour of the seven most important popular music cities -- Nashville, Tennessee -- is just 215 miles east of our first stop, which was Memphis.

In the late fifties, Nashville record producers said good-bye to traditional honky-tonk style country records and started releasing "countrypolitan" records that were characterized by slicker production and a smoother sound.

Outside the famed RCA Studio B
on Nashville's "Music Row"

In particular, those records featured string sections, backup singers (or whole choruses), and lead vocals that sounded more like the crooners of the era (think Bing Crosby or Perry Como) and less like moonshine-guzzling hillbillies (think Roy Acuff and Hank Williams).

The "Nashville Sound" brought country music into the urban mainstream.  By 1960, more records were being produced in Nashville than in any other city in the United States other than New York City.

George Jones at age 31 (1962)

George Jones was more traditional than "countrypolitan," but he was phenomenally popular nonetheless.  Between 1959 and 1983, Jones had over a dozen #1 country hits and over 50 other singles that cracked the top ten.  Jones released ten top-ten singles in a row between 1980 and 1984 -- those ten singles made it to #1, #2, #8, #1, #5, #3, #1, #2, #3, and #2.  

Jones's marriage to female country superstar Tammy Wynette in 1969 was the Nashville equivalent and Jay-Z getting hitched to Beyoncé, or Richard Burton tying the knot with Liz Taylor, or Jimmy Connors marrying Chris Evert.

Did George Jones like to drink?  Does the Pope sh*t in the woods?

George's first #1 hit was titled "White Lightning," and he knew whereof he sang.  The story is told that his second wife would hide the keys to their cars to prevent Jones from driving to a bar.  (The couple lived eight miles from town, and she knew that he wouldn't walk that far for a drink.)

George Jones at age 43 (1974)

However, the second Mrs. Jones did not hide the keys to George's riding lawnmower.  As he wrote in his autobiography:

I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour.  It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did.

A painting depicting Jones being arrested
for DUI while on a riding lawn mower

Tammy Wynette described in her autobiography what she did when she woke up one night at 1 AM and Jones wasn't in bed:

I got into the car and drove to the nearest bar ten miles away.  When I pulled into the parking lot there sat our rider-mower right by the entrance.  He'd driven that mower right down a main highway.  He looked up and saw me and said, "Well, fellas, here she is now.  My little wife, I told you she'd come after me."

"The Race Is On" was a favorite of mine when I was a kid.  It's a weeper, featuring Jones's characteristic high-pitched voice -- but it's a catchy, uptempo weeper.

George Jones at age 80 (2011)

The song's conceit is that there's a horserace featuring horses named after his feelings -- there are horses named Pride, Heartaches, My Heart, True Love, and so on.  The lyrics are quite clever but perfectly transparent -- it's a very satisfying song.

I can't resist sharing this recording of the Grateful Dead performing "The Race Is On" live, which is almost unimaginably bad.  I would guess that on any given Friday night you could walk into at least 100 bars in Nashville and hear a better performance of this song.

Here's George Jones singing "The Race Is On":

Click below if you'd like to order the song from Amazon:

Johnny Cash -- "I Walk the Line" (1956)

I find it very, very easy to be true 

I find myself alone when each day is through 

I'm really, really, really excited about this February's 29 Songs in 28 Days.™  Not quite excited enough to need to put on an adult diaper, but close.

For those of you who are new to 2 or 3 lines, here's a little background info.  Eleven months of the years, you can expect three posts a week from 2 or 3 lines.  But in February, you get a new post every single day -- and a bonus post featuring the star of the SuperBowl halftime act.  Do the math, and you'll see that makes 29 posts in 28 days.

This year's 29 Songs in 28 Days™ will highlight music associated with the seven cities that I believe have had the most significance for American popular music.  Each of the seven days of the week will be paired with one of those seven cities  -- for example, each Friday will feature a Memphis song.

An aerial view of Memphis in 2005

The songs will not necessarily be presented in chronological order, but the first week's songs are all from the late 1950s and early or mid-1960s -- the classic era of American pop music and (not coincidentally) the years when I became conscious of that music.

Let's get started.

Johnny Cash was born in a small town in Arkansas in 1932.  Life wasn't easy for his family during the depression.  Their cotton farm flooded twice, inspiring him to write the song "Five Feet High and Rising" years later.  His 15-year-old brother Jack died after he was almost cut in half in a sawmill accident.

Cash joined the Air Force when he was 18, and met 17-year-old Vivian Liberto at a roller-skating rink in San Antonio, where he was stationed.  After a three-year tour of duty in Germany, Cash married Vivian in 1954.

The Sun Records studios and offices in Memphis

The newlyweds settled in Memphis, where Cash sold appliances by day and played in a band at night.  He went to Sun Records -- the legendary studio that gave Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis their start -- and auditioned for Sun's founder, Sam Phillips, who eventually signed him.

"I Walk the Line" was recorded in 1956, and became Cash's first #1 hit (on the Billboard country music chart).   It's a unique song musically.  Every verse is accompanied by a change of key, and you hear Cash humming to himself to locate his pitch before beginning to sing each new verse.  

Cash wrote "I Walk the Line" for Vivian one night while he was on tour in Gladewater, Texas.  "I suppose I was laying out my pledge of devotion," he said later.

Cash with his first wife, Vivian

When my grandmother did something bad in front of me, she would tell me to "do as I say, not as I do."  Cash didn't do as he said in this song -- he had a number of affairs while touring.  The Cashes divorced in 1966, and Johnny married country singer June Carter in 1968 (13 years after they had met backstage at the Grand Ole Opry).  

"I Walk the Line" is one of the first songs I remember hearing as a child.  Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" and Carl Perkins's "Blue Suede Shoes" -- also #1 hits released in 1956 -- were a couple of the others.  (Cash was a favorite of mine because he had a low voice, as did I -- so I could comfortably sing along with his records.)

That year, Cash, Presley, Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis all happened to be in the Sun studios one day later that year, and started fooling around.  The recording engineer let the tape roll, and boys jammed on everything from "Don't Be Cruel" to "White Christmas" -- although mostly they sang gospel songs.

The "Million Dollar Quartet":
Lewis, Perkins, Presley, Cash

Sam Phillips called the Memphis newspaper, which sent over a reporter who wrote a story the next day about the "Million Dollar Quartet."  The recordings were released many years later, and a musical called "Million Dollar Quartet" opened on Broadway in 2010 and ran for over a year.

Years later, Cash was a member of another "Million Dollar Quartet" when he recorded and toured with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson.

Cash's moribund career was revived in the 1990s when he signed on with producer Rick Rubin, who was best known as a producer of rap and metal albums.  His final albums were recorded after he had been diagnosed as having a neurodegenerative disease and his lungs were damaged by pneumonia.

Cash shortly before his death in 2003

I've written before about the music video for his recording of the song "Hurt" (originally recorded by the Nine Inch Nails), and I will mention it every time I mention Cash.  Cash had a dominating physical presence, and was one of the most charismatic performers you will ever see.  The video pulls no punches -- it is heartbreaking to see what age and his illnesses reduced him to at the end of his life.

Click here to see that video (which has been viewed over 50 million times on Youtube).

I can't think of a performer who excelled in so many popular music genres as Cash.  He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.  (The first Rick Rubin-produced album Cash did won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.)  

Here's Johnny Cash singing "I Walk the Line":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon: