Expecting Rain

any have, or have read the letters that cash and dylan wrote to each other in the early years of their friendship, i think it was before they actually had met. i would love to read them.

The letter defending Bob that Johnny wrote to Sing Out! magazine should be fairly easy to find, but I don't know about personal letters.

I'm googling around to see what I can find on the subject, and found this supposedly written by BD on Johnny's Death. I'm not sure of the source and the authenticity, but it's a beautiful:

Bob Dylan's Statement on Johnny Cash

I was asked to give a statement on Johnny's passing and thought about writing a piece instead called "Cash Is King," because that is the way I really feel. In plain terms, Johnny was and is the North Star; you could guide your ship by him -- the greatest of the greats then and now. I first met him in '62 or '63 and saw him a lot in those years. Not so much recently, but in some kind of way he was with me more than people I see every day.

There wasn't much music media in the early Sixties, and Sing Out! was the magazine covering all things folk in character. The editors had published a letter chastising me for the direction my music was going. Johnny wrote the magazine back an open letter telling the editors to shut up and let me sing, that I knew what I was doing. This was before I had ever met him, and the letter meant the world to me. I've kept the magazine to this day.

Of course, I knew of him before he ever heard of me. In '55 or '56, "I Walk the Line" played all summer on the radio, and it was different than anything else you had ever heard. The record sounded like a voice from the middle of the earth. It was so powerful and moving. It was profound, and so was the tone of it, every line; deep and rich, awesome and mysterious all at once. "I Walk the Line" had a monumental presence and a certain type of majesty that was humbling. Even a simple line like "I find it very, very easy to be true" can take your measure. We can remember that and see how far we fall short of it.

Johnny wrote thousands of lines like that. Truly he is what the land and country is all about, the heart and soul of it personified and what it means to be here; and he said it all in plain English. I think we can have recollections of him, but we can't define him any more than we can define a fountain of truth, light and beauty. If we want to know what it means to be mortal, we need look no further than the Man in Black. Blessed with a profound imagination, he used the gift to express all the various lost causes of the human soul. This is a miraculous and humbling thing. Listen to him, and he always brings you to your senses. He rises high above all, and he'll never die or be forgotten, even by persons not born yet -- especially those persons -- and that is forever.

Yes that was officially released by Bob and was posted on his website after Johnny's passing.

Sing Out! March 10, 1964, Issue 38

A Letter From Johnny Cash

Hi Broadside:
I got hung, but didn’t choke . . . Bob Dylan slung his rope.
I sat down and listened quick . . . Gravy from that brain is thick.
He began by startin’ alright . . . But the place he started . . .
Was way ahead, out of sight!
In the night there’s a light.
A lamp is burning in all our dark . . . But . . . We must open our eyes to see it . . .
As he listened for the wind . . . To hear it.
Near my shores of mental dying, Grasping straws and twigs, and drowning,
Worthless I, But crying loudest. Came a Poet Troubadour, Singing fine familiar things.
Sang a hundred thousand lyrics, Right as Rain, Sweet as Sleep,
Words to thrill you . . . And to kill you.
Don’t bad-mouth him, till you hear him,
Let him start by continuing, He’s almost brand new,
SHUP UP! . . . AND LET HIM SING!
. . . . . JOHNNY CASH

_________________________________________________

Original Sing Out! open letter:


AN OPEN LETTER TO BOB DYLAN
Sing Out! November, 1964
Dear Bob:
It seems as though lots of people are thinking and talking about you these days. I read about you in Life and Newsweek and Time and The Saturday Evening Post and Mademoiselle and Cavalier and all such, and I realize that, all of a sudden, you have become a pheenom, a VIP, a celebrity. A lot has happened to you in these past two years, Bob -- a lot more than most of us thought possible.

I'm writing this letter now because some of what has happened is troubling me. And not me alone. Many other good friends of yours as well.

I don't have to tell you how we at SING OUT! feel about you -- about your work as a writer and an artist -- or how we feel about you as a person. SING OUT! was among the first to respond to the new ideas, new images, and new sounds that you were creating. By last count, thirteen of your songs had appeared in these pages. Maybe more of Woody's songs were printed here over the years, but, if so, he's the only one. Not that we were doing you any favors, Bob. Far from it. We believed -- and still believe -- that these have been among some of the best new songs to appear in America in more than a decade. "Blowin' in the Wind," "Don't Think Twice," "Hattie Carroll," "Restless Farewell," "Masters of War" -- these have been inspired contributions which have already had a significant impact on American consciousness and style.

As with anyone who ventures down uncharted paths, you've aroused a growing number of petty critics. Some don't like the way you wear your hair or your clothes. Some don't like the way you sing. Some don't like the fact that you've chosen your name and recast your past. But all of that, in the long run, is trivial. We both know that may of these criticisms are simply coverups for embarrassment at hearing songs that speak directly, personally, and urgently about where it's all really at.

But -- and this is the reason for this letter, Bob -- I think that the times there are a-changing. You seem to be in a different kind of bag now, Bob -- and I'm worried about it. I saw at Newport how you had somehow lost contact with people. It seemed to me that some of the paraphernalia of fame were getting in your way. You travel with an entourage now -- with good buddies who are going to laugh when you need laughing and drink wine with you and insure your privacy -- and never challenge you to face everyone else's reality again.

I thought (and so did you) of Jimmy Dean when I saw you last -- and I cried a little inside me for that awful potential for self-destruction which lies hidden in all of us and which can emerge so easily and so uninvited.

I think it begins to show up in your songs, now, Bob. You said you weren't a writer of "protest" songs -- or any other category, for that matter -- but you just wrote songs. Well, okay, call it anything you want. But any songwriter who tries to deal honestly with reality in this world is bound to write "protest" songs. How can he help himself?

Your new songs seem to be all inner-directed now, innerprobing, self- conscious -- maybe even a little maudlin or a little cruel on occasion. And it's happening on stage, too. You seem to be relating to a handful of cronies behind the scenes now -- rather than to the rest of us out front.

Now, that's all okay -- if that's the way you want it, Bob. But then you're a different Bob Dylan from the one we knew. The old one never wasted our precious time.

Perhaps this letter has been long overdue. I think, in a sense, that we are all responsible for what's been happening to you -- and to many other fine young artists. The American Success Machinery chews up geniuses at a rate of one a day and still hungers for more. Unable to produce real art on its own, the Establishment breeds creativity in protest against and nonconformity to the System. And then, through notoriety, fast money, and status, it makes it almost impossible for the artist to function and grow.

It is a process that must be constantly guarded against and fought.

Give it some thought, Bob. Believe me when I say that this letter is written out of love and deep concern. I wouldn't be sticking my neck out like this otherwise.


Irwin Silber

thank you so much! very interesting to read...

Just from the style of writing, I wouldn't be suprised if Bob wrote it himself and then convinced Johnny's people to have it published in Johnny's name. The writing style is very similar to the "letter of apology" Bob wrote to the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee just a few months prior. http://www.corliss-lamont.org/dylan.htm

That's only pure speculation, of course.

but also similliar to cash's liner notes on nashville skyline

which also could have easily been ghostwritten by bob, but I'm just haphazardly throwing out possibilities, I don't really believe it


There's also some draft letter to Johnny among the items that A.J. found in the trash, but I don't think it contained anything interesting or enlightening.

This thread rocks!

I never noticed it until now, but Johnny's letter is dated in March '64 and the Sing Out! open letter that Bob says Johnny was responding to is dated November '64. I'm looking at secondary sources, so maybe they just have the dates wrong, but I know the Silber letter was definitely published in November. Anyone have any information to confirm when the Cash letter was published?

Doesn't i feel little bit far-fetched that Dylan should thank/praise Cash for that letter when he his dead, but in fact it was himself that write it

Sure does. But Johnny would still have to approve it and sign his name to it, which is no less a deed deserving of thanks. Presidents rarely write their own statements or speeches either, but they're still their official statements. (See Carter's inaugural statement regarding his predecessor that many think Ford's people bargained to be put into the speech.) And again, I don't really have any reason to believe one thing or another, just raising the possibility.

Indeed. But I can agree it's a very interesting theory

bob obviously really liked johnny, and probaly wanted to look 'cool' around him, so i doubt he would be lame enough to do that letter thing... although its an interesting theory none-the-less, and wouldnt put it past him!

here's johnny mentioning the letters.... maybe they are just not available to the public...


JOHNNY CASH:
It wasn't a long correspondence. We quit after we actually met each other, when I went to play the Newport Folk Festival in July of 1964. I don't have many memories of that event, but I do remember June and me and Bob and Joan Baez in my hotel room, so happy to meet each other that we were jumping on the bed like kids.

Later, of course, Bob and I sang together on his Nashville Skyline album and I had him as guest on my TV show when that rolled around. In between we met a few times here and there, one of those occasions recorded by D. A. Pennebaker in his documentary film Don't Look Back, which chronicled Bob's European tour in 1965 [NOTE: MORE LIKELY EAT THE DOCUMENT ABOUT DYLAN'S 1966 TOUR!!!]....
Johnny Cash (with Patrick Carr), Cash: The Autobiography, San Francisco, CA, 1996, p. 198.

JOHNNY CASH:
He and I were writing each other letters before we'd ever met. I got a letter from him saying that... something like he was from Hibbing, Minnesota, and there was nobody out there but me and Hank Williams, and he was glad to hear about that part of the world that was out there, you know -- he kinda said that in his own words.

The first time I met him was at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. I was on the show with Joan Baez, Bob, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott.

Then one night Bob Johnston brought Dylan down to Nashville to do the "Skyline" album...

"Backstage Johnny Cash ran into Bob Dylan. "I'd gotten some letters from John about my work, which knocked me out," says Dylan who had followed Cash since his early records. "He came down to the Gaslight and that's where I first saw him. I was struck by how tall he was. I didn't imagine him being that tall, by his album covers. He was dressed in black, with a white shirt. I saw him again at Newport. He gave me his guitar, and (sic) old Martin. I still got it."

They became friends when they both sang at the Newport Folk Festival in the summer of 1964. When Dylan later [1965] walked on-stage with an electric guitar and swung into rock, the staid festival went up for grabs. Foul, cried the purists, and Dylan was for months afterwards subjected to condemnation. To Cash, who moved easily from country to pop to folk and back again, the criticism seemed silly. It was what Dylan said, not how he said it, that mattered. Cash sat down and dashed off a note to the folk song magazine "Broadside," in which the controversy of Dylan's electrification continued to rage. "Shut up and let him sing!" Cash suggested."


Christopher Wren, Winners Got Scars Too: The Life of Johnny Cash, New York, 1971, pp. 160-161.

Yeh, his genuine affection is clear here. Nice.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MaCC3AUrdM

I like the way Bob always trys to put a halt to anything that could be perceived as making fun of Johnny, like in the taxi cab with Lennon and in the telephone conversation with Weberman.