Clip- June Carter Cash

[William F. Silvers]

 Tuesday April 27 9:45 AM ET

 June Carter Cash's Turn In The 'Ring'

 By Dean Goodman

 LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Many family gatherings can be wretched experiences, but when 
the members of country music's
 extended Carter clan get together it is pure harmony.

 More than 70 years after her mother achieved superstar fame as one-third of the 
Carter Family, June Carter Cash keeps the
 country-folk tradition alive with fireside sing-alongs at the Hendersonville, 
Tennessee, estate she shares with her husband, singer
 Johnny Cash.

 Sessions may include various children and grandchildren, former sons-in-law such as 
country singers Marty Stuart and Rodney
 Crowell, and longtime family friends.

 Strumming her trusty autoharp, June may perform ``Ring of Fire,'' the hit song she 
co-wrote for her husband, or she may lead
 everyone through Carter Family evergreens such as ``Wabash Cannonball'' or ``Will 
The Circle Be Unbroken.''

 For years family and friends urged her to do an album, but her top priority always 
has been family, specifically traveling the
 world with her husband. But she would always perform a couple of songs such as 
``Jackson,'' the duet for which they won a
 Grammy in 1968, and the poignant ``Far Side Banks of Jordan.''

 ``I've been walking just far enough behind John for him to think that he was way out 
in front,'' June, 69, told Reuters in an
 interview. ``Women, if they've got any sense, will do that.''

 JUNE'S TURN IN THE 'RING'

 But with Johnny Cash, 67, sidelined indefinitely battling a rare degenerative 
disease, he stepped up the pressure on June to
 make an album. She did release a solo album, ``Appalachian Pride,'' in the mid-'70s 
but says Columbia pressed barely 25,000
 copies and it quickly disappeared from shops.

 ``He said to me, 'I want you to do this album. If you can knock me out with 
something you do every day, then you need to do
 this,''' June said. ``I get feeling better if I know I've done something that's 
knocked Johnny out.''

 The result is ``Press On'' (Small Hairy Dog/Risk Records), which June recorded in 
three days at home with family and friends.
 If it sounds rough, that was the whole point. She took requests and sang the songs 
by heart. Most were recorded in one take
 and she did not re-dub her voice, despite claiming to have had a bad cold at the 
time.

 ``Marty Stuart said to me, 'Why don't you sing that one Carter Family song for me 
that I love so much, 'Diamonds in the
 Rough?' And I said, 'Sure I'll be glad to do that for you,''' she recalled. ``I 
didn't even know that was going to be a record. I
 sang it one time and didn't even put the last verse in there, and they said, 'That's 
it! That's it!' That was the first record we cut.''

 CARTER FAMILY LEGACY

 Her mother Maybelle, Aunt Sara and Uncle A.P. Carter would be proud. From their base 
in Maces Spring, Virginia, the Carter
 Family launched the modern era of country music in 1927 by selling millions of 
records and touring incessantly.

 They recorded more than 250 songs in their 15-year career. Some, which will start 
going into the public domain soon, have
 been covered by the likes of Roy Acuff, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Joan Baez.

 ``My mother still sends me money from the grave that I'm thankful for, and my uncle 
and my aunt,'' June said. ``It's quite a bit of
 money, it's amazing really.''

 The three children of A.P. and Sara Carter still run weekly music events at nearby 
Hiltons, Virginia, and June owns the house
 that her father, Ezra, built for his family.

 ``Press On'' also offers exhaustive liner notes and more than two dozen photos of 
June and her family and friends from over the
 years. ``It was like they let me write a book,'' she said. ``People are going to 
know me better.''

 June, the middle of three sisters, has been in showbiz all her life. She first 
performed with the Carter Family, then with her
 mother and sisters, Helen and Anita, after the group broke up. The acknowledged 
family jokester, she also did comedy
 sketches. One who listened to their radio shows was J.R. Cash, an Arkansas boy who 
later won world renown as Johnny
 Cash.

 JOHNNY AND JUNE

 But the paths of Johnny and June did not cross until the early 1960s, when she 
joined his touring revue and was aghast at his
 prodigious use of alcohol and methamphetamines. She cleaned him up (temporarily) and 
they were wed -- his second, her third
 marriage -- in 1968. The union has resulted in a son, John Carter Cash, who 
co-produced ``Press On.''

 Their extended family consists of seven children, 13 grandchildren and one 
great-grandson. Helen died last year and Anita has
 been in a hospital for six months battling complications from rheumatoid arthritis.

 Among the songs on ``Press On'' is ``Ring of Fire,'' which June sings with banjo and 
guitar accompaniment. First cut by Anita as
 a folk song, it was recorded with Mariachi horns by Cash in 1963 and topped the 
country charts for seven 

Clip: June Carter Cash

[jon_erik]

June in bloom 
   (pub. date: April 25, 1999, The Tennessean)  

 By Jay Orr 
staff, The Tennessean 
Carter Family legacy lives in 'Press On' 


As they prepared to retreat to Jamaica last fall after the family's
Thanksgiving celebration, Johnny Cash urged his wife, June Carter Cash,
to consider delaying the trip so she could finish recording a new album. 

The Cashes had a lot on their minds. Johnny had been off the road for
just over a year, sidelined by Shy-Drager syndrome, a degenerative nerve
disorder. Six months earlier, June had lost her sister and long-time
performing partner, Helen Carter, and her younger sister, Anita, had been
in ill health. 

But the album, June's second solo effort, had become a priority for the
couple. "This is something I've wanted for so many years, for her to have
her own record," Johnny Cash said during a recent interview. 

"John insisted that I make this record," June concurs, speaking during an
interview at the Cashes' home on Old Hickory Lake. 

Last Tuesday, Hollywood-based Small Hairy Dog Records, in conjunction
with Risk Records, released Press On, an acoustic collection that loosely
chronicles June's musical legacy. 

The album begins with the Carter Family classic, Diamonds in the Rough.
Played by June on autoharp, with guitar accompaniment and vocal harmony
from Marty Stuart, the song includes the line which gave rise to the
album title: "No more gems be gathered/So let us all press on." 

Along the way, there are other Carter Family songs (Meeting in the Air
and Will the Circle Be Unbroken); a new rendition of Ring of Fire, the
Johnny Cash classic co-written by June and Merle Kilgore; a duet with
Cash on Terry Smith's Far Side Banks of Jordan; the semi-autobiographical
original, I Used To Be Somebody; and Tiffany Anastasia Lowe, a hilarious
tune about June's granddaughter with the cautionary line, "So Tiffany run
and find an earthquake, girl, go jump in a crack/Just don't let Quentin
Tarantino find out where you're at/'Cause Quentin Tarantino makes the
strangest movies that I've ever seen." 

The new record had its start three years ago, at the House of Blues in
Los Angeles, when June joined Johnny in a performance to preview John's
Grammy-winning 1996 release, Unchained. 

Vicky Hamilton, a friend of Rick Rubin, Cash's producer, was impressed by
June's performance. Rubin hooked them up and Hamilton set in motion the
early plans for recording Press On. 

The Cashes' son, John Carter Cash, co-produced the album along with J.J.
Blair. The recording was done in a cabin on the Cash property, converted
for use as a studio. "He just really has an ear for everything, hears
everything, and as a producer he's fantastic," says John Carter's proud
mama. 

For musical support, June enlisted two former sons-in-law, Rodney Crowell
and Marty Stuart, as well as acoustic guitar ace Norman Blake, daughter
Rosie Carter, bassist Dave Roe, drummer Rick Lanow and mandolinist Hazel
Johnson. 

"When June first called me about it, I thought it was the coolest idea
I'd ever heard," says Stuart, who once was married to Cash's daughter,
Cindy. "She wanted me and Rodney Crowell [ex-husband of Rosanne Cash] and
Nick Lowe [ex-husband of Carlene Carter] to help me do it, and she wanted
to call the album June Carter and Her Ex-Sons-in-Law." 

Lowe couldn't make it, but Stuart and Crowell played key roles. 

"The minute I heard her sing the old Carter song, Little Moses [which is
not on the record], I thought, this is totally millennium-based, cosmic
Carter Family music," Stuart recalls. "June naturally brings a cosmic
edge to everything." 

"It is not an ordinary country record. We both know it's not," says June,
who'll turn 70 in June. "I wouldn't have cut one. I've been in country
music so long, and how can you be any purer than pure if your name is
Carter? How can you get away from being a Carter? There's a part of you
that's gonna come through. How do you keep from doing it? It's what
you're born to do." 

June, of course, is the daughter of Maybelle Carter, who performed with
her brother-in-law, A.P. Carter, and his wife, (Maybelle's cousin) Sara
Carter, as pioneer country group the Carter Family. 

June and her sisters began performing with the Carter Family in the late
'30s, singing on border radio stations in Mexico. By 1947, Mother
Maybelle  the Carter Sisters had become stars in Richmond, Va., and in
1950 they joined the cast of the Grand Ole Opry. 

In the late '50s they shared bills with Elvis Presley, and June went to
New York to study acting with Elia Kazan at the Neighborhood Playhouse
(she makes reference to those days in the song I Used To Be Somebody). A
photo from that period is included in the CD booklet, showing June as a
beautiful, aspiring starlet. 

By 1961 June was traveling with The Johnny Cash Show, and in 1963 she
penned Ring of Fire, inspired by her growing attraction to the headliner,
though both she and Cash were married to other people at the time. 

"I'm