From this point on, he began to discriminate between “Johnny Cash songs” and “J.R. Cash songs.” A Johnny Cash song was one like “Ballad of a Teenage Queen,” a fun, superficial song meant to sell records. But a J.R. Cash song, by contrast, was a song that meant something to Cash, a song that took him back to his roots. J.R. songs might not sell very well (songs about dying, homeless convicts rarely do), but they gave voice to Cash’s artistic and spiritual vision.
