A concept album focusing on the mistreatment and marginalization of the Native American people throughout the history of the United States, its eight songs-among them "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," a #3 hit single for Cash on the Billboard country chart-spoke in frank and poetic language of the hardships and intolerance they endured.
Now, 50 years after it was recorded, a collective of top Americana artists has come together to reimagine and update these songs that meant so much to Cash, who died in 2003.
Look Again To The Wind: Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears Revisited (Sony Music Masterworks, Aug. 19), produced by Joe Henry (Bonnie Raitt, Aaron Neville), features Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Milk Carton Kids and more, interpreting the music of Bitter Tears.
"Prior to Bitter Tears, the conversation about Native American rights had not really been had," says Henry, "and at a very significant moment in his trajectory, Johnny Cash was willing to draw a line and insist that this be considered a human rights issue, alongside the civil rights issue that was coming to fruition in 1964. But he also felt that the record had never been heard, so there's a real sense that we're being asked to carry it forward."
Bitter Tears did not realize its stature as a landmark recording easily and quickly. At the time that Cash proposed the album, he was met with resistance from his record label. They felt that a song cycle revolving around the Native American struggle as perpetrated by the white man took him too far afield of the country mainstream and Cash's core audience. Cash still released the album and although it did not perform as well as he had hoped, he remained extremely proud of the album throughout his life.
Ironically, at the same time that his own label was balking because it felt he would alienate the country audience with his Native American tales, Cash was finding a new set of admirers among the burgeoning folk music crowd.
Cash's debut performance of "Ira Hayes" at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival had earned him rave reviews. His appeal was undeniably expanding beyond the country audience, and for those who did connect with Bitter Tears, among them a 17-year-old aspiring singer-songwriter named Emmylou Harris, its music was revelatory and important.
"The record was a seminal work for her as a teenager," says Henry. "She bought the album brand new and realized at that moment that Johnny Cash was a folk singer, not a country singer, and was involving himself politically and socially in a way that she had identified with the great folk singers at that moment."
Henry's awareness of Harris' affection for Bitter Tears led him to invite her to contribute to Look Again To The Wind: Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears Revisited. Following the epic, nine-minute album-opener "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow," written by Peter La Farge-a folk singer-songwriter with Native American bloodlines who Cash had befriended-and sung here by Welch and Rawlings, Harris takes the lead vocal on the Cash-penned "Apache Tears," which also features sweet, close harmonies by the Milk Carton Kids. For Henry, carefully matching artist to song was integral to the integrity of the project.
On some of the tracks, that process required a great deal of consideration. But when it came to deciding who would interpret "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," Henry quickly zeroed in on Kristofferson.
That song is based on the true story of Ira Hamilton Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the six Marines seen raising the flag at Iwo Jima in an iconic World War II photograph. Hayes' moment of glory was followed upon his return to civilian life with prejudice and alcoholism-Cash, moved by Hayes' story and La Farge's recounting of it, vowed to record the song. When planning out Look Again To The Wind, Henry knew that only a few living singers could deliver the song the way he wanted to hear it. He called Kristofferson, utilizing Rawlings and Welch to sing background.
"I wanted somebody whose relationship with Johnny Cash was not only musical but personal," he says. "I'd worked with Kris on a couple of other things and I thought why not ask? Who else has a voice with that kind of power and authority?"
That same sense of intuition guided Henry to choose the other participants and the material they would render. For La Farge's "Custer," the album's third song, the producer knew instinctively that Steve Earle was the right man for the job.
"Steve is an upstart, and there are very few people I can imagine working right now who could deliver a song that is that pointed in that particular way and do it authentically without cowering from it or making it feel a little too arch," Henry says. "He really could embody the kind of swagger that that song insists upon."
The album was recorded in three sessions: the first two in Los Angeles and Nashville and, lastly, one at the Cash Cabin, in Cash's hometown of Hendersonville, Tennessee, where Bill Miller cut his contribution. Providing the instrumental backing for most of the album are Greg Leisz (steel guitar, guitars), Keefus Ciancia (keyboards), Patrick Warren (keyboards for the L.A. sessions), Jay Bellerose (drums) and Dave Piltch (bass).
Track list:
As Long as the Grass Shall Grow - feat. Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
Apache Tears - feat. Emmylou Harris w/The Milk Carton Kids
Custer - feat. Steve Earle w/The Milk Carton Kids
The Talking Leaves - feat. Nancy Blake w/ Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings
The Ballad of Ira Hayes - feat. Kris Kristofferson w/ Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
Drums - feat. Norman Blake w/ Nancy Blake, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch & David
Rawlings
Apache Tears (Reprise) - feat. Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings
White Girl - feat. The Milk Carton Kids
The Vanishing Race - feat. Rhiannon Giddens
As Long as the Grass Shall Grow (Reprise) - feat. Nancy Blake, Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings
Look Again to The Wind - feat. Bill Miller
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