Rosanne Cash - Biography
By J Poet
Rosanne Cash, oldest daughter of Johnny Cash, is known for the emotional power of her highly individual style of confessional songwriting. She’s a Grammy winning singer/songwriter and while her fourteen record albums have included eleven #1 country singles, her blend of country, pop and folk marked her as a maverick when she first appeared on the scene.
Rosanne Cash was born in Memphis, TN, to Johnny Cash and his first wife Vivian. The problems Johnny Cash created for his family with drugs, alcohol, other women and his touring schedule broke up the marriage. Vivian moved to LA; Rosanne Cash grew up a suburban California girl. She got into drugs at 14, as well as The Beatles and the Stones. She also liked Buffalo Springfield, Traffic, Elton John and Joni Mitchell. Her album Blue inspired her to start writing songs. For a while she resisted the urge to perform in public, but when she graduated from high school, she left home and joined her father on the road, becoming a featured performer.
After three years on the road, Cash went to Vanderbilt University, majoring in English and drama, but soon dropped out and went to Hollywood to study at Lee Strasberg’s drama school. In 1978 she met and married Rodney Crowell, another young up and coming country songwriter. Ariola Records offered her a recording contract, so she dropped out of acting class and went to Germany to cut an album that she disowns. Rich Blackburn of Columbia Records heard the Ariola album and signed Cash, allowing her and Crowell to produce. Right or Wrong (1979 Columbia) was recorded in LA with most of Emmylou Harris’s hot bad supplying the backing tracks. It won raves from rock critics as well as country fans, blending country with rock, Motown, and calypso touches. Seven Year Ache (1981 Columbia, 2005 Columbia/Legacy) refined their style and gave her three #1 country hits “My Baby Thinks He’s a Train” and the self-penned “Seven Year Ache,” which was a pop hit as well, and “Blue Moon With Heartaches.” Somewhere in the Stars (1882 Columbia) brought in new wave influences. At the time, Cash and Crowell joked that their music was “punktry.” After a few years off to have a child, Cash scored again with Rhythm & Romance (1985 Columbia). Cash wrote most of the songs on the album and the LA session heavies, including Benmont Tench from The Heartbreakers, gave the record a sound some called Nash/Vegas. Still, it included two more #1 hits, “I Don't Know Why You Don’t Want Me,” which won a Best Female Country Vocal Performance Grammy and Tom Petty’s “Never Be You.”
King’s Record Shop (1987 Columbia, 2005 Columbia/Legacy), again produced with Crowell, was hailed as a masterpiece in its release. Cash’s passionate singing and the rocking band behind her set a new country/rock standard and spawned three more #1s - John Hiatt’s “The Way We Make a Broken Heart,” her dad’s Tennessee Flat Top Box,” her own “If You Change Your Mind,” and John Stewart’s “Runaway Train.” She also scored with “It’s Such a Small World,” a duet she cut with Crowell on his debut Diamonds & Dirt (1988 Columbia).
In 1990 Cash and Crowell were have problems in their marriage, and she wrote and produced Interiors (1990 Columbia, 2005 Columbia/Legacy) on her own. This is a pop/rock album, a searing emotional statement about love going wrong that’s almost hard to listen to. It was a commercial failure, but its power and passion make it one of the best album’s Cash ever made. The couple divorced after the album was released and The Wheel (1993 Columbia) continues Cash’s self-examination with another brutally honest album. It was given a fine pop sheen by producer John Leventhal, who she was soon to marry.
In 1995 Cash and Leventhal moved to New York and she signed with Capital for 10 Song Demo (1996 Capital) and under-produced, folky, singer/songwriter record that implicitly announced that she was no longer just a country singer. In the following six years Cash had a child and discovered she’d developed throat polyps. He throat problems kept her from singing - and speaking - for almost two years. During her enforced hiatus she was writing the songs that became Rules of Travel (2003 Capital). The album has a big, open hearted, almost spiritual feeling, dealing grandly with the issues of love, loss and mortality. It includes “September, When It Comes,” a beautifully poetic meditation on mortality that features her first recorded duet with her famous father. It was the last song Johnny Cash recorded before he died.
The Black Cadillac (2006 Capital) in the title of Cash’s 2006 album is the hearse that carries us all one day, hopefully to glory. In the two years she was working on it, her father and mother died, as did her stepmother, June Carter Cash. Cash confronts death with her eyes and heart wide open, and listening to the album is a wrenching experience. It was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album. In 2009 she released The List.