When Kristofferson was a janitor at CBS in Nashville in the late 60's, he was
told he would be fired from his job if he tried to pitch songs to me while I
was recording. I saw him with a broom and a trash bag in his hand many nights
before I officially met him. One night I noticed he had mopped the hallway outside
the studio about twenty times and he kept cutting the glass window as I was singing
whatever it was that I was singing.
I asked June, "Who is that guy with the broom, and
what's he up to?"
" That's Kris Kristofferson," she said, "a songwriter."
" Kris who?" I asked.
" Kristofferson," she repeated slowly, then spelled it.
" I don't want to hear any new songs now", I said.
She paused studying me, then looked around to see if anyone
was watching, she said, "Will it be alright if I take a tape from him and put it in my purse?
That way no one will know and he won't get fired."
She gave me the tape when I got home and I looked at it.
Two songs: "The
Golden Idol" and "The Best Of All Possible Worlds." Our bedroom
hung over Old Hickory Lake; I opened the lakeside door and threw it far out into
the water. "You should have listened to that," June said.
" I'm not interested," I replied.
The next night we recorded again. Ole blue eyes was there behind the glass
door and again June came home with a tape in her purse. I looked at the writing
on
the tape box. Kris Kristofferson, "Vietnam Blues", "The Golden
Idol" and "The Best Of All Possible Worlds". I opened the door
and threw it out into the lake. June just looked at me.
The next night I recorded again and when we got home, she
put the tape on the machine. At first I paid no attention,
but halfway through the song I said, "Who's
that?" "That's Kris Kristofferson singing The Golden Idol," she
said. When the song ended, I said, "That man's a poet, pity he can't sing."
The lights were being turned out and I was just listening
to all the songs of the night in my mind and June kept
the tape recorder running. When the last song
was over, we went into bed. "Sunday Morning Coming Down is a good song," I
said. "So is The Golden Idol," said June. "Maybe," I replied
uninterestedly.
The weeks and the months went by. I had dozens of Kristofferson
songs on dozens of tapes. One day while working on a special
album project, I cleaned up my office
of everything that didn't relate to the project I was into. I threw all of
Kris's songs into Old Hickory Lake.
One Sunday afternoon I was taking a nap and June came in
and said, "I'm
sorry to wake you up, but I have to." "What's wrong," I asked,
alarmed. She held up her hands to quiet me down and said, "You know how
the tourists have been coming by hundreds, by land and water?" "Yes," I
said, "so what are they doing now?" "Taking pictures as always,
but some fool has just landed in our yard in a helicopter," she said.
I jumped up, put on my pants and ran out the upstairs door,
and there sat a National Guard helicopter, with its big
blade idling. As I approached, out stepped Kris
Kristofferson, with a beer in one hand and a tape in the other. I stopped,
dumbfounded. He grabbed my hand, put the tape in it, grinned
and got back into the helicopter
and was gone, a bit wobbly, but almost straight up, then out high above the
lake where all his songs lay on the bottom. He disappeared
through the clouds. I looked
at the tape of "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and "Me And Bobby
McGee".
Back in the house I said to June, "You gotta admire that guy's guts. What
a way to get a song to me." "He gave you both of those before and you
threw them in the lake," she said. All afternoon and into the evening I
listened to the two songs.
I was in the middle of the season taping my weekly TV show
for ABC. On stage at the old Ryman Auditorium the following
Thursday night, with cameras rolling,
I said, "Here's a song written by Kris Kristofferson. Don't forget that
name, Kris Kristofferson. You're gonna hear it a lot." I sang Sunday Morning
Coming Down. Kris came to the house a couple of weeks later. He had been in Peru
or somewhere, but everybody had told him, I had sung his song on TV. Then he
kept on coming back and bringing friends for me to meet, people like Vince Matthews,
Eddie Rabbitt and Chris Gantry. I remember on one visit, they all helped June
get ready for a big dinner she was planning. I saw Kristofferson hauling a fifty
pound trash can full of ice out the door.
" Hey, Kris," I said. "We're going to the Newport Folk Festival
next week. Want to come up and be my special guest ?" "What?" he
said, unbelieving. "Yeah,"I said. "Come on up to Newport. We'll
get you on."
Kris and Vince Matthew hitchhiked to Newport, Rhode Island. "Man, I'm scared," he
said backstage. "You can kill them, Kris," said June. "Just get
out there and sing your songs. That's all you have to do." He looked at
her and grinned. "I believe I can do that," he said.
Yet, when he was introduced, he stood behind the curtains,
unsure that his name had actually been spoken over the
public address system. "That's you," June
turned to him and said, "That's you," and she put her foot against
his rear and pushed him on the stage.
He stole the show. He did four songs and they kept screaming
for more. Five minutes into the next act, the crowd was
still begging for more of Kris Kristofferson.
That night after the show, we all went to my room and we all congratulated
Kris. "You
stole the show, Kris," I said, "I'm proud of you. You deserve being
the high point of the whole Newport Folk Festival." He was shy and at a
loss of words.
" I'd like to steal this show," said June. Everybody got quiet and
turned to her. "I'm pregnant," she said. We all cried, It was an answer
to a prayer for a long time. The doctor had told June she could not get pregnant. "His
name is going to be John Carter," I announced. "The baby isn't due
until next March (1970), and how do you know it will be a he." "If
it's a girl, it'll be Rachel Carter Cash, but it'll be a boy."
The next day the New York Times gave Kris the credit he
deserved. He was the star of the Newport Folk Festival.
Labour Day 1974, Kris was the first person I saw when Roy
and Barbara Orbison took us through the mob of photographers
at the emergency door at Vanderbilt
Hospital.
John Carter had been in a jeep with a dozen other kids.
My sister was driving not more than ten mph, but making
a short
turn, a wheel hit a rock and over it
went. No one was badly injured, but first reports had really scared me. At
our farm seventy miles away, we were notified that John
Carter had a 50/50 chance
to live. The late Governor Frank Clement's father, Bob Clement, I recently
learned, got on the radio and told the police in Middle
Tennessee, "Johnny Cash's
boy has been hurt and is in Vanderbilt. Cash and his wife, June, are in Hickman
County headed that way. Open the gates for him."
Bob Wootton drove us at 110 mph all the way. June stayed
on her knees all night and into next day. In the hallway
just outside the intensive care unit, Kris,
Larry Gatlin, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, Vince Matthews, and many others
kept the vigil with us. Kris and Gatlin kept telling me
jokes trying to make me laugh,
trying until even they too were tired to try to keep me from worrying about
my boy. Kris never let up. He'd put an arm around me and
say, "He's gonna be
OK. I know, I know, do you hear. I know it, Cash."
"How do you know it," I mumbled. He grinned at me and said, "How'd
you get that scar on your cheek. June hit you with a high-heel shoe?" I
couldn't help but grin. Three days later, John Carter walked out of the hospital,
completely healed, and never since has there been any indication he was injured.
Just recently I wished I had a joke to tell Kris when he stood a long vigil in
that California hospital. His daughter, Tracey, was in intensive care from a
motorcycle accident, but all I could do was say, "She's gonna be alright,
buddy, I know she is. I just know."
In 1976, I got some grappling hooks and a long rope. For
an hour I stood on the shore by the house and tossed the
hooks a long way into the water and kept dragging
them back.
All I could pull in was a couple of telephones I had thrown
in the lake, a couple of shoes I had worn around '69 or
'70 that had ruined my feet. Not one tape did
I find. I expected to drag in at least one or two reels of tape as many times
as I threw the hooks out.
Possibly Kris' tapes had been devoured by an aquatic tapeworm.
("Pardon
me, Kris, but I didn't mean for that last line to sound like William Blake. Or
you.")
