Fire destroys Johnny Cash home By KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press Writer
33 minutes ago



HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. - A fire destroyed the lakeside home of the late country singer Johnny Cash on Tuesday.

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The fire started around 1:40 p.m. CST in this suburb about 20 miles northeast of downtown Nashville. Fire trucks arrived within five minutes, but the house was already engulfed in flames, Hendersonville Fire Chief Jamie Steele said.

Just a few hours later, there was almost nothing left except brick chimneys and the steel frame.

The cause is unknown, but Steele said the flames spread quickly because construction workers had recently applied a flammable wood preservative to the exterior of the house. The preservative was also being applied inside the house.

No workers were injured, but one firefighter was slightly hurt while fighting the fire, Steele said.

Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, lived at the home from the late 1960s until their deaths in 2003.

The property was purchased by Barry Gibb, a member of the Bee Gees, in January 2006. Gibb and his wife, Linda, had said they planned to restore the home on Old Hickory Lake and hoped to write songs there.

Gibb's spokesman, Paul Bloch, said the singer and his family are "both saddened and devastated by the news."

While the Cashes lived there, the 13,880-square-foot home was visited by everyone from U.S. presidents to ordinary fans.

"So many prominent things and prominent people in American history took place in that house — everyone from Billy Graham to Bob Dylan went into that house," said singer Marty Stuart, who lives next door and was married to Cash's daughter, Cindy, in the 1980s.

Stuart said the man who designed the house, Nashville builder Braxton Dixon, was "the closest thing this part of the country had to Frank Lloyd Wright."

When Cash moved there, the road was a quiet country lane that skirts Old Hickory Lake. Kris Kristofferson, then an aspiring songwriter, once landed a helicopter on Cash's lawn to pitch him a song.

In later years, Cash did a lot of recording in the home and in a studio on the property. The landmark video for his song "Hurt" was shot inside the house.

"It was a sanctuary and a fortress for him," Stuart said. "There was a lot of writing that took place there."

Richard Sterban of the Oak Ridge Boys lives on the same road as Cash. "Maybe it's the good Lord's way to make sure that it was only Johnny's house," Sterban said.

Cash's musical career began in the 1950s and spanned from rock 'n' roll to folk to country. His hits included "Ring of Fire," "Folsom Prison Blues" and "I Walk the Line."

The Bee Gees are best known for their disco hits of the late 1970s, such as "Night Fever" and "Jive Talkin'."

[news.yahoo.com]

Oh, well that's a shame, still, that building had done it's job, it wasn't a home for Johnny anymore.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-04-11 02:28 by Erik_Snow.

[www.rollingstone.com]
_______________________________CLOSE FRIGGIN" CALL...

Johnny Cash's Vault Opens

Revelatory, stripped-down tapes from the early 1970s discovered in archive
DAVID FRICKE

"In July 1973, Johnny Cash spent several days in the studio at his House of Cash offices in Hendersonville, Tennessee, recording songs and telling tales with just an acoustic guitar and his virile craggy baritone. He sang Tin Pan Alley hits, traditional folk and gospel tunes, new originals and favorite covers by the Louvin Brothers and Johnny Horton, among others. He recited poetry and reminisced about his teenage job as a water boy on a river-dredging crew and the hours he spent glued to the radio, loving and learning the very songs he sang in these sessions.

But Cash, who died in September 2003, never issued any of these intimate performances. The tapes were shelved at House of Cash, where they sat forgotten and undisturbed until 2004, when his son John Carter Cash asked Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of A&R at Legacy Recordings, Sony BMG's reissue imprint, and producer Gregg Geller for help in cataloging the hundreds of reels stored at the Hendersonville office. "Periodically, I would come across a white tape box with the House of Cash label on it that said 'Johnny Cash, Personal File,'" says Geller. "My sense is he had a concept album in mind, and these tapes were the beginning of that process."

Cash's dream finally comes true with the May release of the two-CD set Personal File, compiled by Geller and featuring forty-nine previously unissued solo Cash tracks, half from July '73 and the rest from similar, later House of Cash demos made in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Personal File arrives at a peak of posthumous Cashmania, fueled by the success of the biopic Walk the Line. The single-CD compilation, The Legend of Johnny Cash, is selling more than 40,000 copies a week, according to SoundScan.

But Personal File delivers a Cash even his most devoted fans have never heard before: at the height of his career and vocal power, telling the story of his life in music, as if he were sitting across from you. "This is his 'Basement Tapes,'" says Berkowitz, "as close as you can get to him singing on the porch." There was no documentation with the original reels to suggest Cash ever submitted them to Columbia, his label at the time. But John Carter Cash recalls his dad referring to these sessions at the time of his first album with producer Rick Rubin, 1994's stripped-back American Recordings. "He talked about how he'd made a record like it in the Seventies," John says, "but nobody was interested in putting it out."

The Personal File tapes were not the only riches buried at the House of Cash, now closed. The tape archive, Geller says, "was a large walk-in closet with, I like to think, virtually every recording that ever passed through his hands," including test pressings of Cash's Sun records and publishing demos by Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. On one visit, Berkowitz noticed towers of unlabeled boxes wrapped in brown paper. Inside were multitrack audio masters from Cash's ABC TV series,

The Johnny Cash Show, including unaired songs by guests such as Bill Monroe, Stevie Wonder and DERICK & THE DOMINOES.

"It is extraordinary," says Berkowitz, who is planning future releases of the material (Sony owns the footage from the show). "You hear Louis Armstrong teaching Johnny to sing [Jimmie Rodgers'] 'Blue Yodel' and Ray Charles trying to teach the Carter Family to sing like the Raelettes."

The two-CD Personal File is just the beginning of what may be a long parade of releases from the Cash archives. In June, Sony is releasing Live in Denmark, a DVD of the Johnny Cash stage revue in the Seventies. And Geller says "the intent is to develop some other projects from, as we call them, 'the Hendersonville tapes.' There are other demos with his band, and there's live material."

"I knew there was treasure there," John Carter Cash says of the House of Cash trove. "But specifics -- that was the mystery of it. My father was creative until the very end of his life. He was genius wherever he went, whatever he did. Luckily, there was a place where this stuff was set aside."
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-04-11 08:17 by Beelyboy.

It fell down in a burning ring of fire? Oh dear!

but he rose again immortal with these hendersonville tapes.

not the first (literally) fiery incident in his personal history apparently...
from wiki: (I added the CAPS)
_____________________________

"As his career was taking off in the early 1960s, Cash began drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates....

Although in many ways spiraling out of control, his frenetic creativity was still delivering hits. His rendition of "RING OF FIRE" was a major crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on the country charts and entering the Top 20 on the pop charts.

The song was written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore and originally performed by Carter's sister, but the signature mariachi-style horn arrangement was provided by Cash, who said that it had come to him in a dream.

The song describes the personal hell Carter went through as she wrestled with her forbidden love for Cash (they were both married to other people at the time) and as she dealt with Cash's personal "RING OF FIRE" (drug dependency and alcoholism).

Cash sometimes spoke of his erratic, drug-induced behavior with some degree of bemused detachment. In June 1965, his truck caught FIRE due to a defective exhaust, triggering a forest FIRE THAT BURNT DOWN HALF OF LOS PADRES NATIONAL FOREST IN CALIFORNIA.

When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said in his characteristically flippant style of the time, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead so you can't question it."

THE FIRE DESTROYED 508 ACRES, BURNING THE FOLIAGE OFF THREE MOUNTAINS, and killing 49 of the refuge's 53 endangered condors.

Cash was unrepentant --
"I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards."

The federal government sued him and was awarded $125,127. Johnny eventually settled the case and paid $82,000.

In his autobiography, Johnny Cash said he was the only person ever sued by the government for starting a forest fire.
_________

Love is a burning thing
and it makes a firery ring
bound by wild desire
I fell in to a ring of fire...

I fell in to a burning ring of fire
I went down,down,down
and the flames went higher.
And it burns,burns,burns
the ring of fire
the ring of fire.

The taste of love is sweet
when hearts like our's meet
I fell for you like a child
oh, but the fire went wild..

I fell in to a burning ring of fire.....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-04-11 08:15 by Beelyboy.

_______________________________________________________________________________




("He has recorded more than 1,500 songs and they can be found on about 500 albums, counting only American and European releases.

More of his albums (45) remain in print today than most artists ever make.

He is the youngest person ever chosen for the Country Music Hall of Fame and the only performer ever selected for the Country and Rock Music Hall of Fame, until 1998, when Elvis Presley was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

He has placed 48 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop charts, about the same number as the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys.")



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2007-04-11 11:15 by Beelyboy.