Johnny Cash - Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian
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CD Details
Artist: Johnny CashEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2008-02-01
Music Label: Sbme Special Mkts.
Soundtracks:
- As Long as the Grass Shall Grow
- Apache Tears
- Custer
- The Talking Leaves
- The Ballad of Ira Hayes
- Drums
- White Girl
- The Vanishing Race
Music reviews of Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian
Music Review: AS AMERICA NOW RECOVERS HEART WE NEED TO HEAR THIS ONCE MORE AGAIN
Rating: 5 Stars
Forty five years ago Mr. Johnny Cash put this out, back when he was still really the The Man in Black, standing up tall and singing loud for the forgotten, giving voice to the voiceless, singing for those who could not, demanding an audience for all the poor and oppressed, those suffering injustice cast outside the The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet and any hope of attaining the American Dream, Mr. Cash defiantly issued this message, as Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society (The American Ways Series) was starting to roll (now fading away), we need to hear this once more again, please, and again.
As Long as The Grass Shall Grow is a sort of proto-rap with a sung chorus joined by some angelic ladies. (Throughout you hear the stripped down guitar and bass with trap drums Mr. Cash used in his early days. This is old time country and folk music, with a message we need now.) As Long as the Grass Shall Grow remembers the treaty signed by General Washington granting the Seneca eternal right to their land, a land later flooded by the Army Corps of Engineers to make a lake, later a swamp.
Apache Tears sounds like a folk song with just a strummed six string pine top guitar, with chorus moaning wonderfully, and recounts the fate of the Mescalero Apache, their women kidnapped and tortured by US Soldiers, driven off their land, Geronimo's people.
Custer goes towards the sardonically joking early Bob Dylan folk-protest expression (who was just begnining to come out then - so Bob might have got it here first!), again mainly a country proto-rap, or what was then called a talking blues, with Mr. Cash often openly laughing at the jokes involved, the mocking of Custer and the way that victory is characterized in our history books, and this was years before Little Big Man broke the real and complete story to the American public. Johnny sings, "The General, he don't ride well anymore." Got to hear it.
The Talking Leaves is for me the most touching, both in message and in beautiful sound (that choir, and that arpeggio folk guitar, without other instrumentation!). A spoken poem, it recalls how Sequioa, seeing the printed pages of English scattered on a battleground, developed a phonetic system for the Cherokee people then in the eastern United States, long before the genocidal trail of tears drove them from their land. This song does not consider the later history, but only the pride of this literate tribe. It does not mention how President Jackson defied the US Supreme Court ruling granting the Cherokee their land, telling the Supreme Court to get their own army to enforce it, as he drove the entire nation to the far west on foot. But Jimi Hendrix of Castles Made of Sand, he was mostly Cherokee, and he got his own back again.
The ballad of Ira Hayes is the most powerful, especially now as our soldiers come on home soon, what's left of them mentally, spiritually, physically. Look up the history of Ira Hayes, and his fate, who he was, how he was treated, and where he went. Mr. Cash defied in a full page ad the radio stations to play this his song. We all need to hear it now, not only to know who comes home to us now, but above all, to remember forever who is Ira Hayes. You might just get a partial glimpse in Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima / Flags of Our Fathers (Five-Disc Commemorative Edition). Try this one on Karaoke night. Go ahead. It's on Hits of Johnny Cash, Vol. 2. I defy you to. Better save it for your closer.
Drums rolls out in a usual folk-blues chord pattern over a rumbling Native American drumming heart beat, speaking of the capture of children from their families and their forced re-education in Anglo boarding schools, a sin which continued well into this past century, trying to re-culturate a whole people and erase the old as much as the people themselves had been rubbed out. But, anticipating much of the slogans heard in 1992, (including in 1492-1992: The voice of the victims (Concilium)), Mr. Cash sings "In five hundred years of fighting, not one Indian turned white." "In our losing we found pride; in your winning you found shame."
White Girl tells of a man taken up by a white woman and dropped after she taught him the night life, etc., but then refuses when he offers marriage because he is Native American, of the Pueblo Indians, a woman who wore him like a trophy or Native American jewel, but would not marry him. It is sung and played in that early electric country style, trap drum, low down home flat-picked guitar like Sun Records, and Mr. Cash. What more do you need?
The Vanishing Race is pure Native American chant, and the best singing I ever heard Mr. Cash do. He gets up in the register, and gets it right. It is a ghost dance chant. He sees the wagons coming,and his people vanish like the eagle into space. Hear this. You'll get up in a circle two-stepping.
Now we are well enough to have the great paradigm shift of a great new president (if only the still sick brothers could pull together and do what we need to do to survive as a nation ourselves for once) let us hear this heartbeat of the original inhabitants of this once wide land, and open ourselves to further renewal, peace, cooperation and begging forgiveness, as we need.
Know our history. Hear this disk. It won't take long, and you will want to hear it again. Even with the slight instrumentation, there is an amazing variety of music and sound. This is what it was all about.
Hear this disk.
Description of Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian
All products are BRAND NEW and factory sealed. Fast shipping and 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.With his highly personal early 1960s work, Johnny Cash had been trying the patience of the Columbia brass, who were less than thrilled with his commercial performance. When "Ring of Fire" topped the country charts in 1963, it allowed him to continue the many ambitious concept albums-history lessons close to his heart. The eight songs on 1964's Bitter Tears are sung from the point of view of the American Indian (still the accepted term in 1964), and together they form a potent work that is both deeply real and highly spiritual. With assistance from co-composer Peter LaFarge, Cash offers an earnest, solemn portrait of Native Americans that examines a variety of issues through a range of viewpoints and contained in unadorned musical settings. Cash actually took out full-page ads daring radio programmers to play "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," but all of the material hits home, from LaFarge's defiant "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow" to Johnny Horton's mournful, spooky "The Vanishing Race." --Marc Greilsamer
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