Old Willow

Roseanne Cash, Her Father’s Daughter

For Roseanne Cash, although she has already achieved so much in her own career with a string of albums featuring some of the best country love songs (she has 11 number one singles in the US country charts tucked under her belt), she has also had to live her life being her father’s daughter. “People think you have it easy and they resent you. I had a brief moment when I thought I might use my grandmother’s maiden name – Rivers. Then I realised that that’s not who I am and it didn’t feel very honest.” This was how Cash internalized her position as the daughter of the legendary Johnny Cash. With the release of her latest album, “The List,” she openly celebrates her roots by choosing to do a cover album not just of country love songs but of ones that are part of the list handed to her by her father when she was just a teenager.

According to CMT, a country love songs, Cash held on to this “list” for so long because she did not want people to think that she was trading on her father. This was why, even though there was a clamor for her to share it, she chose to keep it to herself until the time was right and she can comfortably share it with the world. So how exactly did this list come into being?

“When I was 18 years old I went on the road with my dad after I graduated from high school. And we were riding on the tour bus one day, kind of rolling through the South, and he mentioned a song,” Cash recounted. “We started talking about songs, and he mentioned one, and I said I don’t know that one. And he mentioned another. I said, ‘I don’t know that one either, Dad,’ and he became very alarmed that I didn’t know what he considered my own musical genealogy. So he spent the rest of the afternoon making a list for me, and at the end of the day, he said, ‘This is your education.’ And across the top of the page, he wrote ’100 Essential Country Songs.’”

This list, it turned out, did not just include country love songs, but also included songs from various genres such as gospel, blues, protest songs, Texas swing, and folk music. Essentially, these were songs that inspired Johnny Cash as an artist, thus, wading through this list became such a challenging task for Cash and her husband, John Leventhal, who served as the album’s arranger and producer. Says Leventhal, “It was the right time for her to accept it gracefully and embrace her lineage in all this. It turned into a lovely, joyous experience.” Cash herself agrees, saying that it was time to “Get over it. Claim it. It was time.”

Recently, Cash has released the album, appropriately titled, “The List,” featuring songs in which she successfully stamped her own individual style in interpreting them. Noteworthy tracks include classics such as “Take These Chains from My Heart” (Hank Williams), “Miss the Mississippi and You” (Jimmie Rodger), “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow” (The Carter Family), “She’s Got You” (Patsy Cline), and “Girl from the North Country” (Bob Dylan). Guest artists include Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Rufus Wainwright, and Jeff Tweedy, among others.

For tour dates and other information, you may check out the country love songs CMT and the artist’s site at http://rosannecash.com.

Joe Hansen is a music expert, specialized in country songs reviews.

For more tips and information about country love songs, please visit country love songs.

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