A Novelty Song About a Self-Made Cadillac Christened the Psychobilly Genre and Was Johnny Cash’s Last to Top the Country Chart

Johnny Cash often revealed the lighter side to some of his darker-themed songs of crime, despair, death, and other murder ballads. In 1966, Cash highlighted some of the more lively pages in his songbook on his 23rd album, Everybody Loves a Nut, consisting mostly of novelty songs, including one that poked fun at his outlaw friend Waylon Jennings, “The Singing Star’s Queen.”

By ’69, Cash released his cover of Shel Silverstein‘s “A Boy Named Sue,” about a young boy seeking revenge on a father who left him with a guitar and gave him a more feminine name. The song was inspired by Silverstein’s friend, writer Jean Shepard, who narrated and co-scripted the 1983 film A Christmas Story, and was often teased as a young boy for having a more feminine name.

Throughout the years, Cash also slipped some of his more humorous songs into sets, including his performance of “Please Don’t Play Red River Valley” with wife June Carter on The Johnny Cash Show, and “Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog” and “Joe Bean,” which appear on his 1968 live album At Folsom Prison.

In 1984, Cash even parodied his classic, “Man in Black,” with “The Chicken in Black,” written byGary Genrtry. The song follows Cash after he gets a brain transplant; he ends up with the brain of a robber, while his goes to a chicken.

“Looking back on ‘Chicken in Black,’ it’s no wonder to me that it took a while to get another decent record deal,” said Cash. “People were probably afraid to bank on an artist who’d make a mockery of himself like that.”

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“One Piece at a Time”

In 1979, Cash and the Tennessee Three also recorded the novelty song “One Piece at a Time.” Originally written by Wayne Kemp, the lyrics tell the story of a man who leaves his home in Kentucky to work at a General Motors plant in Detroit, Michigan.

There, the narrator, who cannot afford his own Cadillac, devises a plan to make his own version in a piecemeal manner, or “salami slicing,” by gathering individual parts and building his own hodgepodge car.

One day, I devised myself a plan
That should be the envy of most any man
I’d sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand
Now gettin’ caught meant gettin’ fired
But I figured I’d have it all by the time I retired
I’d have me a car worth at least a hundred grand

I’d get it one piece at a time, and it wouldn’t cost me a dime
You’ll know it’s me when I come through your town
I’m gonna ride around in style, I’m gonna drive everybody wild
‘Cause I’ll have the only one there is a round

So the very next day, when I punched in
With my big lunchbox and with help from my friends
I left that day with a lunchbox full of gears
I’ve never considered myself a thief
But GM wouldn’t miss just one little piece
Especially if I strung it out over several years

Released on the album of the same name, which went to No. 2, “One Piece at a Time” was Cash’s last song to hit No. 1 on the Country chart; it also peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100.

[RELATED: The 12-Year Journey of the Song Johnny Cash Covered by His Ex-Stepson-in-Law Nick Lowe, “The Beast in Me”]

Psychobilly and the Real-Life, DIY Cadillac Built for Cash

Within the song, Cash originated the rockabilly subgenre of psychobilly, combining ’50s rockabilly with punk and a touch of the macabre and taboo, embraced by the Cramps, the Reverend Horton Heat, and the Misfits’ earlier releases, and into the UK with Meteors and Demented Are Go, along with The Living Dead in Australia.

Psychobilly was christened by a single line in “One Piece at a Time,” with the narrator’s conversation with a truck driver on a CB radio about his Psycho-Billy Cadillac, and the different models of the car.

Uh, yow, Red Ryder, this is the cotton mouth
In the Psycho-Billy Cadillac, come on, huh, this is the cotton mouth
And negatory on the cost of this mow-chine, there Red Ryder
You might say I went right up to the factory
And picked it up, it’s cheaper that way
Uh, what model is it?

Well, it’s a ’49, ’50, ’51, ’52, ’53, ’54, ’55, ’56
’57, ’58’ 59′ automobile
It’s a ’60, ’61, ’62, ’63, ’64, ’65, ’66, ’67
’68, ’69, ’70 automobile

In April of 1976, Bruce Fitzpatrick, owner of Abernathy Auto Parts and Hilltop Auto Salvage in Nashville, Tennessee, presented Cash with a similar patchworked Cadillac. Asked to build the car by Cash’s associates to help promote the single, Fitzpatrick used the song as inspiration and pieced together a Cadillac using parts from 1949 through the early ’70s.

“Johnny’s producer phoned me in April of 1976 and said he thought ‘One Piece At A Time’ was going to be a hit and could we come up with a car to use in publicity shots,” recalled Fitzpatrick. “He knew I had a lot of Cadillacs, so using parts from 1949 to the early seventies, I had my guys build it. It took them about eight to ten days, and when it was done, we drove the car to the House of Cash (Cash’s former museum, which burned in a 2007 fire) in Hendersonville, Tennessee, to deliver it to Johnny.”

The car became a popular attraction at the House of Cash, and was later crushed since it could not receive a proper title, nor be driven legally.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal when we built it,” added Fitzpatrick. “Nashville wasn’t even that big then. We built the car for fun. I never got paid for it.”

Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images