How Marty Robbins Posthumously Inspired Johnny Cash To Release One of His Most Celebrated Albums

A great artist’s legacy lives on long after they’re gone, and this was especially true of Marty Robbins. The singing cowboy and, later, racecar driver was massively influential to the country music world in the late 1950s and 60s, and that included a young Johnny Cash.

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During a 1979 interview, Cash discussed his return appearance as the host for the CMA Awards Show. The Man in Black expressed his grievances with CMA for not highlighting artists like Marty Robbins.

“There’s no greater country singer than Marty Robbins,” Cash said. “And I’ve asked the last two years to get Marty Robbins on the show, and I get some kind of runaround. I’m not really all that happy to be the host of the show for that reason. That’s what bugs me.”

Unable to convince the television networks to arrange the show his way, Cash found other methods of celebrating the artists who came before him. In the early 1990s, Cash paid homage to Robbins by recreating his own version of the “El Paso” singer’s previous work.

How Johnny Cash Paid Homage to Marty Robbins in 1994

By the time Johnny Cash was preparing to make American Recordings, his first album with Rick Rubin, Marty Robbins had been gone for a decade. The “Big Iron” singer died in 1982 after undergoing quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery. Robbins left behind a tremendous musical legacy that continued to inspire his contemporaries and predecessors alike, including Cash. Speaking to Guitar Player in 1994, Cash said that American Recordings was loosely based on a project Robbins had done years earlier.

“It’s that dream album that I wanted to do all these years,” Cash said. “I remember talking to Marty Robbins 25 years ago about this. I even had the title for 25 years: Johnny Cash Alone. That’s really what I wanted to call it. I’ve stripped it down to just me, now that I play a little rhythm with my thumb. Marty Robbins did an album like that. Just him and his guitar, him and a piano, singing songs he always loved and wanted to record. It went a little further than that with me.”

Cash did more than just gather his favorite darlings to record. He also wrote extensively, writing four new songs for the album in one year. Cash also included a few cover songs, though, including Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me Lord?” and Leonard Cohen’s “Bird On a Wire”. Cash said he put “more time” into American Recordings than “any I’ve ever done.” And for a dream album, why wouldn’t you?

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