In the mid-1950s, June Carter had the distinct and intensely coveted privilege of touring the country with the most swooned-over rock icon of the decade, but she had her heart set on a different tall, dark, and handsome man altogether: Johnny Cash.
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The only problem, of course, was that Carter was married…and she had never actually met Cash. She had only heard his distinct baritone voice coming out of jukeboxes across the country as Presley paid, again, to hear “Cry, Cry, Cry”, again.
How June Carter First Heard About Johnny Cash
Country music icon and member of the iconic Carter Family, June Carter, toured the country with Elvis Presley for a short time in the mid-1950s. While they were on the road, Carter quickly learned that Presley used “Cry, Cry, Cry” by Johnny Cash as his de facto guitar tuner. Carter later recalled the first time she watched Presley hunch over a guitar and try to tune the strings using Cash’s 1957 track. “‘Who is Johnny Cash,’ I asked Elvis Presley,” Carter said. “I grabbed the guitar away from him. Mother Maybelle would never let me or Elvis go on the stage with a guitar that was that far out of tune.” Carter asked Presley about the vocal affectation he put on.
He told her he was imitating Cash. “That’s what drives the girls crazy,” Presley told her. “Cash don’t have to move a muscle. He just sings and stands there.” Carter continued, “So, the whole tour, my first with Elvis, we went into small cafes all throughout the South, and Elvis played Johnny Cash on the jukebox, while I fought off the girls trying to get through Scotty [Moore], Bill [Black], and I to Elvis.”
Carter said that even while she was fending off ravenous female Elvis fans, she kept her focus on the voice coming out of the jukebox. “Somehow, this low voice just penetrated my heart and spoke to my loneliness, for I had no lover in my life, and there was a terrific loneliness in my soul.”
The pair would later meet at the Grand Ole Opry, a moment in time they would never forget, even as either musician returned to their actual spouses. By the late 1960s, both Carter and Cash had divorced their partners and wed each other.
The Country Singer Had High Praise for His Inadvertent Wingman
Johnny Cash had no idea that June Carter was slowly falling in love with him by his voice alone as she listened to another round of “Cry, Cry, Cry” on the jukebox, courtesy of Elvis Presley. But there was the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, struggling with his guitar’s tuning while playing inadvertent wingman to the Man in Black. Years later, during a 1998 television appearance, Cash gave Presley high praise, calling him one of the best performers of all time. (We have to assume that the gratitude he felt toward Presley for slowly connecting him to Carter goes without saying.)
“I don’t think anybody could touch him,” Cash said of Presley. “He had a lot of rhythm, he was a very good singer, and he was a fabulous performer. When he was 19 years old is when I toured with him at first, and not only the girls loved Elvis, but every man backstage was standing in the wings watching Elvis. He had that charisma, that magic, you know, that a great performer needs to get the people right there. Elvis always did that.”
Thankfully for Cash and Carter, the one thing Presley wasn’t good at was tuning his guitar.
Photo by Ron Galella/Getty Images
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