‘Dad loved his Irish roots. Ireland had a place in his heart’
Son of Johnny Cash recalls his father’s regard for ‘beautiful place’
SINGING legend Johnny Cash had a deep love of Ireland, his only son told country star Nathan Carter during an emotional meeting.
Carter was shown around the late singer’s estate by John Carter Cash, 47, who told the 27-year-old singer: ‘My father certainly loved Ireland. He had a special place in his heart for Ireland.
‘And he was connected of course by blood – my father had Irish blood – and by his heart and by the love for that beautiful, beautiful place and a fine, kind people.
‘I know he went there in the mid- to late1950s, and on his first trip there, he wrote Forty Shades Of Green.
‘I think he got there and saw how beautigest ful it was. He saw the history that was right there.’
Carter was invited to Johnny Cash’s home during a US trip to film a new RTÉ documentary, Nathan Goes To Nashville. The Wagon Wheel and Beautiful Life singer met some of country’s big- names, such as Crystal Gayle, and even performed at the legendary Ryman Auditorium.
But many fans will savour his meeting with Cash Jr, who showed him round the cabin where his father – and mother June Carter – escaped the pressures of the world before their deaths, just months apart, in 2003.
The documentary includes a clip of Cash talking about his muchloved song Forty Shades Of Green, in 1990. He said: ‘I was in a car with a road map of Ireland on my lap, rhyming the names – the names of Ireland beg to be sung anyway.
‘To get the title, I just looked out the window and there they were, the 40 shades of green.
‘But it was all brought home to me later when someone from the White House told me that he was with President John F Kennedy when he came to Ireland.
‘When they were landing, President Kennedy was looking out the window and said, “I see Johnny Cash’s 40 shades of green.”
‘That was a big moment in my life and my career, to know that song had reached out that far.’
As well as singing Forty Shades in Cash’s cabin, Carter performed in Nashville’s legendary Bluebird Café and met Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains.