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Wide Open Road (Johnny Cash song)

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"Wide Open Road"
Single by Johnny Cash
from the album Original Sun Sound of Johnny Cash
B-side"Belshazah"
Released1964
Recorded1955
Genre
Length2:33
LabelSun
Audio
"Wide Open Road" on YouTube

"Wide Open Road" is a song written by Johnny Cash.[1] It became the first song he recorded for Sun Records.[2][3][4][5][6]

Recorded by Cash in early 1955,[7][8] it wasn't released as a single until 1964,[9] years after his move to Columbia. (That year Sun included the unpublished songs "Belshazah" and "Wide Open Road" on the album Original Sun Sound of Johnny Cash and also released them as two sides of the only single off it.)

Composition

[edit]

Cash wrote this song while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany.[10][11][12][13][14][15]

It is a song about a lovers' quarrel.[10] It is one of those songs in which Cash "chases his roaming [woman] of waits for [her] to return, all while feeling a sense of dislocation and identity trouble because of the woman's departure". Other examples include "Big River", "So Doggone Lonesome", "Port of Lonely Hearts", "Don't Make Me Go", "Next in Line", "There You Go", "Two-Timing Woman".[16]

John M. Alexander writes in his book The Man in Song: A Discographic Biography of Johnny Cash,

"Wide Open Road” [is] a breezy kiss-off to a girl who says she's had enough, and the singer's response is to tell her to just leave and head down that wide open road. Right away Cash invokes a carefree persona who refuses to be a victim. However, he does eventually regret the decision and tries to win her back by searching for her in order to tell her that things have gone crazy for him since she left. The road then becomes a means for her to find her way back home. The theme of second thoughts and regrets due to rash judgment would reemerge in many Cash songs through the years.[17]

According to AllMusic, this early song "shows the singer still under influence of Hank Williams". It is also "a rarity in featuring the steel guitar of A.W. 'Red' Kernodle, who left the group [The Tennessee Three] shortly afterwards."[18][10][19][20]

Cash recollected:

I was really nervous in the studio [...], and the steel guitar player, Red Kernodle, another mechanic at the Automobile Sales Company, was even worse; he was so jittery he could hardly play at all. The results were predictable: the first track we recorded, "Wide Open Road," sounded awful, and it didn't get any better. After three or four songs, Red packed up his steel and left. "This music business is not for me," he said, and I didn't contest the point. After that we settled down a little and managed to get a respectable take on "Hey, Porter.[21]

Track listing

[edit]

The opposite side of the single is another song written by Cash himself, "Belshazah".[22][23] As AllMusic states, that gospel song was "an unusual inclusion in that [Cash's] producer, Sam Phillips, usually recorded only the performer's secular material."[18]

7" single (Sun 392, 1964)

  1. "Wide Open Road" (2:30)
  2. "Belshazah" (2:21)[22]

* Billboard advertisements list "Belshazah" as the main side and "Wide Open Road" as the flip.[24][25][26][27][28][29]

Covers

[edit]

The song has been covered by a number of artists including The Little Willies.[9]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Millard, Bob (1999-09-30). Country Music. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-80903-3.
  2. ^ LIFE Unseen: Johnny Cash: An Illustrated Biography With Rare and Never-Before-Seen Photographs from the Archives of Sony Music Entertainment. Time Home Entertainment. 2013-08-13. ISBN 978-1-60320-492-7.
  3. ^ Miller, Stephen. CAMION BLANC: JOHNNY CASH Une icone américaine (in French). CAMION BLANC. ISBN 978-2-35779-462-7.
  4. ^ Johnny Cash: The Biography. Hachette Books. 4 September 2007. ISBN 978-0-306-81591-1.
  5. ^ The Golden Age of Rock 'N' Roll. Chartwell Books. April 2010. ISBN 978-0-7858-2625-5.
  6. ^ Johnny Cash FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Man in Black. Rowman & Littlefield. August 2014. ISBN 978-1-61713-609-2.
  7. ^ Hall, Dennis R.; Hall, Susan Grove (2006-06-30). American Icons [3 volumes]: An Encyclopedia of the People, Places, and Things that Have Shaped Our Culture [3 volumes]. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 978-0-313-02767-3.
  8. ^ Dobler, Franz (2021-11-09). The Beast in Me. Johnny Cash: ... und die seltsame und schöne Welt der Countrymusik (in German). Heyne Verlag. ISBN 978-3-641-28282-0.
  9. ^ a b "Cover versions of Wide Open Road by Johnny Cash". SecondHandSongs. Retrieved 2022-05-05.
  10. ^ a b c "Wide+Open+Road"+"Johnny+Cash"&pg=PT17 Johnny Cash: Story und Songs kompakt - Google Books. Bosworth Music. 3 June 2010. ISBN 978-0-85712-337-4.
  11. ^ Gigliotti, Jim; HQ, Who (2022-06-07). Who Was Johnny Cash?. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-399-54417-0.
  12. ^ Guralnick, Peter (2015-11-12). Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll. Orion. ISBN 978-0-297-85654-2.
  13. ^ Miller, Stephen (2010-04-09). Johnny Cash: Das Leben Einer Amerikanischen Ikone. Bosworth Music. ISBN 978-0-85712-277-3.
  14. ^ Hilburn, Robert (2016). Johnny Cash - et liv (in Danish). Klim. ISBN 978-87-7129-859-8.
  15. ^ Johnny Cash - Google Books. Orion. 31 October 2013. ISBN 978-0-297-86658-9. There was also "Wide Open Road," the song John had written, or at least started, in Germany with Hank Snow in mind. John's brother Roy thought "Wide Open Road" was John's best song yet, but John himself wasn't so sure. He thought it was pretty standard country stuff, but it was pretty standard country stuff, but in the early months of 1955 Sam had seemed at least a little interested in it, so ...
  16. ^ Edwards, Leigh H. (2009-02-25). Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-22061-5.
  17. ^ The Man in Song: A Discographic Biography of Johnny Cash. University of Arkansas Press. 16 April 2018. ISBN 978-1-61075-628-0.
  18. ^ a b "Johnny Cash - The Original Sun Sound of Johnny Cash [Bonus Tracks]". AllMusic. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  19. ^ Rolling Stone (2010-04-27). Cash: A Tribute to Johnny Cash. Ebury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7535-3465-6.
  20. ^ JEMF Quarterly - Google Books. John Edwards Memorial Foundation. 1973. "Wide Open Road" : The cuts used on the original Sun releases Su 392 and SLP-1275 and on the Sun International single release SUN-58 use a steel guitar ...
  21. ^ The Country Music Reader. Oxford University Press. 2 January 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-023373-0.
  22. ^ a b "Johnny Cash - Wide Open Road / Belshazah". Discogs. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  23. ^ Sheehy, Colleen Josephine; Swiss, Thomas (2009). Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World. U of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-6099-5.
  24. ^ https://books.google.com/books?id=0iAEAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22Wide+Open+Road%22+%22Johnny+Cash%22&pg=PA31
  25. ^ https://books.google.com/books?id=U0UEAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22Wide+Open+Road%22+%22Johnny+Cash%22&pg=PA52
  26. ^ https://books.google.com/books?id=h0UEAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22Wide+Open+Road%22+%22Johnny+Cash%22&pg=PA40
  27. ^ https://books.google.com/books?id=bkUEAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22Wide+Open+Road%22+%22Johnny+Cash%22&pg=PA36
  28. ^ https://books.google.com/books?id=rUUEAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22Wide+Open+Road%22+%22Johnny+Cash%22&pg=PA32
  29. ^ https://books.google.com/books?id=Y0UEAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22Wide+Open+Road%22+%22Johnny+Cash%22&pg=PA28
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