The Johnny Cash Children’s Album
Dear readers, if you know of another children’s album that contains multiple allusions to the paranormal, a little ditty about a mercy killing, and a reference to interspecies breastfeeding, please send it my way. Because as far as I know, Johnny Cash is the only one to have done this, and the result is pure brilliance, as well as the material for many hours of deep discussion with your little ones about things that really MATTER, damn it. This recording is full of guns and death, and death, and, um… death, and two ghosts, and a pretty lady nursing two orphaned bear cubs, whose mama bear the song’s hero had shot; even the father of another song’s narrator (a goose, but we identify with him nonetheless) gets hunted down and shot. This is some heavy stuff. But after giving this album a good tenure in your music player, your children will understand death, or at least have some songs to sing about it, when the going gets rough:
“Mom, I’m feeling a little down about mortality.”
“Oh, sweet little son, I’m sorry to hear of your troubles. Let’s sing ‘Tiger Whitehead,’ shall we?”
People, I bid ye: cast off your Barney recordings and bring forth unto yourselves the Johnny Cash Children’s Album. (Note: Don’t bother with Track 5: “Miss Tara.” As the token “girl song” on the album, it is pure sentimental drivel, I am so sorry to say.) “Oooooh, I’m not sure about that, I’m just really not sure,” you say. Well, I say to you: silence your trivial concerns, and just listen to the magic. LISTEN!
“Nasty Dan”
Well, Nasty Dan is basically a dickhead with a sadistic streak who doesn’t bathe. But somehow Johnny Cash makes it work. Dan goes around just generally being a nuisance and wishing bad things upon everyone until he finds a “nasty girl” (I assume he meant “woman,” but it is a difficult word to rhyme, I guess…) with whom he sets up house and procreates, and then he is apparently happy and not so nasty after that. That’s it in a nutshell. All this to a nice, laid-back, rockabilly accompaniment. Beats “Wheels on the Bus” hands-down!
“Tiger Whitehead”
This song is my personal favorite. Tiger Whitehead is a bear hunter. He is a strong yet compassionate man, who is probably also pretty hot, since a pretty young lady named Sally Garland basically tracks him down at work one day and declares she’s going to “have” him since he is the best bear hunter around. One day he orphans two bear cubs, and, being the strong yet compassionate man he is, he brings them home to Sally, whom he has apparently married by then, and who then proceeds to breastfeed the two cubs, being the strong and compassionate and (I assume) lactating woman that she is. Tandem nursing two bear cubs? Yes, please! This is perhaps my new favorite song lyric of all time: “Once he left two bear cubs orphaned, but he brought them right on home, and Sally nursed the two bear cubs upon her breast.” As you do.
The song continues to follow Tiger into his later years, when, upon the eve of his death, he has killed 99 bears. Some random guys, apparently trying to kiss up to Tiger, trap a bear for him to shoot — it would have been his 100th — but he refuses, saying, rather magnanimously, “Just let him go. If he ain’t running wild, he won’t be mine.” Another point for Tiger. So then he dies, having only killed 99 bears. But, at the end of the song, we learn that people in the area have since been sighting an old grey headed ghost wandering through the woods — Tiger Whitehead — searching for his 100th bear. The restless undead!!!! Speechless? Me too. Hooray for Johnny — you did it again! Although, I’m still at the stage of coughing loudly whenever the line about Tiger’s ghost roaming through the hills comes up. I just don’t want Lander to associate the woods and hills with the restless undead. Yet. Leave that fun to his teen years.
“The Call of the Wild.”
The Long Toms will get you from the Old Bayou=Along comes a kitchen from the old Bayou
Despite the many merits of this song (a catchy tune with nice guitar riffs that backs lyrics pertaining to the biological, geographical, cultural, ecological, and spiritual), my initial concerns about “The Call of the Wild” were twofold:
1. This line, which recurs several times throughout the song, as it’s part of the chorus: “The Long Toms’ll getcha from the old Bayou.” After doing some research, I learned that Long Toms are a type of firearm. And here is the problem: Lander, every night as he is going to sleep, asks me and/or Amos, in his little voice piping through the darkness: “Is anything going to get me?” To which we always answer, “No, no, sweetie, you’re safe and sound here. Nothing is going to get you.” Okay. So now there is a song — a song we now listen to ALL THE TIME — talking about something that is going to “getcha” (if you fly too low — don’t fuck up! Or you’ll die!!) What to do? When he asks if anything is going to get him at bedtime, will we now have to answer, “No, sweetie, nothing is going to get you — not even the Long Toms. There are no Long Toms in here. Nor are there any immediately outside this residence, within shooting range…as far as we are aware. The Long Toms are not going to get you (fingers crossed).”??
Much to my relief, Lander has interpreted the line as, “Along comes a kitchen from the old Bayou.” Which captures the spirit of the line, really, as I’m guessing that the hunted geese will end up in someone’s kitchen eventually. So I let Lander’s interpretation be. It captures the point without the “getcha” trigger. Done, and done.
2. In this song, the father of the narrator (a goose) gets shot dead — by a Long Tom, of course — and it is implied that the narrator takes over as leader of the southward expedition to the Old Bayou. So, there is the topic of dead animal parents that comes up yet a second time on this album. This doesn’t happen on Barney albums, I bet. How do you talk to little ones about daddy goose getting shot? Well, readers, I don’t know, because I’m still coughing really loudly when this line comes up.
“Old Shep.”
Well, Old Shep was a dog, and he was the narrator’s best friend — they grew up playing all over God’s green earth together — the dog even rescued the boy from DROWNING at some point, I kid you not. But then, Old Shep got, well… old. “Then what did the song’s narrator have to do?” you ask. I won’t spoil it for you, dear readers, but I’ll give you a hint: it involves a gun, and in the end Old Shep goes to doggy heaven. Still waiting for questions from Lander on this one.
“Grandfather’s Clock”
This is an old chestnut about a grandfather clock that belongs to the grandfather of the song’s narrator, built on the day grandfather was born, and it stops working on the day grandfather dies — except for one last chime, when grandfather’s soul is about to depart for the afterlife. Of course. This very thing happened when my own grandfather died, I kid you not. Except in our case, the clock made a chicken sound. But I digress. What I like about this is that this story could come across as spooky or creepy, but the tone of the music and Johnny’s attitude about it is, “Hey, kids! Check out this cool story (cough, cough, cough — about a dead guy and his haunted clock).”
So, dear readers, I hope you are now rushing to your local record store to buy up any and all copies of the Johhny Cash Children’s Album. Because we all have to encounter the topics of death and the restless undead eventually. And why not do it with a song?
