8.02.2008

Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music

I would have missed this if I wouldn't have checked out The FRREKBASS Blog http://freekbass.blogspot.com/

P.O.V. Revives Classic 1969 Portrait of “Johnny Cash: The Man, His World,
His Music,” Tuesday, Aug. 5 on PBS

Film Captures Cash on the Road, on Stage and Behind the Scenes Fresh on the Heels of His Breakthrough “Folsom Prison” Album; June Carter Cash, Bob Dylan, Carl Perkins Featured

“…a rousing masterpiece.” – Rolling Stone Magazine


When the Man in Black died in September 2003, he closed an original and captivating chapter in the great American songbook. Even as death approached, Johnny Cash displayed the hardscrabble grit, authentic individualism and knack for doing the unexpected that had made him an American icon — his powerful video cover of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt,” showing him visibly ailing but resolute, was nominated for six MTV Video Music Awards that year. It had been a long, maybe improbable, certainly American journey for a sharecropper’s son from Kingsland, Ark., and it had more ups and downs and surprising turns than a country road.

In 1968, Robert Elfstrom (who went on to an award-winning career as a cinematographer and director) had the insight to make a documentary on Cash — and the luck to strike up a warm and candid rapport with the temperamental singer. By then, Cash, who had begun his career in the late ‘50s, had won over country music audiences with his uniquely intense "underdog" ballads, and was experiencing the first of several crossover successes with Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. He had also been through early bouts of “fast living” — alcohol and drugs — and recently married the great love and stabilizing force in his life, June Carter (of the Carter Family singers). Elfstrom’s Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music, made vérité-style over several months in late ’68 and early ’69, both on and off the road, remains the definitive portrait of a great American troubadour at the peak of his powers.

Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music has its national broadcast premiere on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2008 at 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), as part of the 21st season of public television’s award-winning P.O.V. series. American television’s longest-running independent documentary series, P.O.V. is public television’s premier showcase for point-of-view, nonfiction films. P.O.V. received a 2007 Special News & Documentary Emmy Award for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking.


Source: Press Release

No comments: