America Was Tired and Divided. So Johnny Cash Wrote a Song About an Old Flag, and It Came Out Faster Than He Could Write It Down

In 1974, America was going through a hard time.

The war in Vietnam had divided the country. The Watergate scandal was in the news every day. Many people were losing faith.

Johnny Cash loved his country, and it troubled him to see it hurting. So he wrote a song to remind people what the flag stood for.

He called it “Ragged Old Flag.”

It isn’t really sung. Johnny tells it, in that deep voice of his, as a story about a stranger passing through a small town who sits on a bench next to an old man. The stranger remarks that the flag on the courthouse looks a little worn. The old man tells him why.

He goes through the battles the flag has seen, from Washington crossing the Delaware all the way to Vietnam, and everything it has survived since.

Johnny said the song “came out faster than I could write it down.” It became the title track of his 1974 album, “Ragged Old Flag.”

He kept performing it for years. In this video, he tells the story again on March 14, 1990, at Nassau Coliseum in New York. He was on tour with his friends Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, the supergroup known as the Highwaymen.

Listen for the last line, the one about being “mighty proud.”

Does someone in your family have a flag folded from a loved one’s service? Tell us about them in the comments.