One of the most moving moments of the night came when his eldest daughter, Rosanne Cash, walked out to sing “Tennessee Flat-Top Box.”
Johnny wrote and recorded the song in the early 1960s, when Rosanne was only a little girl. It tells the story of a dark-haired boy who plays his guitar in a little cabaret near the Texas border, then disappears, only to turn up years later with a song on the hit parade.
Rosanne recorded her own version for her 1987 album King’s Record Shop. Funny enough, she had grown up hearing it, but it was her then-husband, Rodney Crowell, who told her that her father had written it. She later said singing it “was like singing a lullaby that you’d heard through your childhood.”
Her version went to No. 1 on the country charts. Johnny was so proud that he took out an ad in Billboard magazine, calling her success with the record “one of my life’s greatest fulfillments.”
So when Rosanne sang it at the Ryman just weeks after losing him, the song meant more than ever. She is joined by guitarists Randy Scruggs and John Leventhal, and she sings it with spirit and joy rather than sorrow.
It feels like a daughter saying thank you to her dad in the best way she knows how, with his own song.
Do you remember Johnny Cash singing this one? Share this with someone who loves the Cash family.
