As Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir states in one, “Every artist of any stripe is first and foremost a storyteller. And of course his regular material is in there too, but you get a certain portrait of him that’s not his conventional regular show.”Īnd while Johnny is famously known for his country flair, we cannot underestimate Johnny Cash’s influence on psychedelic music, or music in general, as is made evident in the personal writings included with the Cash release.
So you get this document of his musical life. I don’t think he played a "Ballad of Ira Hayes” as a regular thing, but he did that night. And the result," Dennis adds, “Was that Cash felt it wasn’t a regular show so he could be a little more loose and bring in songs he wouldn’t ordinarily, songs that he was not doing as a regular part of his set, like a couple of Dylan songs, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, and one of the earliest known live recordings of “One Too Many Mornings”. (The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Big Brother and the Holding Company.) Ron Rakow, (manager of the Grateful Dead at the time) made a last second offer inviting Johnny Cash to come to the Carousel, creating an add-on to the end of Johnny’s American tour for a completely different market, mainly a bunch of hippies on a Wednesday night in San Francisco. It was being run by an unconventional group of people at the Carousel. In the words of Dennis McNally, longtime publicist of the Grateful Dead and author of, A Long Strange Trip, “The Johnny Cash show is a fascinating show.
With the Johnny Cash, Live at The Carousel April, 24th 1968 release from The Owsley Stanley Foundation’s Bear’s Sonic Journals collection, we are not only introduced to Johnny Cash in a completely different light but also taken into the extraordinary mind and innovation of Owsley Stanley. In this case, two historic characters, Johnny Cash and Owsley “Bear” Stanleycollide with Haight-Ashbury’s famously historic venue, The Carousel, in one of the most historic times in music history, 1968. Sometimes from within the musical world the cosmos comes together in just such a way, at just such a time that it produces something truly special.