100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #17 Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire

Released: 1963

To be clear, the number of artists who could walk away from Ring of Fire with their image not only intact but somehow enhanced was precisely one, and that one was Johnny Cash. The phrase applies like a pitch black glove, not only because it was written by June Carter about her desire for Cash, but because the singer boldly risked provoking Nashville by the heresy of adding in some Tex-Mex to the arrangement for good measure.

Carter had worked with Merle Kilgour on the tune in 1962 and then handed it off to her sister Anita, only for it flop. Cash bided his time, telling her there would be a period of grace before he stepped in. As if by fate, the Mariachi trumpet idea came to him in a dream, and despite the oil-and-water premise, it provided the light against which he could cast such remarkable shade.

Everything that made him almost unique and somehow apart from the pretenders was woven dexterously into Ring of Fire, from it’s elemental simplicity to the overwhelming sense that damnation was always just around the next bend. In anyone else’s hands it would’ve been a novelty, but Johnny Cash always had a little help from above – or below.