Here’s an unusual pair of singers: Joni Mitchell performing the song “Long Black Veil” with Johnny Cash on his television show.
The history of the song from Wikipedia. It’s been covered many times (see a version by Neil Young here, and one by Rod Stewart here).
“Long Black Veil” is a 1959 country ballad, written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin and originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell.
It is told from the point of view of a man falsely accused of murder and executed. He refuses to provide an alibi, since on the night of the murder he was having an extramarital affair with his best friend’s wife, and would rather die and take their secret to his grave than admit the truth. The chorus describes the woman’s mourning visits to his gravesite, wearing a long black veil and enduring a wailing wind.
In 2019, Frizzell’s version of “Long Black Veil” was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
You can hear Lefty Frizzell’s preserved version here.
This was from the second episode of the Johnny Cash Show on June 21, 1969. He was 37 and she was only 26, but had already released two albums. They both get a chance to sing lead, and it’s a sad but beautiful duet. There’s a bit of pre-song banter, too:
Lagniappe: Here they perform Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country“; one site says this aired on October 7, 1970.
Of course one YouTube video leads to another, and here’s Dylan himself doing a duet of the same song with Johnny Cash. I’d almost forgotten about this Dylan song, but it made me realize once again what a great songwriter he was. One site says this was on the first episode of the Johnny Cash Show on May 1, 1969.
h/t: Greg Mayer
Comment by Greg Mayer
I don’t think people appreciate how much Cash in particular, and country music in general, were intertwined with rock, folk, blues, pop, etc. up until the early 70s. Country then became a world unto itself, in part a reactionary counter culture; other genres, too, became largely self-referential. (Beyonce’s “Cowboy Carter” is not a renewal of fruitful cross-communication. I did like Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”, which while more of an homage than a reinterpretation, did highlight the connections of country and folk.)
I did a WEIT post years ago touching on the interconnections of country and rock, featuring Cash’s very-late career cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”; if you haven’t listened to that cover lately, I urge you to do so.
(Jerry found the Johnny-Joni duets; what I added to the post was finding a better version of one of them.)
GCM
I recently encountered Cash’s country-gospel ballad The Man Comes Around. He sure has the perfect voice-of-doom.
Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons kept the connection with rock, folk, and pop alive in the seventies, and in Harris’s case, onward. And then there are the Skaggs, Ricky and Randy…
This was about 5wks before she appeared at the Atlantic City Pop Festival. She started into her (IIRC) first song, got maybe 15sec into it, became overwhelmed by something and said she couldn’t continue, and that was it. Was anyone else there who remembers that?
I’ll throw in one of my favorite versions of The Long Black Veil from the Chieftains’ album of the same name (I think), with a certain Mick doing the vocals. The whole album is great, IMO, featuring collaborations with many well known musicians: Sting, Ry Cooder, Mark Knopfler, Van Morrison, and others.
Great album…”The Foggy Dew” is probably my favorite…with the incomparable Sinead.
And I’d forgotten how many collaboration albums they did until I looked at my (very) dusty CD rack…Another Country with Willie, Chet, EmmyLou, etc.
Tears of Stone, with Joni and Bonnie Raitt, Sinead, Mary-Chapin Carpenter and other female vocalists. Voice of Ages with some more modern Indie-type groups.
Quite an opus.
I hear this exact recording all the time on my subscription – lots of Chieftains gems with famous singers! Look for Sinead O’Connor singing The Foggy Dew
Her voice is BEAU-TI-FUL on this … I’m getting goosebumps just writing this… one of those tunes that just … such serene, focused power and strength …
I won’t put a link, but please just try to look it up!
Dylan still is a great songwriter – he’s been on a winning streak since 1989
Wow, Joni and Johnny make a great duet. I had no idea, even though I am fairly familiar with her life. She’s my favorite singer. And Johnny Cash was my grandfather’s favorite singer. I remember watching Johnny’s show with him when I was a young child. “Burning ring of fire”….
Three most famous people from Arkansas: Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Bill Clinton. Two out three ain’t bad.
Nice. I know this song from the cover that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds did, also a great version (Cave and the Bad Seeds of course later did an entire album of Murder Balads which is great).
Here’s where the music subscription fails – I can get Cash, but not the TV show.
In the old days I could at least set the tape recorder up against the TV speaker – I actually love the low quality and sporadic noises, like someone saying “hey what the hell are you doing to the TV?!” that ends up in the final recording…
So subscriptions don’t really let you put your own stuff in. A real gut punch.
This is among my favourite songs, especially as played by The Band. This is Rick Danko’s mournful version, from the 1970 Festival Express tour.