‘Love, God, Murder’ Looks Into the Heart of the Man in Black

Johnny Cash has never served hard time. Aside from a few nights in local jails--most during his ‘60s-era amphetamine addiction--he’s never been behind bars, and the only prisons he’s seen from the inside are the ones where he headlined as an entertainer.

That always shocks Cash’s fans, many of whom “refuse to accept the nonfelonious version of me,” he writes in “Cash,” his autobiography. Which is understandable. Anyone can claim “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” as Cash does on “Folsom Prison Blues,” but only the Man in Black owns a baritone steely and gothic enough to turn those words into a plausible confession. Never mind that his greatest real-life transgression was accidentally starting a forest fire on a California wildlife refuge.

*

This gift of all-purpose conviction gleams throughout “Love, God, Murder” (Columbia), a new three-CD retrospective. The concept here is to divide Cash’s career into a trinity of sorts, with a “Love” disc for his romantic side, a “God” disc for his gospel career and a “Murder” disc containing his greatest hits, so to speak.

This isn’t a best-of collection. (If it were, “A Boy Named Sue,” one of Cash’s few crossover pop hits, would have been included.) It is instead a summation and a character study, though the character it studies isn’t merely that of Johnny Cash.

The singer is obsessed by the notion that the heart of a man--and his antiheroes are always men--can be divided against itself: capable of senseless criminality one moment and salvation-seeking the next, monogamy one minute and philandering the next. The killers in Cash’s songs are trigger-happy and erratic, and sometimes they think their victims had it coming because they were double-dealing or cruel or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the shooters buckle with guilt nearly as soon as a body hits the ground. They pray a lot. They realize they deserve to be locked up.

“I know I had it coming/I know I can’t be free,” the narrator sings at the end of “Folsom,” while listening to a passing train from a prison cell.

As filmmaker Quentin Tarantino states in liner notes to the “Murder” disc, it’s Cash’s focus on remorse that separates his crime sprees from those of the gangsta rappers who, whether they realize it, owe a debt to this country boy. Unlike DMX or Big Pun, bravado for its own sake doesn’t interest Cash. He’s fascinated by the aftermath of bravado, by moral agony and shame.

His role in defining the thug life is most obvious in the pair of live albums he recorded during the ‘60s, “At Folsom Prison” and “At San Quentin,” which are pro-inmate to their core. Part of this affinity is undoubtedly about image-making and brand-building, but it jibes perfectly with his deeply liberal notion that even the shabbiest souls are capable of regret and therefore deserve a shot at redemption.

On “Murder,” Cash also covers “Highway Patrolman” by Bruce Springsteen, one of Cash’s more obvious musical heirs. And there’s a live version of “Cocaine Blues,” a classic about a guy who “shot his baby down” and then ran, without success, from the law.

Cash started his career as a country singer in 1955 with Sun Records but quit the Memphis label a few years later.

Cash signed with Columbia and cut dozens of best-selling gospel songs, most coated with a fine rockabilly lacquer. The songs exalt Jesus (“It Was Jesus,” “When He Comes”) or tell Bible stories (“Belshazzar”).

And there’s plenty of talk about consequences. On “What on Earth Will You Do (for Heaven’s Sake),” Cash argues that anybody hoping to enter the Pearly Gates ought to be prepared for a little work in this world. “Did you feed the poor in spirit and befriend the persecuted?” he asks. “Did you show the bound how all the chains can break?”

Coping with love is every bit as perilous as defying the Lord. “I Walk the Line,” one of his first and most famous hits, is a celebration of romance, but mostly it’s about a guy willing himself to fidelity. (Cash wrote it while on the road in Texas, trying to steer clear of temptation.) “I keep a close watch on this heart of mine/I keep my eyes wide open all the time,” he sings.

*

“Ring of Fire,” a 1963 country tune festooned with Spanish horns, casts love as a variation of Hell. The lesser-known but equally haunting “A Little at a Time,” a B side from 1962, finds Cash pleading with a girlfriend to break up with him in manageable increments: “Walk away slow, like you don’t want to/ I’ll put up a fight but I’ll be all right/ If you stop loving me a little at a time.”

On the solo acoustic “I Tremble for You,” a previously unreleased track from 1967, Cash plays a suitor worn out by an unsuccessful pursuit, a guy who treats “shame like an old friend from home that I can lean on.”

Fittingly, the only false notes to be found in these 48 songs are the upbeat ones. On “While I’ve Got It on My Mind,” Cash is home watching a ballgame, feeling fine and suddenly frisky. His wife, cooking blackberry jam in the kitchen, is about to learn the meaning of afternoon delight.

There is only one thing on Cash’s mind. Which just isn’t his style.