June Carter Cash

Wildwood Flower's liner notes are reason enough to recommend the final recording by June Carter Cash, who died from complications of heart surgery in April. Penned by stepdaughter and songwriter Rosanne Cash, they eulogize Carter Cash as a unique and loving mother and musician who for nearly 40 years nurtured the art and stormy soul of one of country music's most storied performers. And though she was an accomplished Autoharpist, writer of both songs and books, and a descendant of country music's first family, Carter Cash will best be remembered as the wife of Johnny Cash. "If being a wife were a corporation, June would have been the CEO. It was her most treasured role," Rosanne writes. "My daddy has lost his dearest companion, his musical counterpart, his soul mate and best friend."

Related Content

• Hot for Teacher
  September 22, 2011
• This Week in Music History: June 20 through 26
  June 20, 2011
• Winter's Bone: Music From the Motion Picture Performed Live Last Night at Mesa Arts Center, 6-8-2011
  June 9, 2011
• Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash
  June 11, 2009
• Love will be a many-splintered thing if you put any of these 12 songs on your Valentine's Day mix
  February 14, 2008

More About

• June Carter Cash
• Rosanne Cash
• Johnny Cash
• John Carter Cash
• Carlene Carter

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Yet Wildwood Flower shows us how much country music itself lost with Carter Cash's passing. Recorded over a six-month period, from late 2002 to March of this year, the album is a musical memorial to a life shaped equally by music and family. Wildwood Flower abounds in world-wizened visions of songs she performed thousands of times over the past six decades. Most of the tunes were penned by uncle A.P. Carter -- including "Keep on the Sunny Side," "Storms Are on the Ocean" and "Sinking in the Ocean." But Carter Cash's individual spirit colors them all. The intro to "Big Yellow Peaches," the sole Carter Cash composition included here, is a humorous riff on Lee Marvin that suggests the wit and fearlessness of the woman who co-wrote "Ring of Fire."

Wildwood Flower is as roughly rendered and scratchy as a historic photograph. Produced by son John Carter Cash, the album eschews smooth production in favor of familial intimacy. Some of the songs, including the spare, spooky "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone," were taped in June and Johnny's bedroom in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Cameos by members of the ever-sprawling Carter/Cash lineage -- including daughters Rosanne and Carlene Carter, granddaughter Tiffany Anastasia Lowe and, of course, Johnny, who sings back-up on almost every track -- lend the album the casual feel of a living-room concert. Backed throughout by Norman and Nancy Blake, who share duties on acoustic guitar, mandolin and cello, Carter Cash carries her years in her voice: It's craggy and often flat, but utterly sincere from the first note to the last. Carter Cash is gone, but Wildwood Flower ensures the circle, indeed, will remain intact.