Sometimes, the songs that best resonate with a songwriter aren’t the ones that bring them tremendous commercial success, and Johnny Cash’s unlikely favorite song is no exception. From “Folsom Prison Blues” to “Tennessee Flat Top Box” to “Boy Named Sue,” Cash had no small shortage of songs to choose from when determining which he liked best.
But back in 1982, Cash didn’t bring up any of these tracks when 60 Minutes’ Harry Reasoner asked him to select his favorite. Although, Cash did give an honorable mention to the song that people would likely expect him to say.
Johnny Cash’s Unlikely Favorite Song
While sitting at a red picnic table in the Tennessee woods, Johnny Cash and 60 Minutes correspondent Harry Reasoner discussed the country icon’s prolific music career, including his best-ofs and worst-ofs. One of the most interesting parts of the 1982 interview was when Reasoner asked Cash his favorite song he had ever written, to which the Man in Black had an interesting reply.
“Well, I think I should probably say “I Walk the Line,” because it was my biggest seller,” Cash began with a smile, referencing the breakthrough hit he wrote for his first wife, Vivian Liberto Cash. “But the one that really means more to me, that says it more for me in my life is “Pickin’ Time.” The message of the song is a good time’s coming for us all. Pickin’ time.”
The Johnny Cash deep cut is the fourth track off his November 3, 1958, release, The Fabulous Johnny Cash, which was the first album he released with Columbia Records after leaving Sun Records. “Pickin’ Time” is just how Cash described it—a preview of “good times” when farmers are harvesting their cotton in the bottom land, the money is flowing, and rural life becomes easier and happier, if only for a brief moment.
How The Country Reconciled His Multiple Images
“Pickin’ Time” is a far cry from other Johnny Cash tracks that are rough around the edges. The Fabulous Johnny Cash B-side features no murders, convicts, jail time, cheating, or otherwise. By all accounts, it’s a wholesome song about a farmer with a good wife and them kids of mine, who attends church and works hard to grow crops that he can sell later in the year. It’s not outlaw country, it’s country country.
Harry Reasoner brought up this discrepancy during his 1982 interview with Cash. After all, Reasoner posited, wouldn’t it be hard to reconcile the difference between “inspirational” songs like “Pickin’ Time” and “low down and dirty” tunes like “Folsom Prison Blues?” Cash, clad in knee-high, lace-up boots, a denim button-up, and a gold chain, quickly shook his head no.
“Roy Orbison had a line in a song called “My Best Friend,” and in it was a line that says, A diamond is a diamond and a stone is a stone, but man is part good and part bad. I recognize the fact that I’m part good and part bad,” Cash said matter-of-factly. Indeed, while we might associate the Man in Black with his darker musical offerings, to the man himself, he was always a country boy from Arkansas, waiting for pickin’ time to come back around.
Photo by ITV/Shutterstock
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