Musicians Grace Potter, left, and Shooter Jennings appear onstage during Ovation’s TCA panel for “Johnny Cash: Song by Song” at the Beverly Hilton hotel on Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2012, in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The story of Cash’s vivid life is told

By Valerie Milano

Beverly Hills, CA (Hollywood Today) 10/3/12 – “Cash had a vivid life. He battled demons. Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost. It’s a story that we wanted to tell,” Senior Vice President of Programming told Hollywood Today of their new program on the infamous Johnny Cash, “Johnny Cash: Song by Song” on Ovation.

The story of Cash’s vivid life is told in six, half-hour segments, is presented through his art, “focuses on his life through the lens of that song, the impact of the song, what was going on in his life at that particular moment in time.”

Shooter Jennings, son of friend and the infamous Waylon Jennings told Hollywood Today, “He was actually my godfather. So I was lucky enough — I’m 33. When the “Highwayman” thing happened around ‘84. So I was like five, and all of our families went on the road.”

Jennings also spoke of the emotional connection with Cash’s music, “everybody relates to these songs. I mean, that’s what music is about anyway. You find something in a song that you relate to. So it’s — like, dissecting a song like that you end up kind of cracking the surface on a lot of things that relate to people, Cash, everything.”

In previous movies on Cash’s life Jennings felt he was shown “as a very intense, serious person. But Cash was, like, goofy. He, like, had a smile on his face all the time.”

Kris Salva explained of their song selection, of the 1,500 songs from which they had  to choose, they “looked for the songs that were really seminal in terms of what was happening in his life, his connection with June Carter Cash, you know, “Ring of Fire,” “Walk the Line.” Moments in his life where he had kind of hit a low point and came up again.”

A few songs that were not selected but were close to the hearts of those involved in the project include: Shooter Jennings “ Man in Black”  because he “love how he spun that song lyrically, and what he says in that. “I’d like to wear a rainbow every day.”

Grace Potter chose ““In Your Mind.” That is just stunning to me. And I don’t know,

it just resonates with me as an artist personally. It’s the kind of song that I would cover and want to make my own, because he just attaches himself to every word in such a way.”

“And I guess for me, not that it’s one of the deeper songs, but just one important in my own love of him is “Get Rhythm,” which is a song that — because, again, it sort of bothers me when people don’t realize that he has a connection with rock-and-roll”.