It’s hard to even imagine what you would ask the legendary Johnny Cash if you ever had the opportunity.
I mean, I could think of at least a dozen questions I have right off my head, but unfortunately, that’s not something we’re able to do anymore since his passing almost 20 years ago in 2003.
But ’90s country legend Travis Tritt did get the change to pick his brain decades back, and it’s a pretty cool story.
He recently recounted the incredible advice the Man in Black gave him early on his career during an interview with Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson on Tucker Carlson Today.
Travis had his bus parked behind the Ryman one day, and that’s when he got a call from his friend, Marty Stuart, telling him Johnny wanted to meet him:
“Marty Stuart called me, and we were parked in our buses behind the Ryman Auditorium. And Marty Stuart called me and said,
‘Hey, Johnny Cash is over on my bus, he wants to meet you… and I go over and I meet him. And I’m sitting there with him, and he was just so nice and so courteous.”
But he knew this was his chance to ask the icon himself about how he was able to make such an incredible career in the music industry, so he worked up the nerve to ask him one question:
“And so we’re talking, and out of the blue, I don’t know what gave me the courage to say it, but I looked at John, and he said ‘Don’t call me John, call me JR. All my friends call me JR.’
And I said ‘Okay, JR’, I said, ‘Let me ask you something.’ I said ‘I saw you do something last night that was absolutely amazing.’
And I told him the story of what I had seen, about how all of these people had just known he was in the room. I said, ‘How do you do that?'”
And Travis is referring to the first time he saw Johnny in person at a county music radio seminar in Nashville back in 1989, where he watched Johnny completely command the room just by walking in, not even saying a word.
Apparently, Johnny would get pretty shy about compliments like that, but Travis pressed him on it:
“And John was the kind of person, if you embarrassed him, he’d get real humble on you, you know?
Head down, you know, if there was a rock on the ground, he’d kick it, you know, that kind of thing. And I said, ‘No, JR, I’m serious.'”
And ya might wanna grab a pen and paper for what Johnny tells him, because especially in this day and age of social media, I think the advice can go for just about anybody.
It also explains everything about what made Johnny such an immortal legend with a presence you usually only read about in books:
“When I said that, his eyes came up and met mine, and he said ‘There’s a little thing in our industry that has been forgotten. It’s called mystique.’
He said, ‘Don’t ever wear out your welcome, don’t ever forget where you came from and always be humble, always be kind to people, but always keep a little something back that you don’t show everybody.'”
Amen to that, Johnny. If there’s anyone who would know a thing or two about that, it’s certainly him.
It’s pretty incredible to hear Travis tell the story himself, though, so make sure you check that out here:
And you have to see Travis playing an acoustic version of Johnny’s absolute classic “Walk The Line” at the Grand Ole Opry back in the day, mullet and all:
