It’s always cool to see a story about country greats giving each other a hard time.
Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson had quite the intriguing friendship. Kristofferson owed a lot to Cash after the “Man in Black” insisted that Kris sit in on one of his recording sessions… when Kris was just a janitor at the recording studio. Another memorable story between the two was when Kristofferson landed a helicopter in Cash’s yard to pitch him the song “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”
Needless to say, there was an interesting dynamic between the two country music greats.
That was on display when Kristofferson was a guest on The Dick Cavett Show in December of 1980. As you probably already know, Kristofferson was both an accomplished country music artist and a well-respected movie star once his career really got rolling. So he was partly on the show to discuss his new movie at the time, Heaven’s Gate.
While he was on the show, fielding questions about his career, his new film, and how he left Oxford, Johnny Cash came up. And Kris just so happened to have a telegram (think of it as an ancient text message) that he had gotten from Johnny earlier that day. Kristofferson ended up reading it while on air:
“I got a telegram from him today about a screening thing. He says, ‘Dear Kris, June and I wanted to attend the private screening of Heaven’s Gate tomorrow night, but we thought it was going to be tonight. We won’t be able to be there because we’re on our way to Jamaica. We’re gonna take about 10 days away from it all there.'”
Johnny and June on a Jamaica vacation? That sounds like a country song right there.
Kris went on to read the rest of the telegram, which hilariously featured a couple of jabs from Cash saying that Kris looked old in another one of his TV appearances. The “Ring of Fire” singer even suggested that Kristofferson could benefit from dying his hair:
“‘June and I did the 20/20 show talking about you. Hope we didn’t say anything stupid. Good luck on the film. You looked great on Good Morning America this morning. Thanks for mentioning my name. You still look older than I do. Did you ever try color back? Just look at Ronald Reagan. Your friend, Johnny Cash.'”
Love that.
Kris clearly took it all in stride, and why wouldn’t he? Not everyone was lucky enough to be on a telegram basis with the legendary Johnny Cash. You can view the comical clip, as well as the rest of the interview, in the video below:
