On this day ABC presented The Johnny Cash Show. Cash opened each show, and its regulars included members of his touring troupe, June Carter Cash (his wife) and the Carter Family, The Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins, and The Tennessee Three, with Australian-born musical director-arranger-conductor Bill Walker. The Statler Brothers performed brief comic interludes. The show started with an hour-long tryout offered by ABC as a summer replacement for their Saturday night variety extravaganza The Hollywood Palace. While Cash had a large degree of freedom, he had to accept some compromises by hosting showbiz royalty like Bob Hope, George Gobel, Kirk Douglas, Burl Ives, Peggy Lee and Lorne Greene. They gave the show gravitas that satisfied both advertisers and the network. Cash persisted in the face of ABC network anxieties on several occasions. He refused to cut the word stoned from Kris Kristoffersons Sunday Morning Coming Down, he stood by his Christian faith despite network anxieties, and persisted in bringing on Pete Seegerwhose anti-Vietnam War song on another network had caused a firestorm. He premiered his Man in Black song on an episode taped at Nashvilles Vanderbilt University campus. The show was canceled in 1971 as part of ABCs involvement in the so-called rural purge in which all three major broadcast networks eliminated rural and older skewing programs. The purge also affected ABCs The Lawrence Welk Show. In 1976, CBS ran a revival of the show, Johnny Cash and Friends, as a replacement series for four weeks from August 29 to September 20, 1976. The new show was taped at the Grand Old Opry in Nashville. youtu.be/z_WsvGlQrt8
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 11:52:03 +0000
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