It was a Black Cadillac that drove you away....

“My father had demons... But the mark of his greatness as a human being and father is that he never inflicted his demons on others. He never took anything out on anyone. His problems were his own and you never felt that he tried to make them yours.”
Rosanne Cash


When my dad died in early 1998, I had at that point been writing and performing my own music for three years. Although he never heard me play, except the time I brought my guitar to his bedside at the nursing home, I thought it would be a fitting tribute to write a song to his memory. I couldn't. It's been eight years since he's gone, and I still can't.

That's why Rosanne Cash's stunning new album Black Cadillac is so moving to me. Cash was able to take not only the death of her father, but also the deaths of her mother and her stepmother, and turn her emotions into a collection of heartfelt, mature songs that never once become maudlin, self-pitying or anything but genuine expressions of love.

Take the title track, for example. It's a rolling, rocking, hard-edged song that starts out with an eerie recording of Rosanne as a baby (you hear Johnny saying, "Rosanne....say 'come on'") and ends with a trumpet sample similar to "Ring of Fire." It's about as perfect as a song gets, really. My favorite line: "It was a black sky of rain/none of it fell...one of us gets to go to heaven, one gets to stay here in hell." The song ends and, instead of feeling sorry for her, you feel somehow uplifted.

Ditto for the track "Radio Operator," that talks about Cash's father's experience listening for Russian spy transmissions during the Cold War. It's a rocking little tune with a very catchy chorus. Ditto for "Burn Down this Town," in which Cash talks about her rebellious teenage years to a bluesy backing track. On "World Without Sound," Cash delivers a scathing criticism of organized religion, prompted by her and her mother's disillusionment in the Catholic Church. Again, a rockabilly tune that swings along with a killer horn section.

This isn't feel-sorry-for-yourself music by any means. Even the two most touching ballads, "I Was Watching You," a song that left me weeping upon first listen; and "Good Intent," which takes Cash's personal history all the way back to the ship that brought her ancestors to America, don't depress the listener. Instead, like every track on this album, you listen. You listen to what she says; you listen to yourself as you react. And, if you're like me, you think about your own family relationships and wonder if you're really listening to your parents, your siblings, your children.

Black Cadillac is a mature work, for a mature listener. It's written by a woman, not a young girl. It's written by a person who has experienced great loss in a short period of time and has the poetry, the wit, the smarts and the grace to share it with us in a way that makes us think.

Now maybe I'll try again to write a song for Dad.

Best Rosanne Cash Albums:

1. Black Cadillac (2006)
2. Rules of Travel (2002)
3. 10 Song Demo (1997)