It was around this time that another American musician came on Saul’s radar. While negotiating further dates around an upcoming Carl Perkins show in London, manager Bob Neal brought up another possible client — a rising star named Johnny Cash. The charismatic young country singer had joined the Sun Records lineup in 1955 and was enjoying some popularity with his hit song “I Walk the Line,” written as an ode to his wife, Vivian Cash, to assuage her concerns about dalliances with other women on the road. This wasn’t the first time Saul had heard of Cash, who was on a whirlwind fifteen-day tour of Canada to promote his latest single, the rather saccharine “Ballad of a Teenage Queen.” Just a month prior, he had received complimentary tickets to Cash’s show at the Palace Pier in Toronto with an offer that, as a rising figure in the world of promotions, Saul would have a ringside table and be introduced to the crowd by the emcee from the stage.
There was no mistaking that Cash was swiftly becoming a hot act in Canada. Given the volatile nature of promotions — so much so that he eventually named his business Volatile Attractions, though that was more of a reference to the stock market — Saul needed a musician who was a sure thing. Maybe this Cash guy would fit the bill.26
3
WHEN SAUL MET JOHNNY
As with so many things in his life, Saul’s ascent in the world of music promotion was built on a foundation of research. In this case it meant regular trips to Heintzmann’s, the record store on Dundas Street, where he would walk his fingers through records for hours. It was a musical hub for not only London but also all the surrounding districts. At the epicentre of its teenage section stood Dave Roberts, a sixteen-year-old music aficionado with a deft ear cocked toward what was up-and-coming, who reigned over Heintzmann’s back counter and listening booths, where teens flocked to check out the latest records.
Initially a customer, Roberts made incessant musical requests that eventually landed him a job at the store after the employees realized he knew more about what the kids were listening to than they did. He was a smart kid, and had a deft handle on what was hip. From there he grew to become a source for radio DJs and promoters on which records were moving fast and who was going to be the next big thing. Clever enough to know what he didn’t know, it wasn’t long before Saul realized Roberts had what he needed.
“I knew a lot about what could make a hit and what didn’t, so I did get called on,” said Roberts. “Saul used me as a sounding board to say, ‘What’s cooking? What should we be doing?’”
Saul wanted to know about Johnny Cash, who first caught his ear when he heard “Five Feet High and Rising,” his ode to a childhood flood, on a jukebox a couple of years earlier. Bob Neal had set down a solid offer for an August 16 date for Cash, at the cost of $1,250, and he needed to know more. Primarily in charge of overseeing the pop section, Dave was the first to notice when hits like Cash’s “Walk the Line” began to make their crossover from country. The trend was clear, and it was Dave who first insisted that, as an avid listener of a variety of stations, like WSM out of Nashville, it was imperative that Saul look into expanding his promotions to include country musicians. The names of country stars like Merle Haggard, Johnny Horton, and Eddy Arnold were still unfamiliar to Saul, but that was about to change. In return for Dave’s help, Saul would often take the teenager out to shows with him in style, picking him up at his modest home in west London in a white fin-tailed Cadillac Eldorado. The image of Saul’s elegant car coasting to a stop outside Dave’s house was a sight the young man never forgot.
One night after Saul promoted a package show in Kitchener that featured Duane Eddy and the Rebels and Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Dave and Saul headed back to London and decided to stop to get something to eat. “We pulled into a restaurant along the highway. As we settled into a booth we looked across the restaurant and saw Buddy Holly and his band at another table. We then joined them for an after-show burger,” said Roberts. Shy and nervous, Buddy answered all those who directed questions at him with “Sir,” and it soon struck fifteen-year-old Dave that the singer did not seem to have any idea just how big a star he was.1
By 1958 Johnny Cash had officially joined Columbia Records, for whom he had been recording new songs all summer. Saul watched as the artist took the stage for a show in London. As an onstage presence, Johnny’s enigmatic electricity was unmistakable, and to see him was an experience that far surpassed his recorded material. Though still uncertain of himself, he commanded the stage in a manner that made it hard to look away. Not quite as pretty as Elvis, his dark hair and tall, lithe frame draped in white satin nonetheless cut a striking figure. Possessed of a charismatic darkness, it granted him a depth unlike other artists of his genre. Together with bassist Marshall Grant, with a face as happy and open as a Christmas ham, and guitarist Luther Perkins, eyes askance like a dog that had just eaten his master’s dinner, they painted quite a picture onstage. Though the music wasn’t as nuanced and technically complex as the music Saul typically favoured — the Tennessee Two’s musical abilities were rudimentary, and their stage presence stiff — that signature boom-chicka-boom sound, mixed with Johnny’s rich, unusual baritone, provided a certain warmth he could appreciate. It’s like the Bible, he thought. It does something for some people, and that’s fine. Most important, it was what the kids liked, and they were the ones who would follow Johnny like he was the Pied Piper into Saul’s restaurant.
Johnny Cash, backstage in London, Ontario, 1958.
Saul recognized potential when he saw it, and Cash had it in spades.
After the performance, Cash — in a large cowboy hat — kept to himself and glowered the entire time. When introduced to Saul backstage after the show, he “perfunctorily” dismissed him, Saul later recalled. It was a rejection Saul remembered as painful, as he didn’t usually seek out people and had made a special effort for Cash. Apparently the darkness Saul had sensed in the performer wasn’t just an act, and the two “did not hit it off at all.”2
The following year, Saul booked Johnny for a show at the Lucan Memorial Arena. After three twenty-five-minute sets, Johnny prepared to depart to Saul’s restaurant as agreed in the contract, though in this instance Johnny stipulated that his presence not be advertised in advance. Everything proceeded as planned, but before he and Marshall departed for the restaurant, they wanted to discuss finances with Saul, so the three men pushed into the arena’s cramped box office.3
Though it concerned only a trifling amount of cash, a difference in the range of forty dollars, the animosity that had merely simmered during Saul and Johnny’s first encounter erupted into an argument. The two haggled over interpretations regarding Johnny’s contract and whether advertising expenses were to be taken off the top prior to the performer’s cut being calculated (they were). The disagreement irked Saul, who considered himself a principled man who rarely made mistakes when it came to specifics. He was also hard-nosed, and wasn’t about to be pushed around by some young country singer, rising star or not.
Saul fiddled with a cufflink and stared at the men while he collected himself. He couldn’t help but reflect on all the piddling negotiations he had been required to hash out over recent years. The previous summer he had hosted Jerry Lee Lewis at a net loss in London, and two weeks earlier he had promoted hard-drinking honky-tonk singer Faron Young. Laid up for weeks afterward with hepatitis, Saul had been required to phone Young from his hospital bed to explain why the 15 percent non-residence tax for performers — which Young was refusing to pay —