Their pranks ran the gamut from dropping water balloons, eggs, and furniture from hotel balconies to more complex antics, like tying all the doors on a hotel floor together with rope, or painting the doors (or sometimes an entire hotel room) a different colour. On two separate occasions they axed down the wall between their rooms and flushed a cherry bomb down the plumbing — which took out an entire wall of toilets below.
A long-running joke of Marshall Grant’s was to sit at a long diner counter, order a big piece of pie with a mountain of meringue, dig in his fork, and then slam it with his hand to splatter the person next to him. On one early tour, the person next to him happened to be Saul, who was mortified. As they left the diner and returned to the road in two cars, Johnny asked Saul to speed up next to Marshall’s vehicle so that he could lob pies at him. In retaliation, Marshall handed the wheel to another driver and sped past, blasting Saul with a cap-and-ball pistol that he had loaded with baloney. Thoroughly rattled, Saul pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and asked one of the other passengers to drive. It was like nothing he had ever encountered. If he thought the Paikin family was charmingly unbridled, these men were like wild animals.
“Saul was completely mortified by the deal because that was his territory where we worked those shows: Peterborough, Kitchener, Sudbury. He was so straitlaced, he couldn’t imagine anyone doing that,” remembered Johnny Western. “He’d never seen anything like that. He was used to ladies and gentlemen, and there weren’t any on that tour.”
Saul Holiff, Luther Perkins, Gordon Terry, and Johnny Cash on tour in 1962, having a bite to eat at a roadside diner in San Antonio, Texas.
As he grew closer to Cash, Saul also learned to keep his distance; he began to book himself in at separate hotels and avoided the mayhem backstage by hovering about the box office, where he could keep a keen eye on audience numbers and the night’s takings. The all-cash world of promotions in those days was notorious for rip-offs, an aspect of the business he loathed. In his mind, business dealings were to be undertaken in good faith, and he adhered to a sense of honesty in such negotiations with a near-spiritual reverence. It was the grease that kept the entire machine running.
Two days later, Johnny replied to Saul’s message on letterhead that read, “A Few Very Rural, Badly Phrased But Well Meant Words From Johnny Cash.” Typed across the bottom of each page were the words Singer — Song Writer — Guitar Picker — Cotton Picker. He began by addressing Saul as “Mr. Volatile,” and thanking him for the photos he had included. At that time, Cash’s publicist was a man named Howard Brandy, so he noted that if Saul needed anything in the promotional department, Howard was his man. The points Saul had raised regarding the proposed tour of eastern Canada and Newfoundland were agreeable, continued Cash, and a trip to the Far East to check out the possibility of a tour was also something he was willing to pay for.
In personal news, Johnny wrote that he had just laid the foundation for his new home in the hills near Ojai in California, where he would live with Vivian, still pregnant, and their three little girls. In total, the property was fifteen acres, situated on the lower slopes of a mountain that overlooked a beautiful valley, with room for stables to house bulls for hamburger in the winter, Cash wrote. In a postscript he added, “Gordon went to Las Vegas over the weekend, won $1,000 playing dice. I went to the mountains with a friend and my 30.06 Winchester. We dry-gulched two deer. Had venison all week.”19
Saul swiftly composed a letter in return.
June 12, 1961
Dear Mr. Singer, Song-Writer, Guitar Picker and
Cotton Picker …
You’ve got more titles than an Arabian Sultan, but I think your stationery is terrific! In any event, here are a few very suburban, horribly phrased but terribly confused words from Mr. Volatile.
I appreciate your prompt and thorough answer to my letter of June 4th. I’m glad you liked some of the pictures, and will order the ones you requested, immediately. I’m also very happy to hear that Howard Brandy is doing a good job and have made a note of his address for any contributions to his publicity file. I assume that you are aware of the story in Billboard, on Page 6 of the June 5th issue, concerning your acquiring rights to The Jimmie Rodgers Story. I do hope you will go on to produce it, and if there’s a part for a dissipated, constipated, overweight, over-wrought, oversexed, and overbearing promoter, I’d like to read for it. […]
Sorry to hear you are suffering from laryngitis; I wonder if the venison had anything to do with it. I do hope your illness is short-lived and that it doesn’t force you to cancel your Texas date.
The description of your new home sounds like a Paradise and the fulfillment of a dream. It’s exactly what I would like, only I’m still dreaming.
It’s great to hear of Gordon’s win in Las Vegas. I wonder if he tells you about his losses.… Incidentally, what does “dry-gulched” mean?
Recently when I spoke to you, you mentioned that you were going to Colorado with your father and Merle Travis, and, to quote you, you were “aimin’ to breathe air that ain’t never been breathed before.” I was so intrigued by the thought behind that statement that, while in Toronto, I called the Entertainment Editor of the Toronto Star and he felt as I did, and quoted your remarks in the paper. If you knew what the air is like most of the time in Toronto, you would realize what impact your statement had on those who read it.
Very happy to have received your O.K., plan on meeting Columbia officials in New York next week, and hope to leave for Tokyo around the 5th of July.
Keep well, and good hunting! Your Chicken Pickin’ Friend,
Saul Holiff.
P.S. Have you ever played England, and if not, would you be interested?20
With Carnall out of the picture, Saul had seized the initiative and arranged a flight to New York to meet with Columbia executives in mid-June on Johnny’s behalf. What he and Dave Roberts had discussed was true: country stars had a draw, and at least as comparable an appeal as rock ’n’ roll acts. With Johnny’s charisma and star power, Saul was convinced he needed to be treated as much more of a top-level act. Imploring Cash to also think of himself as a bigger star, he now needed to persuade him that Saul Holiff was the man to take him there. And one way that was going to happen was to build his international presence. Part of the trip to meet with the Columbia executives would be to pressure them to support his idea for a tour for Johnny in Japan. Hell, maybe he could get Elvis to go along, too. Before he left, Saul jotted off a quick telegram.
MEETING COLUMBIA OFFICIALS IN NEW YORK CITY NEXT WEDNESDAY. THEY APPEAR ENTHUSIASTIC AND COOPERATIVE ABOUT ORIENT PROSPECTS BUT HAVE DONE LITTLE TO PLUG YOUR RECORDS THERE IN THE PAST. JOHNNY HORTON “ALASKA” NUMBER SIX IN TOKYO THIS WEEK. IF I HAVE MY WAY YOU TOO WILL BE IN TOP TEN BY THE TIME I’M FINISHED THERE. PLAN TO LEAVE APPROXIMATELY JULY 4 AS VISAS ARE NOW OKAY. MAY I BE OF ANY SERVICE TO YOU WHILE IN NEW YORK? HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER. REGARDS, SAUL.21
The mere mention of Horton in the telegram — he had been one of Johnny’s closest friends — likely stung. Johnny was still reeling from Horton’s fiery death in a car accident just seven months earlier, after a drunk driver plowed into his car. It was Cash who had gone to retrieve his body in Texas, arranged the funeral, and then assisted his grieving wife, Billie Jean Horton, and her three children. Dark-haired, devastatingly beautiful, and a renowned singer in her own right, Billie Jean was now a widow twice over, having previously been married to country legend Hank Williams.
Even worse, Cash was also mired in his own secret revelation that he was in love with Billie Jean, and had been so for months. The three were the best of friends and had often gone fishing and hunting together, and Cash considered Johnny Horton’s character to be of the highest integrity. Billy Jean was not