After completing a mid-June tour in Lubbock, San Antonio, and El Paso, Johnny settled into his bed late one night and scrawled out a handwritten response to Saul’s letter about his trip to New York. “Glad the ‘wheels’ at Columbia were kind. Don’t repeat it, but I’ll be damned if I remember writing a song for Bill Gallagher,” he wrote by way of introduction, and then addressed the issue of Bob Luman and Rose Maddox, which revealed where his true allegiance now lay — and it was not with Stew Carnall. Prefacing his words by saying they were “STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL,” Cash said he had asked Carnall how he might get in touch with Bob and Rose for booking purposes, to which Carnall responded, “Why not let me sell them to Holiff so I can make a commission?” Cash agreed. This was where his warning came in.
“HINT #1: (TOP SECRET),” Cash wrote to Saul. “I never paid Rose Maddox more than $150 per day, and usually $125 per day and she was constantly available. HINT #2: (TOP SECRET) Bob Luman has never worked a tour with anyone but me, and we paid him $150 to $200 per day.”
Most important, Cash added, was that “Stew will try to ‘snow’ you.”
As he nodded off, Cash wrote that he would be travelling to Anchorage, Alaska, on July 6 and then be off bear hunting, before telling Saul that to “dry-gulch” meant to sneak into the mountains and kill deer, out of season.29
Though not yet officially Johnny’s manager, the letter’s advisory illustrated a clear and crucial shift in Johnny’s loyalties, and Saul didn’t miss a beat.
“Appreciate your ‘top secret’ and confidential hints regarding Luman and Maddox, which will remain confidential as you requested,” Saul responded on July 2. “I won’t do anything definite about extra talent until I’ve investigated and made sure that they would be the right people and would prove helpful. It may be that Rose Maddox or someone along the same lines would prove sufficient to give the show more depth and avoid too much in the way of extra cost.”30
On July 11, Saul departed for Japan and managed to secure some connections for what he envisioned as a series of one-nighters in the Philippines, Singapore, and Japan, which he hoped could be scheduled for that November. As he kept the Far East pan warm in the fire, he struggled to finalize the last dates for the tour of eastern Canada and Newfoundland (which was in the midst of a wildfire outbreak that had raged for weeks). Saul was frustrated by the lack of progress. As the heat of summer bore down, both men then also became entangled in intense life circumstances that grappled for their attention.
In mid-August, Saul received news that his father had died, just months after the family had been rocked by the sudden death of Sam Paikin. Only fifty-one, Sam had suffered a heart attack while playing golf at the Beverly Golf and Country Club in Hamilton. Two days later, as the family was forced to carry on with the first birthday party for Sam’s grandson, Steve, Saul’s sister Ann was in a daze. Within a month, she sold their house and moved into an apartment. The blow to her identity as “Mrs. Paikin” was severe. Saul said very little to anyone about either death, simply writing to Johnny that his father had passed away and “as you can well appreciate, it has somewhat upset my working tempo,” though the loss of both his father and mentor must have cut him deeply.
Saul also inquired after Johnny’s wife, Vivian, who had given birth to their fourth child, Tara, on August 24. Johnny saw the new baby only briefly before he hit the road to play a weekend show at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis. The tension among the needs of his expanding family, his passion for other women, like Billie Jean Horton, and his burgeoning career was beginning to overwhelm him. “Hi Saul, am rushing, getting junk taken care of so I can leave for Indianapolis,” Johnny scribbled a week after the birth, and reassured him that both Vivian and baby Tara were fine. Though earlier Johnny had expressed to Saul that he couldn’t wait to get away from the smog and into his sprawling new home in Casitas Springs, in reality the family had scarcely moved their belongings into their opulent new house before Johnny had disappeared again on tour.31
Sensing the strain Johnny was now under with four young children at home, Saul continued to write to ask about Vivian and his domestic life, mailing trinkets for the older siblings and a silver dollar memento to commemorate Tara’s birth. “I re-read your autobiography last night,” Saul wrote to Johnny on September 4, after he had confirmed that all the dates for the Newfoundland tour were finally set. “It is much more revealing than I first realized, and certainly provides a clear insight of the many stages that you have passed through up ’til now. I believe that any time you get dejected or despondent you should re-read it yourself.”32
The twenty-one-day tour of eastern Canada and Newfoundland was sponsored by Field & Stream magazine and included a multi-day moose hunting trip, during which photographer Richard Fiske snapped au naturel photos of Johnny in prime hunting territory, engaged in one of his favourite pastimes. In advance of the tour, Saul and Johnny stopped over in New York on October 3, where they met with Columbia executives to renegotiate Johnny’s contract. Just prior to their departure, Saul organized a quick show at Massey Hall that met with middling reviews. The show was sold out three days in advance and more than a thousand people were turned away at the door, but the next day’s newspaper declared the show to be a “Big Letdown.” The incessant upselling of merchandise, constant assurances that they were going to have “a good show” by emcee Johnny Western, and syrupy praise of Canada throughout the performance was frankly insulting, said Toronto Daily Star reviewer Wendy Michener.33
“Mr. Cash himself did not appear until the end of the evening’s program of popularized folk and western music, and then for only half an hour,” she wrote. “A cold, or throat trouble of some sort took the resonance out of his low-pitched voice, and the zip out of his performance. Those rhymed stories of his, so reminiscent of Robert Service, were falling apart at the seams despite good support from his trio.” The greatest portion of her praise was reserved for the Tennessee Three, Gordon Terry — “spectacularly dressed in white with rhinestones” — and Rose Maddox, who, Michener felt, delivered the “meatiest” performance with “lots of real singing and little chin-wagging.”34
There was that throat trouble again. It was becoming a problem, but Saul didn’t have time to consider the implications, and if he did, it still seemed like Cash had a handle on it. No, he had to focus. The return trip to Columbia Records was to be a trial by fire of sorts, his chance to show not only the executives there — but also Johnny — that he truly meant business.
I’m like a mystery guest. I’m a completely unknown entity, Saul thought, as they entered Columbia president Goddard Lieberson’s office. Everything seemed to slow down, as though he could observe the proceedings from outside himself. An aristocrat and consummate classical music fan, Lieberson not only cut an elegant figure himself but also was married to a stunning Norwegian ballerina dancer of considerable fame. It was intimidating, but Saul had at least one card he could play, and it was that he knew Lieberson either possessed or pretended to have great personal interest in Johnny. Arguably one of the most influential and powerful men in the recording industry, it was British-born Lieberson’s visionary nature that led the label to sign Johnny in 1958. Under his leadership, the company had doubled their sales. But he was much more than just a suit. An accomplished composer, he had written more than a hundred pieces of music, and was also a pianist, producer, and novelist. To Goddard Lieberson, I must be the equivalent of an irritating mosquito, Saul mused.35
It was there, feeling completely out of place in Lieberson’s spacious office, his heart racing, that Saul had a moment of realization: it was then, right then, that he needed to assert himself. It’s now or never, he thought. He made his move.
“You’re just going through the motions,” he declared. “Actions speak louder than words, and so far it’s all words. You don’t appreciate your talent. You’re not doing what can be done for him.”
At that, Lieberson stood up, stormed out of the room, and didn’t return.
At that moment, Saul felt his relationship to Johnny become an actual