It was a joyous and celebratory occasion, last week's inaugural Johnny Cash Music Festival at the Arkansas State University's Convocation Center. But it was not without a very sad milestone.
Marshall Grant, the legendary upright bass player in Cash's original backup the Tennessee Two, was all set to perform at the Thursday night event, and had attended the rehearsal the night before. But he suffered a brain aneurysm that night and died Sunday.
He was 83.
"Grateful I was w/him last 2 days. Boom Chicka Boom, old friend," Rosanne Cash tweeted, announcing Grant's passing. She had stayed over in Jonesboro to be with him until the end.
"He was my 'back-up dad,'" she wrote, in another tweet. "Lot of bass players owe him a debt."
It was as simple as Grant's signature "Boom Chicka Boom" bass sound on such defining Cash hits as "I Walk The Line" and "Hey, Porter."
"There are different kinds of bass players, different kinds of backing bands in general, actually," says Gregg Geller, a music business veteran and "catalog" music expert who has compiled numerous Johnny Cash album compilations.
"The Tennessee Two [also featuring guitarist Luther Perkins] has always been cited for its simplicity," says Geller. "That could be taken as a backhanded compliment, but what they did for Johnny Cash was exactly right for Johnny Cash. Can you imagine if Marshall Grant or Luther Perkins were more 'complicated' musicians, how that would have worked?"
With Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, it was a case of "stars aligning," continues Geller.
"Sometimes the right people come together, and it makes perfect sense--and this is one of those instances," he says. "It's like peanut butter and jelly, ham and eggs. Some things are meant to go together: Those three guys were just the absolute right combination for those songs."
Earl Poole Ball, who was Johnny Cash's pianist for 20 years and co-produced Cash's acclaimed 1980 album Rockabilly Blues, lauds Grant as a "creative innovator."
"He was a self-taught guy who took his bass all over the world," says Ball. "He helped create a whole different style of music with Johnny and Luther and Sun Records."
But according to Ball, Grant was an even better road manager for Cash.
"He was great with details and booking flights and hotels, and making sure everybody's baggage got picked up!" says Ball. "He was a master at handling responsibility."
After splitting from Cash in 1980, Grant managed the Statler Brothers, who had long toured with Cash.
"Marshall was first a friend--the best," recalls the quartet's lead vocalist Don Reid. "He showed us the ropes and took us under his wing back in the ‘60s when we first joined the Johnny Cash troupe. Then in ’82 he came on board with our organization and became our agent. He traveled every mile with us personally and professionally. He was like a big brother who never let you out of his sight. To say I/we will miss him, is a gross understatement. I feel something inside me has taken flight that I’ll never see again. I loved him dearly."
Grant's breakup with Cash was bitter, but the two had reconciled by the time Cash died in 2003.
"The last thing he said to me at the funeral was, 'Son, it will be a long time before I get over this," recalls Ball.
Backstage at the Convocation Center Wednesday evening, Grant seemed overcome by memories, especially of Cash's nearby boyhood home in Dyess--which the festival was raising money to restore.
"John used to reminisce so much about it," Grant said softly, remembering how he would accompany Cash there sometimes during their touring in the area. "Times were very, very tough for him there. I went there several times just with him, and to see the expression on his face when he'd walk in the house…it was unbelievable."
He said that he tried to keep in touch with everyone from those days, and that he talked often with Rosanne.
"Marshall used to say 'if you want the REAL story, ask ME!'. Truth," Rosanne tweeted. She tweeted, too, that at the rehearsal he played his bass on stage one last time, "with so many friends."
She and many others marveled at the friends Grant had, and the full life he had lived--one that had almost mystically come around full circle at the Convocation Center.
"The lineage from Johnny Cash and The Tennessee Two through the music of successive generations of roots and rock musicians is inestimable," Rosanne said after leaving Jonesboro. "He was a solid tree of a man, a truth-teller and a truly good human being. I loved him dearly. He was family."
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