'Black Cadillac' Gives Grief A Lift

A lot of people would assume the daughter of Johnny Cash would have come out of the womb wanting to sing.

Not so, reveals Rosanne Cash to CBS Sunday Morning contributor Russ Mitchell.

"I didn't want to sing because I thought that's what made you famous. And I thought -- that was a really bad life choice to try to become famous," Cash says.

She adds, "You know, obviously because when I was a child my father was very famous and he was -- had a drug problem and my parents' marriage was falling apart, and he was gone all the time. So I -- I associated all of that with singing, with performing. I thought, well, this is not good. This is not something you want to do."

Despite her initial doubts and beyond her famous surname, Cash has created a career on her own terms.

This past week, Cash released what is perhaps her most personal album to date -- and what might just be her finest: "Black Cadillac." It's a musical memoir of mortality, loss and redemption.

Cash explains that the album served as a catharsis.

"The writing of it was a release in a way," she says. "And so to bring my reason and discipline and my sense of poetry to this -- these feelings that something manageable, this tremendous sense of grief and loss, to bring all of those things to this, to this kind of tidal wave of feelings was useful to me."

The album charts her efforts to make sense of the recent deaths of her stepmother; June Carter Cash, her father, Johnny Cash, and her mom, Vivian Liberto Distin, all within a two-year period.

In the title song, Cash sings, "It's a black heart of pain that I'm wearing that suits me just fine. 'Cause there was nothing I could do for you when you were still alive."

Cash, however, admits, "You know, I don't feel that bitter right now. I felt that bitter when I wrote the song because my dad suffered for a long time with illness in the last several years of his life. And you know, I ended up feeling very helpless that I couldn't ease his suffering and I couldn't make him better."

It is a grief Cash has transformed into songs about past and future while taking a look into Cash family lore: a black Cadillac, an open road, a radio, a house on the lake, laughter and prayer.

Asked whether the process was difficult, Cash said no because, "it rhymes."

Cash elaborates, saying that "if I write these songs and I've brought, you know, 28 years of songwriting to it and I make it all rhyme, you don't know where I took poetic license, you know? You don't know what is fact and what is truth."

The eldest of four daughters by the legendary Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian, Rosanne was a latecomer to music, a self-admitted nerdy kid more comfortable in the world of books than at center stage. Eleven when her parents divorced, it wasn't until she was 18 that she learned to play guitar while accompanying her dad on tour.

It was a life-changing experience.

"It was great to stock in some time with my dad because he had traveled so much through my childhood. So just being with him on the bus every day and going to new places and traveling with him, that was wonderful," Cash recalls.

"And I really satisfied some childhood yearning for him that I had. But it was great in another way in that I sat in the wings every night and watched him for three years. And I saw the essence of him, that's where the essence of him flourished, is under the spotlight. So to see that every night was beautiful," she says.

At 24 Rosanne Cash released her debut album, a defiant blend of country, rock and progressive folk.

And just a year later, the first in a string of 11 number one country hits.

For someone so reluctant to seek fame, Cash says her early years as a hit performer, while filled with turmoil, were beneficial.

"Seventy-nine to '89, it was blessed by children and marred by drugs and fear and somewhat tumultuous marriage. And looking back, I say it was all good, I learned a lot," Cash says, adding that her most important lesson learned was how to be a good mother.

Her 13-year marriage to musician Rodney Crowell, the father of her four daughters and producer of many of her early albums, ended in 1992.

And these days, the 50-year-old mother, now with five children, calls New York home, where she lives with her second husband and musical collaborator, Jon Leventhal.

Cash, who is also a published author and essayist, has enjoyed watching her children attempt to follow in the family business.

"They've seen it all. They've been on the road. They've been in the studio. They know their grandfather's life, they know my life," Cash says. "They, you know, there's not much that can surprise them or, or seduce them really."

While she strives to maintain her privacy, Rosanne Cash's resolve to be a private person is being tested like never before.

The hit movie "Walk The Line," which chronicles the love affair between Johnny Cash and June Carter, is expected to be a big contender at this year's Academy Awards. And there's a musical, soon to open on Broadway.

"I am the last person that could be objective about that story, you know?" Cash admits. "And I think that anyone would have a hard time seeing the screen version of their childhood, you know?

"Because there's no way to be objective about it. Particularly painful parts of your childhood, the break up of your parents' marriage and my father's drug addiction. You know, that's not something I want to see fictionalized," Cash says.

"It was," Cash says bluntly, "it was hard enough living with the real thing."

And while the world honors a lost musical icon, for Rosanne Cash the loss is more profound: she didn't lose Johnny Cash, the legend. She lost her dad.

Regarding her father's relationship with Carter, Cash remarks that it was inflated by public perception. What really existed, Cash says, "was true companionship and they were incredibly close and kind of fitted each other --they filled in each other's parts in that best way that great couples do, you know? That was a relationship that was destined. Even as a child, I saw that it was destined."

Asked how her father, her mother and Carter might view "Black Cadillac," Rosanne Cash seemed unsure, adding that, "I feel I did my best work and I can't share it with them. And yet I wouldn't have written it had they been there. It's strange.

"And yet I hope they do hear it," she says.