For my money, of those I've seen, this was the best to date of the Netflix "Remastered" musical documentaries and all the more unlikely down to being about a country artist, which is about my least-favoured type of popular music. But then again, even I can see that Johnny Cash isn't your average country artist. I prefer to think of him as "rebel country", sure he could do the Grand Old Opry, God-fearing stuff if he was of a mind to, but he definitely appeared to be his own man and you have to admire him for that.
This well-made programme focused on a concert Cash was invited to play at the White House for the then sitting president Richard Nixon, who thought he could play to the what he believed to be the inherently conservative, i.e. Republican, country and western-loving "silent majority", by having Johnny sing and play for him. Not long before, after Nixon had made his televised broadcast to the nation promising an honourable end to the Vietnamese War, Cash had impulsively concluded his live network TV show with a ringing endorsement of the president's lofty aim.
Sensing an opportunity to lead the narrative with Cash as his unwitting agent, Nixon, himself more a classical than country music fan and his aides set up the gig in front of an exclusive, hand-picked audience. All Cash had to do was effectively roll up and roll over with the administration even trying to have him sing, by presidential request, two hoary Conservative anthems "Okie From Muskogie" and "Welfare Cadillac". Would Johnny play ball?
Let's just say I was delighted with the outcome and that my admiration for the man in black rose immeasurably as a consequence, especially when you think that only a couple of years later, Elvis himself famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) docilely shook Nixon's hand in a further attempt by the Pres to ingratiate himself with a well-known singer's fan-base.
You've got to wonder how many artists would have displayed the integrity Cash did when it would have been so easy to comply. Sometimes the documentary over-reaches itself when it seeks to meaningfully juxtapose the fall-out from the White House show with bigger events happening elsewhere, especially the Kent State killings, but with this one act, Mr Cash reportedly made Nixon squirm in his privileged seat and I for one, having recently completed a weighty Nixon biography and listened to a podcast on his presidency, both of which attempt to reclaim his political legacy by minimising his obvious faults and almost airbrushing Watergate out of his history as if it was to coin a phrase, "a little local difficulty" was pleased to see that Cash could see through the whitewash and was enough of his own man to ask the president the telling question "What is Truth?".
You'll not be surprised to learn that this episode doesn't rate a mention in either the book or podcast referred to above.
