Fresh Air - Rosanne Cash on the gift her father, Johnny Cash, gave her

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

For Labor Day, we’re listening back to our 2009 interview with Rosanne Cash. When she was 18, in 1973, her father Johnny Cash gave her a list of 100 essential country songs he thought she should know. At the time, she knew that it was an important document, “but it took me, I think until now, to realize that he was really giving me himself, a part of his heart and soul.” She made an album out of some of those songs called The List.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. This Labor Day, we're going to revisit a 2009 interview Terry Gross recorded with singer and songwriter Roseanne Cash. Back in 1973, when she was 18, her father, Johnny Cash, gave her a list of a hundred essential country songs he thought she needed to know. At the time, she was more interested in writing her own songs than interpreting the songs of others. But decades later, she returned to her father's list and recorded 12 of the songs on it. The 2009 album is called Naturally the list. Terry's interview started with Cash's version of Sea of Heartbreak. Bruce Springsteen sings with her on this one.

Roseanne Cash, welcome back to fresh air. Well, thank you, Terry. Tell me why you wanted to record this record. We'll get to the whole list in a second, but of all those songs on the list. Why see a heartbreak? Y-C-F heartbreak. It's kind of a perfectly constructed country song, and it was on the list, so, you know, that gave me permission. And it embodies that longing that is in so much of country music really, really well.

And beyond that, it takes a metaphor and carries it to the very end without breaking that narrative about the metaphor. without becoming kitchy, which a lot of songs do. And that's kind of perfect to me. And it's also, it makes it a bit of a period piece because you don't hear many modern songs that do that. And there's also some language in it that's not modern, you know, when he says, divine and my dear, these are kind of old-school ways of talking, and I really enjoy that.

So it's like stepping into a period piece. At the same time, it has the hallmark of every great song, which is that it transcends time. It has a timeless quality to it. And it feels very modern. It's amazing. The lyric was written by Hal David, who wrote the lyrics for so many Bert Backrack songs.

So he's not exactly Mr. Country Music, Mr. Nashville. No. And, you know, I myself thought that Don Gibson had written it because he had the early definitive version of the song and then found out that Hal David and Paul Hampton wrote it in New York. It was a huge surprise. Your father has a good reason. recording of this? He does. You know, not being disloyal, but I have to say I still prefer the Don

Gibson version. And I, you know, my dad recorded his version with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on Unchained, and he might have been a little too energized from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Now you have Bruce Springsteen singing with you on this one. Is he a friend? No, I couldn't call him a friend. I've met him a few times over the years, but it would be presumptuous to say he's a friend. Why'd you ask him to duet on this song? Because he's just a dream date, Terry.

We knew we wanted to do a duet. So I did my part on Sea of Heartbreak. We going, God, who's the perfect person to ask to sing on this song? Who's like the embodiment of, American romantic male voice. Well, that would be Bruce Springsteen. So we asked him. And he said yes.

He said yes. I thought, oh, there's a 50-50 chance. Bruce will do it. And then, you know, he knew the song. He got the concept of the list. He's so steeped in country music anyway and roots music. So it was an easy thing for him, I think. So let's get the story of the list.

Your album's called the list, and there's a story behind it. So would you tell the story? Yeah. When I was 18 years old, I went on the road with my dad after I graduated from high school. And we were riding on the tour bus one day, kind of rolling through the south. And he mentioned a song. We started talking about songs, and he mentioned one, and I said, I don't know that one. And he mentioned another.

I said, I don't know that one either, Dad. And he became very alarmed that I didn't know what he considered my own musical genealogy. and I was very steeped in pop and rock music, and I grew up in Southern California. So he spent the rest of the afternoon making a list for me, and at the end of the day, he said, this is your education. And across the top of the page, he wrote 100 essential country songs. The list might have been better titled 100 Essential American Songs, because it was very, comprehensive. He covered every critical point in Southern and American music, early folk songs,

protest songs, Delta blues, Southern gospel, early country music, Appalachian, everything that fed into modern country music was on that list. So his overview was really of a musicologist, but formed by his instincts, you know, and just the rhythm in his own blood. So I realized when he gave me the list at the age of 18 that this was an important document. And I said about learning these songs. But it took me, I think, until now to realize that he was really giving me himself, a part of his heart and soul. When you say you went about learning those songs, did you get the sheet music or get the records?

How did you learn them? All I had to do is get my dad, because he had them all at his fingertips. You could say, well, how does this one go? And he'd pick up a guitar and sing it to me. And then some I knew the records, you know. Like I had known Ray Charles take these chains from my heart since childhood. I had known Patsy Cline's, she's got you since childhood. Others I found the records for.

So you finally realized later in life that your father had given you a piece of himself and a piece of his own kind of genetic makeup when he gave you this list of 100 songs. But when he gave you that list, did you immediately think, thanks, Dad? or was it more like, thanks, dad? Like an 18-year-old would do? Yeah. No, I, you know, if he had given it to me even a couple years earlier, I might have said, oh, yeah, I roll, thanks dad. But I wanted this.

I wanted him. You know, my parents were divorced. I was just stocking in this great time with my dad, who was clean and sober. So I wanted that experience of loving what he loved and learned. about his life. Also, I was just starting to write songs. So this was a template for me. These are excellent songs. He wrote the list as a songwriter. So I had that template for great songwriting. It was exciting to me. Now, do you still have that piece of paper that the list was on? I do. I found it again in 2008, 2005, when I was writing the narratives for my last record,

Black Cadillac, and I wrote narratives for the show, and I found the list in 2005, and I thought, well, this will make a nice subject for a narrative for the Black Cadillac show, never thinking anything more than that. And I wrote this narrative, and it started when I was 18 years old. My dad gave me this list. Well, everybody started coming up to me saying, where's that list? When are you going to record that list? It became funny. So what did you do with a piece of paper now? Is it like framed? Is it preserved? Where do you keep it?

I keep it in my files. It's not framed. It's not, you know, I want to do the right thing with the actual list at some point, but I don't want to just publish it on the Internet or, you know, give it away yet, partly because I want to do volume two. And I don't want anyone else to do volume two. Well, I want to play another song from the list. And this is a great song.

I love this song that Patsy Klein made famous. It's called She's Got You. And of all the songs on the list, why did you want to do this one? Well, it's a classic country song. Anyone who knows country music knows this song. Unfortunately, they also know Patsy Klein's version, which is so iconic that I had some trouble getting past that to actually record it myself. But you know what's great about this song, too, is that it's a list.

In the song is listed all the things that the other woman has. So it's a list within the list. Oh, right. Yeah. And I guess what do you do to put yourself in the mood to feel the song? I mean, you're married. You know what I mean? Like you're not a teenager anymore.

You're married. So maybe that's a presumptuous question. Maybe I should just drop that. No, I know what you're saying. But, you know, passion is not reserved for young people. And I think that my sensitivity to music has actually deepened and expanded as I've gotten older. You add more life experience. You know, the music gets filtered through all of that.

And that's beautiful. When I started singing this song, like I said, I had to get Patsy Kline off my shoulder a bit to even approach the song. So once I started singing it, and it kind of dawned to me, oh, this is why this song has been covered so many times. This is a great song. I've got your picture that you give to me That's signed with love Just like it used to be I've got your picture Not you

I've got the records Used to shake That's when you That's my guest Roseanne Cash singing She's Got You a song made famous by Patsy Klein A song featured on Roseanne Cash's CD called The List which is song selected from the list of 100 essential songs that her father, Johnny Cash, gave to her when she was 18.

When your father gave you that list when you were 18, how deep were you into country music? Not very. I was president of my Beatles fan club when I was 11. Were you really? Yes, I was indeed. Is this where I asked who your favorite beetle was? Well, John. Okay, good.

And I grew up in Southern California. I was very well-versed in Southern California, Pop and Rock, and Buffalo Springfield, and Neil Young, and Elton John, and Janice Joplin. And then Joni Mitchell, which is the first time I realized that a woman could be a songwriter. So I had, of course, heard what my parents played around the house and heard the musicians my dad drug home off the road.

And my mother listened to a lot of really. Charles and Marty Robbins and Patsy Clent, so I got that in by osmosis as well. But as far as doing a serious immersion in it like I had done with the Beatles, no, I had not done that. You've had this list of 100 country music songs that your father gave you since you were 18. So you've had this since the early 70s. 73. Why now? Why record them now? It's a very good question.

In fact, I resisted it for the first year that John started talking about it. Well, for a lot of reasons. One, I did have a chip on my shoulder when I was younger. I'm going to do this my way. Nobody's ever going to be able to say that I traded on my dad's name. It was a large shadow. I wanted out of it. And I probably carried the chip longer than was great.

gracious. It's okay when you're in your 20s. It's not okay when you're in your 40s. So it was partly that my knee-jerk reaction against doing anything that traded on my dad's name. Now, I started to realize this is my list. He gave this to me. This was personal. This was like if he was a martial arts master and was passing on a secret to his child. You know, it belongs to me. So when I started to feel myself take possession of it psychologically, then I started thinking about recording the songs. And the other part is, I don't think I could have done this until I lost my parents until they died. I was thinking you might feel that way because, is it because they owned the songs? Well, if they did, they passed them on. But it's also because you're not, well, I wasn't so

interested in legacy until they were gone. I wasn't so interested in what they left me until they They weren't here to tell me about it. And, you know, at this point, I had a really serious health problem myself. You face off with my own mortality. You start thinking about those things. What did my parents leave me? What's in my DNA? What am I going to leave my kids?

And these songs are part of my cells in a way. They are part of my DNA. And they are what I want to leave my own kids. You mentioned that you had your own brush with mortality. and I know that you had brain surgery. Right. How long ago was this? It was November 2007.

Would you explain what the problem was that necessitated the surgery? I had a structural abnormality in my brain. I may have been born with. My neurosurgeon wasn't sure. And it just got worse as I got older until I was becoming debilitated by headaches. So they didn't really discover what it was until 2007, earlier in 2007. And then he said, you know, there's no advantage in waiting to fix this. You need to take care of this.

So I had brain surgery, and, you know, it's not for the faint of heart, by the way. And anytime somebody enters your brain for surgery, it's really, really risky. Yeah. Were you terrified before the surgery? I prepared myself psychologically. I, you know, I did hypnosis tapes, and I did just a lot of reflection and talking about it and getting prepared because I knew how scary it was. And in fact, that's why my neurosurgeon said to wait, you know, six weeks or something. He said, you need to prepare yourself psychologically.

So I got it when he told me that it was going to be tight. and it was a long recovery. So, you know, I did my work enough beforehand that I walked into the OR laughing with my anesthesiologist making jokes and singing if I only had a brain. My morbid sense of humor really got me through this, I have to say. What about the recovery on the other end?

I mean, you're so steeped in your senses in writing which you do a lot of, both songs and books. You're completing a memoir now. In listening, what you do a lot? lot of in singing. So, I mean, were your senses altered in a way that was either interesting or disturbing after the surgery during the period of recovery? That's a good question. And nobody has thought to ask me that question. And the truth is that they were. I had the hearing of a dog

for about two months. Wait, what does that mean? I mean, it was, my hearing was so sensitive that, I live in Manhattan. I couldn't go outside for a month. It was so intense. But the thing I was afraid of didn't happen, which is my experience of music. And I had written this letter to Oliver Sacks before I went into surgery. I had met him at a party the year before. And so I wrote him, and I told him my problem, and I said, do you think that my experience of music is going to be altered? Will I lose my sensitivity to music or my ability to play it? And he wrote me back the most beautiful typewritten letter that was hand-corrected in ink. And it basically said my, he said, my expertise is with the cortex, and your problem is with

the cerebellum, so I can't really help you. But I do have an inkling of how important this is to you. I loved that. That's the letter I'm going to frame. Singer-songwriter Roseanne Cash speaking with Terry Gross in 2009. We'll hear more of their interview after a break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air. I'm growing tired of the big city lights, tired of the and tired of sights.

And all of my... My dream on a river shore. I am sad. Miss the Mississippi. And you did days everywhere. Miss the Mississippi and you. This is fresh air. I'm Dave Davies.

Let's get back to the interview Terry recorded with singer and songwriter Roseanne Cash in 2009 for the release of her album The List. It featured 12 songs from a list of 100 essential country songs that her father, Johnny Cash, compiled for her. He made the list in 1973 when she was 18 and on the road with him. When we left off, Terry and Roseanne Cash were talking about her recovery from the brain surgery she'd undergone in 2007. You know, you mentioned that before the surgery, you had headaches, like really severe headaches.

I find that the one time when I can't enjoy music, when I want nothing to do with music is when I have a bad headache. And when I think of you going through, it was a long period, right, when you had these bad headaches, how did you do music? Did you have any room in your head where it was pleasurable to make or listen to music? That's interesting. I listened to a lot more classical music in the two years before the surgery.

because it seemed it was more soothing to me and, you know, I could digest it better. But a lot of times singing, playing music myself, I would move out of the headache. You know, it would just dissolve. That's an interesting thing about music. You know, people say it's very healing. It is very healing, literally. Well, I think we should hear another song from your new CD, The List. and I thought this might be a good spot to hear 500 miles.

And I have to say, I was telling you this before we started the interview, if I went through the rest of my life never hearing this song again, I'd be fine, I thought, until I heard your version. You know, I think so many of us know the Peter Paul O'Merry version, which I heard so many times. And when I was learning folk guitar and doing a terrible job at it, this was one of the songs that I learned to massacre, which is part of the reason why I could go through the rest of my life not hearing it again.

But you do this like desolate version of it. But the lyrics are, yeah, the lyrics are desolate. They are desolate. And your husband is playing organ behind you. And it's this really like eerie, lonely organ. It almost sounds like it's being played backwards. It's just so odd. And it's really just a haunting version.

Well, we wanted to get it very churchy and we wanted to bring out all of the lone of the lyrics, because the lyrics are really sad. And I knew Bobby Bear's version better than I knew Peter Paul and Mary's version. And Bobby Bear's version was much sadder, and I think we even took it a step further.

Okay, well, let's hear it. And this is my guest, Roseanne Cash, singing 500 miles. Our husband, John Leventhal, is playing organ behind her, and he plays a lot of the instruments and did the arranging for the CD. It's from the album, the list, which features songs from

list of a hundred essential American songs that her father, Johnny Cash, gave her when she was 18. So here's 500 miles. If you miss the train I'm on, then you'll know that I've gone. You can hear the whistle blow. A hundred miles. A hundred miles. A hundred miles. A hundred miles. A hundred miles. A hundred miles One hundred miles You can hear the whistle blow A hundred miles

Teardrops fell on Mama's note When I read the things she wrote She said we miss you Hun, we love you Come on home Well I didn't have to to pack. I had it all right on my back.

Now I'm 500 miles away from home. Lord, I'm two. Lord, I'm three. Oh, Lord, I'm four. Lord, I'm 500 miles away from... That's Roseanne Cash from her CD, The List, which features songs from the list of 100 essential songs that her father, Johnny Cash, gave her. You know, before hearing that song, we were talking about the brain surgery that you had.

And I was wondering what you've turned to in recent years to just kind of give you strength. And just to fill listeners in, it's been a difficult few years. You lost your mother, you lost your father, you lost your stepmother, June Carter, Cash. There were three years where you could barely speak and couldn't sing because of polyps on your vocal cords. And then there was the brain surgery that we talked about. It's been a rough period. And when people go through rough time, I mean, some people turn to religion. Some people turn to drugs or alcohol.

Some people have nothing to turn to. Some people are lost. Some people find this inner strength. Looking at your father, I mean, there were times in your father's life when he turned to him. to drugs or pills. But through all his life, I think he had a sense of Jesus in his life. Your mother was,

I think, a pretty devout Catholic. She was. Yeah. So what about you? Like, what have you had that has kept you through all this? I adhere to the religion of art and music

and small children, the pronouncements of small children. You know, I'm not the type to turn to religion in that way. I'm not the type to turn to drugs and alcohol, but I do have a profound devotion to art and music and children. And those three things, as well as the love of my husband, who is an amazing partner. And, you know, if you ever have brain surgery, you want to call him up to do all of the vetting of the neurosurgeons. and all of that business

because he makes a great patient advocate. Good if I'm ever making an album, I'm going to call him too. That's cute. So you mentioned art and music as what you turned to as like how that's kind of your religion. So what were some of the things

that you read or listened to or watched during the period of recovery when you needed that kind of nourishment? Joan Didien's Year of Magical Thinking was great. I read the book and I went to see Vanessa Redgrave perform it. Let me stop you right there. I love that book. It was so hard to read it because it's a journal of the year she lost her husband.

It is so painful. So what was healing about reading that really painful book? Well, I loved it. I know a lot of people found it really difficult. and kind of depressing, but I loved her very meticulous documentation of the little moments of insanity that happened during grief. You know, that thing she said about, well, it's three hours earlier in California. Is he dead in California yet? I had that feeling. And many others that you don't tell people because they will think you're nuts. And so to see it there on the page,

poetically written. It was really great for me. I loved that. What else? What else? Oh, Picasso. Arvo Part, the Estonian musician. I went to see a show in Paris that just, it rearranged my whole life. It was so great. It was called melancholy. And it was 800 years of madness, despair. and depression in art. It was fantastic. I loved it. I told you I have a morbid sense of humor. But it was just amazing, you know,

because we used to express all of these things in art, you know, the madness and the despair and the depression. And now we just medicated away, but it was all there on the canvas, and I just loved it. Oh, wow. And did you, after grieving for your parents, did you go through a period feeling like you were grieving for yourself? Because your brain was being compromised.

Your life was in jeopardy. Your ability to be who you are was in jeopardy. Yeah. I was angry at my parents when I had to have brain surgery that they weren't still around. Because no matter how old you are, you want your parents when you're going through something like that. Yeah. And I, yeah, did I grieve for myself? No, I kind of thought, well, why not me?

I have good health insurance, you know, I don't have to show up to a nine to five job. You know, I didn't have that feeling of, oh, why me? I never had that. You never had the feeling of being resentful or envious of everybody else who didn't have to go through the brain surgery that you were about to go through? No, I don't, I don't do that. I don't do comparisons because I always lose. Is that how you feel?

Yes, it's exactly how I feel. No, but not that I always lose, it's that if the process of comparing yourself to someone else, you're setting yourself up to not feel good. So I don't bother. Getting back to the list of songs again that your father gave you, did you love the same songs on that list after the surgery that you loved before? Did your taste change?

I love them more now. I love everything more now. I know that sounds like a cliche, but I do. But I love these songs so much. And they keep getting deeper and broader and more poetic and more full of life. for me. Every time I hear them, every time I put on one of the original versions, or I get to sing it myself, it's all new. It's amazing that it took this long for me to realize what was always there, you know, like T.S. Eliot said, you return home and know it for the first time. I feel like that.

I've returned home and known it for the first time. My guest is Roseanne Cash. We'll talk more after a break. This is fresh air. This is fresh air. That's good. back to my interview with Roseanne Cash. She's known for singing her own songs, but she released a CD called The List, on which she sang some of the songs from the list of a hundred essential songs that her father, Johnny Cash, made for her back in 1973 when she was 18. We spoke when the album The List was released in 2009. I want to play another song from your new album. And I was thinking of girl from the North Country. I think you'd do a beautiful job of this.

Bob Dylan wrote it. It was on his 1969 Freewheeling album. 1962, I mean, what year is it? More like 62, probably. Yeah, it's earlier than 69. Yeah, I think it's like 62. Because they did Nashville Skyline. That was 69.

Yeah, so in 69, your father recorded it with Dylan on Dylan's Nashville Skyline album. So why did you? choose this one for your own? This was John's idea to do the song, and I know why it's on the list because my dad made the list in 1973, and he had just recorded this four years earlier with Bob, so it was still kind of fresh to him. It's one of the newest songs on the list. And when John brought up that idea, I said, oh gosh, I can't do it. It's almost sacrilegious. Not only do I have my dad and Bob's recorded version in my head, I have images of that session in my head. I wasn't at that session, but there is footage of it.

And it was just such a watershed record, too. You know, I became the coolest 14-year-old in the world when my dad recorded this song with Bob Dylan. And I just can't do that. It's outside of my own realm. And John said, let's listen to Bob's. original version and approach it that way. And his original version is, it's in the tradition of a classic folk song that's rooted in Elizabethan music even. And I got to do that old folk twist of a woman singing about another woman, which was great. I loved that. And once we

listened to the original version, and I could approach it like that, I went, oh, I get it. Yeah, this is Gorgeous. If you're traveling in the North Country Fair, where the winds here, heavy, there she once was a true and summer. We see she has a cold soul. To keep her from...

That's Rose N. Cash, singing Dylan's girl from the North Country from her new CD, The List, which is songs from the list of 100 great American songs, Central Country songs that her father, Johnny Cash, gave her when she was 18 years old. You know, I think it's really interesting that you're doing this album of songs by other people because you're best known as a singer-songwriter. You do your own songs. And this kind of frees you up to just be the singer and the interpreter.

And also to sing other people's melodies, which I think must be, kind of refreshing in its own way? Yeah, it is. It is. It was a little scary at first because I didn't ever want to put my voice front and center. I was a songwriter. That was the torch I carried. This is an honorable

profession. This is what I do. I'm a songwriter. My voice just serves what I'm writing about. So to let all of that go, I mean, bring the sensibilities of it actually to the song choices, but to just be the interpreter

was incredibly liberating and really fun. You know, it's interesting that you've done this album of covers. John Doe did an album of classic country covers. Loudoun Wainwright just did an album of Charlie Pool songs. So, you know, the three of you are famous as songwriters, and within a period of months, you're turning to other people's songs. I just find that so interesting. And all of those albums I just mentioned are really good.

Well, there is a canon of American music that maybe an entire generation doesn't know that well. You know, people who weren't around to hear Patsy Klein's version of She's Got You or a song like Take These Chains, or never heard Ray Charles Modern Sounds in Country and Western music or Hank Snow or any of these people. So I always felt like you can't imagine the Scots or the I've got. without Celtic music. You can't imagine us, the Americans, without these songs. They're so important to us. And it would be a tragedy if they were just, you know, you had to, if they were just in a museum, if they were just archive somewhere, if they weren't still being performed. Oh, I really agree with you. When we last spoke, it was 2006, maybe. And this was after you had

started singing again after your three-year bout of not being able to sing because of polyps on your vocal cords. And in that interview, you said that when you had the polyps, you vowed that if you recovered, that you'd give up all the anxiety that you had surrounding singing and just kind of enjoy singing and enjoy, you know, the talents that you had. So did that work out? Have you been able to just, as you've released this album of you singing other people's songs, have you been able to just enjoy singing without the attendant anxieties? I'm laughing because I'm I did say that, didn't I? You did.

I'm glad you reminded me. You're welcome. Yeah. I did give up a lot of the anxiety. I'm not a person who will ever entirely give up anxiety. I mean, it kind of fuels my everything. But I did stop the criticism. That's what I stopped, the self-criticism.

You know, if I miss a note, if I can't sustain it as long as I want, If my diaphragm gives away or something, I just go, well, that's okay. That's all right. You know, human being here. But I enjoy it a lot more. I do. I did keep that part of the promise to myself is that I got it back and I enjoy it a lot more. My guest is Roseanne Cash.

We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. We're listening to an interview from our archive with singer and songwriter Roseanne Cash. We spoke in 2009 when she released her album The List, featuring songs from the list of a hundred essential country songs that her father, Johnny Cash, compiled for her. He made that list in 1973 when she was 18 and on the road with him. She's Cash's oldest child. Her mother was his first wife. Your father lived his life on stage. Your mother didn't. Where do you fit in in terms of comfort level on stage and in terms of like having a public component of your life? That's something that I still struggle with. My daughter just made her first record,

and it's coming out soon. She's 27 years old, and she has not asked me for any advice. She's wanted to do this on her own. It's history repeating itself. But she did call and say, Mom, how do I have a successful career as a musician without having a public life?

and it kind of broke my heart because that was the exact question I asked at her aid. And I said, I don't know. Because, you know, songs are not complete until they're heard. You know, you can't just do this for your living room. It's part of doing it is putting it out there. And, of course, being a performer, that's a whole other thing. But I still do struggle with that. And I guess that I'm more comfortable, you know, how Malcolm Gladwell had that 10,000-hour

rule. Like if you do something 10,000 hours, you'd become an expert at it. I feel like maybe I'm close to 10,000 hours. So I'm a bit more comfortable. But you're right, my mother was very, very private and my dad lived out his best self on stage. So I have both of those examples, you know, don't tell anybody anything, keep to yourself, and take everything to the stage. Wow, that's really confusing, isn't it? It is. So I've had to work it out for myself. And what I do is both.

I have a great private life. I don't divulge everything. I find that incredibly distasteful. And I love performing. Well, I'm glad you found that comfort zone for yourself, that you found where the line is. I want to close with another track from the list, but since I've chosen everything so far,

I thought I'd be generous and let you choose one. Do you want something sad and slow in ballady or something a little more up? I'm letting you choose. Okay. Motherless children. This song is one of the oldest songs on the list. And it was amazing how many people had done it. Everyone from Billy Holiday to the Lovin Brothers to Eric Clapton.

There are many different versions. many, many, many verses, too. So John and I had to sort through them and kind of make it more linear, you know, just pull four verses that would work together. And John had just lost his mother a couple of weeks before we recorded this.

So I think we were both feeling that sense of loss and being motherless. And I can really hear it in John's guitar playing in this track. Rosanne Cash, it's just been wonderful to talk with you again. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure, Terry. Thank you for having me. Roseanne Cash, speaking with Terry Gross in 2009.

Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone. Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone. Motherless children has all that weeping and all that crying. Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone. Father will do the best he can when the mother is gone. Father will, father will, but there's so many things he just don't understand. Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone. Tomorrow on fresh air, we'll hear from writer Casey Gerald.

NPR called his 2018 memoir, There Will Be No Miracles here, one of the year's best books. His new book is The Great Refusal, A New Vision of Resistance. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews,

follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanishefsky. Our interviews and reviews are produced. and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldinado, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thaya Challoner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nespera Shorak directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.