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Brett Eugene Ralph wrote: . . .

--"Saturday Night in Hickman County," "Tony," and "Allegheny" (all from Johnny Cash & His Woman, my favorite Johnny Cash album) . . .

millions wrote:"Don't Take Your Guns to Town"

From The Essential Johnny Cash: "I started writing 'Don't Take Your Guns to Town' as a joke which involved Sammy Davis, Jr. It was 1958 and western television shows were hot. So were fast-draw artists. I was fast but Sammy Davis, Jr. always outdrew me.

We squared off in the hotel lobby in Sydney, Australia using blanks, but real gunpowder. We were threatened with eviction."

Johnny Cash wrote:Back in the late fifties and early sixties, the fast draw craze was goin' 'round and I got pretty fast with a Colt .45. I kept that thing cleaned with a powder solvent, oiled her down every day and had a hair spring trigger. I could draw and cock and fire somewhere under half a second, and I thought I was just about as fast as old John Wesley Hardin or any of the rest of them. I got to really livin' the role. I thought it was 1881 and somebody was comin' after me. Sometimes I'd put on that gun at night and go out lookin' for them bad men. Wound up shootin' every tree in the yard full of holes and God only knows why I didn't shoot off all my toes.

Then I bought myself a Civil War pistol, a cap and ball job, that fired black powder and when I got a whiff of that black powder smoke up my nostrils, I was like a wild burro. It does strange things to a man. That hammer would hit the cap, the cap would fire, the powder would explode and that round lead ball would go deep into the gut of that imaginary bad man. Then I'd sniff and snort and paw like a bull, lookin' for something else. I thought I was invincible. Black powder smoke does that to you.

In the days before security checkpoints in airports, I carried my pistol and my fast draw holster on the road. I had a showdown with Johnny Western one night in Minneapolis (blanks, of course) and he killed me seven times in a row. In Waterloo, Iowa, Gordon Terry and I had a standoff. "Sissies use blanks," he said, and my bullet (blank) found its mark and so did his (real), the toe of his boot. In Sydney, Australia, in the hotel corridor, Sammy Davis, Jr. and I had a standoff and he dropped me cold. "It only takes one good eye to shoot, Cash," he laughed.

Well, I went back to practicing, but by the time I did get really fast, the craze had died out and all those swift gunslingers had hung up their holsters. Of course, every week I could draw on Jim Arness at the beginning of Gunsmoke, but there was something kind of unfulfilling about drawin' against the T.V.

Later on, I did that movie with Kirk Douglas where we squared off. I think I got him, but I never did know for sure because I couldn't understand the ending of that movie.

A few years ago, Hank Williams, Jr. gave me a pistol that belonged to his daddy (It's in the picture on this album). I keep her close by and loaded with five bullets, the hammer being down on an empty chamber, 'cause even though I feel I am now the fastest gun alive, I'd spin that cylinder and give a slowpoke a one out of six chance to be standing after the smoke clears. But I want to say to all you weak-thumbed, wishy-washy, gun-shy, lily-livered, young, shaky, tenderfoot, owl-hoot, whippersnappers, that this ain't the movies, so don't come tryin' me. You're not gettin' a chance to prove me wrong. Old gunfighters never die, we just go on smellin' like black powder.

John R. (Deadeye) Cash