{"id":178,"date":"2016-02-12T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=178"},"modified":"2025-02-08T10:02:53","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T15:02:53","slug":"tennessee-flat-top-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/tennessee-flat-top-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee Flat-Top Box (Johnny Cash)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tennessee Flat-Top Box\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VXxcW4zNtlk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This was the first guitar solo I ever learned, through an odd confluence of coincidences. I got Johnny Cash&#8217;s <em>Ring of Fire<\/em> LP in Falmouth, <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-181\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Ring_of_Fire_-_The_Best_of_Johnny_Cash.jpg?resize=200%2C200\" alt=\"Ring_of_Fire_-_The_Best_of_Johnny_Cash\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Ring_of_Fire_-_The_Best_of_Johnny_Cash.jpg?w=200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Ring_of_Fire_-_The_Best_of_Johnny_Cash.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>where the record store on Main St. had a discount bin and I could easily persuade my mother to take chances on unfamiliar material. Cash was definitely that, for us, and when we got home and listened, my mother was instantly turned off &#8212; she didn&#8217;t like his hyper-macho voice and the overblown arrangements, and her dislike was cemented by the lyrics of &#8220;Remember the Alamo&#8221;: &#8220;Hey, Santy Ana, we&#8217;re killing your soldiers below\/ So men wherever they go\/ Will remember the Alamo.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-179 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Seth-Shulman.jpg?resize=200%2C199\" alt=\"Seth Shulman\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Seth-Shulman.jpg?w=200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Seth-Shulman.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>Be that as it may, I listened to it sometimes, and then I was over at Seth Shulman&#8217;s house &#8212; the one time I ever recall visiting him. Seth had blown me away in fourth grade by bringing his guitar for &#8220;show and tell,&#8221; and performing a Beatles song. I don&#8217;t remember which Beatles song, but it was way beyond my abilities, as was the whole idea of performing anything on guitar &#8212; I had one already, but could barely pick out simple melodies. Seth and I were not super-close friends, but we were always friendly and I had huge respect for his guitaristic abilities, which is probably why I was invited over to his house.<\/p>\n<p>I think I was only there once, and we went up to his room and played guitar, and he had the <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-403\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Newport-Folk-Fest-Songbook.jpg?resize=198%2C272&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"272\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Newport-Folk-Fest-Songbook.jpg?w=236&amp;ssl=1 236w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Newport-Folk-Fest-Songbook.jpg?resize=219%2C300&amp;ssl=1 219w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 198px) 100vw, 198px\" \/><em>Newport Folk Festival Songbook<\/em>, which I had never seen. We were going through it, and it had &#8220;Tennessee Flat-Top Box&#8221; &#8212; not only the words and melody, but the guitar solo. It was just an extension of a basic bass run in C, and I could read enough music to figure it out, so I did. Seth and I played together for an hour or so, and then we went downstairs and played for his mother, and then I went home, and that was that &#8212; except that almost fifty years later, I still know the damn thing.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, Seth is now a respected science journalist, with multiple books to his credit, and he lives in Western Mass, and we really should get together one of these days. I have no idea if he still plays guitar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first guitar solo I ever learned, thanks to Johnny Cash, the Newport Folk Festival songbook, and envious emulation of my schoolmate Seth Shulman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tennessee Flat-Top Box (Johnny Cash) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The first guitar solo I ever learned, thanks to Johnny Cash, the Newport Folk Festival songbook, and my schoolmate Seth Shulman.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/tennessee-flat-top-box\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tennessee Flat-Top Box (Johnny Cash) - 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It's one of his most autobiographical songs -- pretty much straight-up life story except that he\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Killers-Three-poster.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/johnny-be-fair\/","url_meta":{"origin":178,"position":2},"title":"Johnny Be Fair (Buffy Sainte-Marie)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Another by Buffy Sainte-Marie, though, like a lot of people, I thought it was an old folk song that I just happened to learn from her recording. The story is certainly old, and I also do a Caribbean version called \"Shame and Scandal in the Family,\" but this version doesn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"buffy_sainte_marie02","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/buffy_sainte_marie02-300x213.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5925,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bright-lights\/","url_meta":{"origin":178,"position":3},"title":"Bright Lights, Big City\/Baby, What You Want Me to Do? (Jimmy Reed)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 6, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I never really learned either of these songs, but they're both blues standards and I've been playing them together since the 1970s. It's kind of a long story, but the short version is that I had a guitar stolen in Morocco in the winter of 1978-79 and needed to buy\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Jimmy-Reed2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3159,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/im-moving-on\/","url_meta":{"origin":178,"position":4},"title":"I&#8217;m Moving On (Hank Snow\/Ray Charles)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In the mid-1980s I was looking for songs in the wide area of overlap between blues and country, and Ray Charles' terrific version of this Hank Snow hit made it an obvious choice. In that period I was touring across country twice a year, with most of the gigs in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Ray-Charles-Movin-On-300x296.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1579,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lonesome-7-7203\/","url_meta":{"origin":178,"position":5},"title":"Lonesome 7-7203 (resisting and singing country)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Growing up where I grew up, when I grew up, I had no understanding or appreciation for country and western music. That may seem strange to a lot of younger music fans, who think of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard as \"Americana,\" along with the Carter Family, and bluegrass, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"18 king-size country hits","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/18-king-size-country-hits.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5665,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/5665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}