Rosanne Cash on the gift her father, Johnny Cash, gave her

In this podcast, the today's show anchor talks with A-Listers and Athletes about the moments

that shaped them. Listen, and you might get a fresh perspective. Search Glass Half-Full wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Rosanne Cash. Back in 1973, when she was 18,

“her father Johnny Cash gave her a list of 100 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. The night's in the harbor.

Don't shan for me. I'm back a whole ship, and drift on the sea. Sea of Heartbreak lost low moments, memories of your presence. So divine, I wish you would win again the deal. All the sea of tears, sea of heartbreak.

“Rosanne 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 sea of heartbreak? It's kind of a perfectly constructed country song, and it was on the list. 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 kitschy, 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 she 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. Well, it's amazing. The lyric is written by Hal David, who wrote the lyrics for so many birdback racks songs. So he's not exactly a mystery country music.

And that's the 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 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 the 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 my friend. I've met him a few times over the years, but it would be presumptuous to say he's a friend. Why don't you ask him to do it on this song? Because he's just a dream-date Terry. I mean, 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 all his 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 is 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 he mentioned the 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, protests, 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 and 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? Well, all I had to do is get my dad because he had them all in his fingertips. You could say, "Well, how does this one go?" And he picked 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 Klein, she's got use in 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 the 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, you know, if he'd given it to me even a couple years earlier, I might have said, "Oh yeah, I roll a thanks dad." But I wanted this.

I wanted him. You know, my parents were divorced. I was just sucking in this great time with my dad who was clean and sober. So I wanted that experience of loving what he loved and learning 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.

“And 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 of black catalog. 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 catalog 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 he do with the piece of paper now? Is it framed? Is it preserved? Where do you keep it? I keep it in my files.

It's not framed. 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 give it away yet. It's 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. The patty client made famous. It's because 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 patty client'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. I guess what do you do to put yourself in the mood to feel the song?

You know what I mean?

You're not a teenager anymore.

You're married. Maybe that's a presumptuous question. Maybe I should just drop that. No, I know what you're saying. But 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 had more life experience. You know, the music gets filtered through all of that. It's beautiful. When I started singing this song, like I said, I had to get patty client off my shoulder to even approach the song.

So once I started singing it, it kind of dawned on 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 gave to me. And it's not with love.

Just like it used to be. The only thing different. The only thing you. I've got your picture. She's got you.

I've got the records that we used to share. And they still sound the same. As when you were here. The only thing different. The only thing new.

I've got the records. She's got you. I've got your memory. Or has it got me? I really don't know.

But I know you won't let me be. I've got your classmate. That's my guess Roseanne Cache singing. She's got you. A song made famous by Patty Klein.

A song featured on Roseanne Cache's CD called The List,

“which is sung selected from the list of 100 essential songs”

that her father Johnny Cache 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, you know, president of my Beatles fan club.

When I was 11. Yes, I was indeed. I was just where I asked for your favorite beatle was. Well, John. Okay, good.

And I, you know, 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 Johnny 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 eight Charles and Marty Robbins and Patty Klein. So I got that in by us Moses 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 a hundred 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? Uh, it's a very good question.

In fact, I resisted it for the first year that John started talking about it.

Um, 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, I probably carried the chip longer than was 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.

Then I started realizing 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.

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 weren't here to tell me about it. And at this point, I had a really serious health problem myself. I faced 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. All right. How long ago was this?

There 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 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 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 six weeks or something.”

He said, "Do you need to prepare yourself psychologically?" So I got it when he told me that it was going to be tough 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, which you do a lot of, in singing. So, I mean, where 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. I mean, I mean, that it was my hearing was so sensitive that, you know, 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 Sachs 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?”

I lose my sensitivity to music or my ability to play it." And he wrote me back the most beautiful, type written letter that was hand corrected in ink.

And it basically 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. [laughter] I loved that. That's the letter I'm going to frame.

[music] Singer Songwriter Rosanne 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. [music]

I'm growing tired of the big city lights, tired of the glamour, and tired of the sights. And all of my dreams, I am roaming once more. Back to my home on the old river shore.

This is the Mississippi and you, dear.

These are dark and dreary, every layer I roam. This the Mississippi and you, roaming the white world over. [music] You count on sunscreen to protect your skin.

But that SPF rating on the bottle might not be exactly as advertised. So you could measure an SPF 50 at one lob and an SPF 30 at another. On the Sunday story, is it time to update sunscreen guidance.

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Sure way, your daily mental recent. Listen on the MPHR app or wherever you get your podcasts. The MPHR app cuts through the noise, bringing you local, national and global coverage. No paywalls, no profits, no nonsense. Download it in your app store today. This is Fresh Air, I'm Dave Davies. Let's get back to the interview Terry recorded with singer and songwriter Rosanne 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 Rosanne Cash were talking about her recovery from the brain surgery she'd undergone in 2007. You know, you mentioned the 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, was it long period, right, when you had these bad headaches?”

How did you, 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 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 and every hearing list 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 of Mary version, which we 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. And it's a lyrics. Yeah, the lyrics aren't desolate. They are desolate, but in 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 still haunting version. Well, we wanted to get it very churchy, and we wanted to bring out all of the loneliness of the lyrics, because the lyrics are really sad. And I knew Bobby Bears version better than I knew Peter Paul Mary's version.

“And Bobby Bears version was much sad, or, and I think we even took it a step further.”

Okay, well, let's hear it. And this is my guess Rose and Cash singing 500 miles. Her husband John Leventhall is playing organ behind her. He plays a lot of the instruments and did the arranging for the CD.

American songs that her father Johnny Cash gave her when she was 18. So here's 500 miles.

“If you miss the train alone, 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, one hundred miles. You can hear the whistle blow, a hundred miles. Tears drops fell on mama's note when I read the thing she wrote. She said,

"We miss you, honey, we love you, come on home."

Well, I didn't have to pack, I had it all right on my back. Now I'm 500 miles away from home.

“Lord I'm one, Lord I'm two, Lord I'm three, Lord I'm four, Lord I'm five hundred miles away from home.”

That's Rosanne Cash from her CD, "The List", which features songs from "The List of a Hundred A Central" songs that her father Johnny Cash gave her. Before hearing that song, we were talking about the brain surgery that you had. 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's

been times and there were times in your father's life when he turned 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? What have you had that has kept you well, I grew up with. I adhere to the religion of art and music and small children, the pronouncements of small children. I'm not the type to turn to religion in that way, I'm not the type to turn to drugs in alcohol, but I do have a profound devotion to art and music

and children. And those, 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 gonna call him to you. So you mentioned art and music as what you turned to, it has like, 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, when you needed

that kind of nourishment? John Dittian's year of magical thinking was great, I read the book, I know what to see Vanessa Redgrave perform at. And let me stop you right there. That is a, I love that book. It was so hard to read because it's all, it's a journal of the year she lost her husband.

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, that thing she said about, well, it's three hours earlier in California as he dead in California yet. I had that feeling and many others that you don't tell people because they, we'll think you're nuts. And so to see it there on the page, poetically written, I 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 you. 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, oh. Did you go 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, your ability to be who you are wasn't 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. Absolutely 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. I, 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 ambience 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? Yeah, it's exactly how I feel. No, but not, 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 was there any, what 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 to you, return home and

note for the first time. I feel like that. I've returned home and known it for the first time. My guest is Rosanne Cash. We'll talk more after a break. This is fresh air. This week on Newsmakers, after more than a decade in comedy, I wasn't sure that we would get here Robbie Hoffman is fearless. I had a small feeling I wasn't sure and fully or herself. My landlord. Hello. You can go out and wash. Well, I'm not home now. I'm doing something.

We plunge into comedy and success with Robbie Hoffman on NPR's Newsmakers. Hi there. I'm Brittany loose and not to brag, but I host a really fabulous podcast. It's called it's been a minute. I love

“making it and I think you'll love listening to it. Over the last year, hundreds of thousands of”

listeners have been tuning in and I got to say, if you haven't yet, you're missing out. Listen to be it's been a minute podcast from NPR today. This is fresh air. Let's get back to my interview with Rosanne 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 100 essential songs that her father,

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 do a beautiful job of this. Bob Dylan wrote it. It was”

on his 1969 free wheel in Album. 1962, I mean, what year is it? More like 62 probably. And this is earlier than 69. Yeah, because they did national skyline. That was 69. Yeah, so in 69, your father recorded it with Dylan on Dylan's national 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

you know, 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 sacralisius.”

I 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 as I can't do that, it's outside of my own realm. John said, let's listen to Bob's original version and approach it that way.

And his original version is original version is in the tradition of a classic folk song that's rooted in Elizabethan music even. And I got to do that old 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 travelling in the North country fair, the winds here have the all the borderline,

remember me, to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine. If you go when the snow flakes don't, the rivers freeze and the summer ends, please see she has a cold so warm. To keep her from the howling winds. That's Rosanne 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,

essential 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 your 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. You know, 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. That was Wayne Wright just did an album of Charlie Pool songs. So, you know, the three of you are our famous as songwriters 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 or a song like Take These Chains are never heard

Ray Charles Modern Sounds and Country and Western Music or Hank Snow or any of these people. So, I always felt like you can't imagine the Scott's or the Irish without Celtic music. You can't

“imagine us, the Americans without the songs. They're so important to us and it would be a tragedy”

if they were just, you know, you had to, they were just in a museum if they were just archive somewhere if they weren't still being performed. Yeah, 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

about of not being able to sing because of polyps under 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 talent that you had. So, did that work out? Have you been able to just, as you've released this out, but if you're singing other people songs, have you been able to just enjoy singing without the attendant anxieties? I'm laughing because I did say that, didn't I? You did. I'm glad you remind

of 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 you know, 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. When 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 Rosanne Cash. We'll talk more after a break. This is fresh air. This week on Whitway, Don't Tell Me, we talk with our panel, Mo Raka, Shane Torres, and any rower to about the latest trend in dating,

smelling bad on purpose. This fair moon maxing is just not bathing. Yes, yeah. So this is like when a Uber came out and they're like, it's not taxi. It's a ride chair. Don't miss our full conversation in the rest of our games. Listen to the Whitway. Don't tell me podcast in the NPR app or wherever. You get your podcasts. How will a historically unpopular president navigate a midterm election season that may leave him with a lot less power? Stay caught up with the latest news

with Trump's term, the podcast where we curate NPR's coverage of President Trump in short episodes focused on a single story. Follow Trump's terms on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air. We're listening to an interview from our archive with singer and songwriter Rosanne 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 over 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 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 age. 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.

So I have both of those examples, you know, don't tell anybody anything, keep to yourself and

“take everything to this date. 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, you know, divulge everything. I find that incredibly distasteful. And I love performing. Well, Gladwell, 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 and

balladier 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 Louven 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.

Rosen and Cash has 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 there's all that we've been in all that crime. Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone. Mother will do the best you can when the mother is gone. Father will do the best you can when the mother is gone. Father will do the best you can but there's so many things you 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 of his Sam Brigger our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our

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