There was one of them, "Ragged Old Flag" that I didn't even have any control over. It came out faster than I could
write it down. You've heard of people who write a song in ten minutes. "Ragged Old Flag" was one of those songs.
Then I recorded it at a Columbia luncheon at the House Of Cash and the applause is from the
Columbia recording people who where in convention there. Chuck Cochran arranged the most unusual orchestration
(and Earl Scruggs played the banjo).
-- Johnny Cash
In the spring and summer of
1974, you couldn't avoid hearing this
spoken-word-plus-accompaniment
(the obvious fife and drums, etc., and a kitchen-sink, encyclopedic approach to
4th-of-July music, IIRC) on your local
country radio station, and it also ascended
into the lower reaches of the
Top 40 charts. Inspired, loosely, by the Byron MacGregor hit version of
Gordon
Sinclair's "
The Americans" (a.k.a.
America: The Good Neighbor), it would become the title track of Cash's
next LP (
Ragged Old Flag). Cool album cover, with the Man in Black, dressed in
denim this
time around, pointing back at a large, ragged(y) old flag behind him. The Man-in-Black übercool of Mr. Cash
always overrides the fact that this piece has become, over the years, associated with hyper-patriot dreck
best (or, rather, worst) embodied by
Lee Greenwood's "
God Bless the USA". For me, nothing can tarnish that
ragged old Cash.