If you were buying country albums in the spring of 1976, there is a good chance Johnny Cash’s One Piece at a Time made it into your collection. Released on May 1 of that year, it was his 54th studio album. Most fans loved it for the title track; a clever, funny story about an auto worker who builds a car piece by piece over the years. Pure Cash.
But that album carried two surprises that a lot of people missed at the time.
The Tennessee Three Were Back
The first thing fans noticed was the credit on the cover: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three. Cash hadn’t used that name since the 1960s. Seeing it again meant something.
The Tennessee Three were the tight little band that helped build his early sound. Luther Perkins played lead guitar. Marshall Grant handled bass. W.S. Holland kept time on drums. Together, they gave Cash that stripped-down, no-frills style that first made him a star.
Songs like “Daughter of a Railroad Man” and “Love Has Lost Again” on the album capture that same feel. When fans saw that credit, they knew exactly what they were getting.
A Daughter’s Song Before Anyone Knew Her Name
Here is the part most people did not realize at the time. “Love Has Lost Again”, one of the tracks on the album, was not written by Johnny Cash. His daughter Rosanne Cash wrote it, before she had a recording career of her own.
Johnny putting her song on the album was a quiet passing of the torch. A father giving his daughter her first real moment on a big stage.
It turned out to be a very good investment in her future.
Rosanne Went On to Win Four Grammys
Rosanne Cash, now 70, became a major force in country music in her own right. You may remember her hits “Tennessee Flat Top Box” and “Blue Moon With Heartache.” She built a career that stood completely on its own.
She won her first Grammy in 1985, Best Female Country Vocal Performance for “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me.” Three more followed:
- Best Americana Album for The River & the Thread (2015)
- Best American Roots Performance for “A Feather’s Not a Bird” (2015)
- Best American Roots Song for “A Feather’s Not a Bird” with John Leventhal (2015)
Four Grammys. And it all traces back, at least in part, to a song her dad quietly slipped onto a 1976 album.
Next time you hear the title track on an oldies station, remember there was a whole lot more going on with that record than a funny story about a stolen car.