The Man in Black

For this class journalism we have been focusing on how to interview people. For my Action Project we had to choose an impactful voice of the twentieth century. We also had to get a podcast style recording of the conversation talking about this person we choose. I choose johnny cash because I think that seeing helped a lot of people with his music and sometimes it's the misrepresented people who he fought for and I liked that.

[00:00:01.830] - OL
Thank you. CL for joining me.


[00:00:06.760] - OL
About this interview for Johnny Cash.


[00:00:09.310] - CL
Glad to be here.


[00:00:11.050] - OL
his interview is about johnny cash because I think he was an influential person of the 20th century. And I think he. Was very impactful on a lot of people. Now a few questions.

[00:00:23.820] - CL
Go ahead.


[00:00:25.220] - OL
What do you think. What do you know about Johnny Cash ?


[00:00:29.290] - CL
Well I know that he's a country singer icon who started out bluegrass. What do you think of his style of songs. Well it's country. Slash bluegrass. He had his origins in an extremely pure country. And then he moved into a little more extruded sound when he got to Nashville. Of the Grand Ole Opry influenced him a lot. It became more studio effect on his vocals for example he stayed pretty pure with that he had a good deep rich voice.


[00:01:05.260] - CL
He really popularized the driving rhythm kind of a railroad beat that he did just with his own guitar. So he started out just using his own guitar as a rhythm instrument. And that drove that railroad kind of beat that.


[00:01:33.850] - OL
Why do you think he dressed in black all the time ?


[00:01:36.340] - CL
That's a good question. If it was a a crossover because black was not a popular country music theme back then it was more it was a beatnik. 50s to early 60s signature to be all in black and darker and it was a good symbolism for that the darker side of his music and then then he became known as the man in black and then he couldn't change. So who knows at the end if he wanted to wear black or not he really had to because he was the man in black. the way I feel about a lot of things.


[00:02:15.170]  Johnny cash
 So this is the way I feel about a lot of things. This is called the Man in Black.


[00:02:18.000] - OL
Why do you suppose he had a drug problem.


[00:02:21.420] - CL
Well a lot of people in the music industry.Play around drugs a lot. Many many people. Kurt Cobain lots of people a mama cast lots of people on drug music. Use drugs in the music industry. So. That isn't that surprising. He also had a very personally had a very troubled past. He had apparently had some anger problems and he. Did alcohol as well. And he just felt alienated from society.


[00:02:57.090] - OL
What type of people do you think relate the best to him ?


[00:03:00.370] - CL
Disenfranchised people. The the people who relate because that's to him. Started to be left out of American society back in the day right after the war during World War Two you could be a poor rural person and still like step into society go in the army and save the country and all that. Once they came back. The 50s were pretty good economically but when the crash came in 57' rural America just kind of became the forgotten stepchild of American society. No nobody in power talked about.


[00:03:40.540] - CL
Poor rural people as being of any importance at all. And he spoke to them.


[00:03:47.770] - Johnny cash
"You stay the hell away from me ya hear".


[00:03:49.660] - CL
It's kind of the American dream that you can crash and be a phoenix and rise up again. And he inspired that and people like no matter how low you get. If you just get a grip on yourself you can rise up out of the ashes. So he appeals to a lot of people. OK. Thank you for meeting with me about this. My pleasure. It was very informative.


[00:04:11.200] - OL
Good afternoon. Yes. Thank you for joining me. Thank you. Quick question. If you don't mind about Johnny Cash . What do you know about him and his legacy ?


[00:04:21.940] - DS
So I think he's left a.Very famous legacy. Now if that works. But. Yeah I think he's influenced many people and continues to influence them to this day. I think a lot of people look up to what he was and kind of aspire to be. Yeah I think that's kind of the big things.


[00:04:46.410] - OL
Thank you.

Refection 
This action project took about 3 or 4 hours for me to do. The interviews where the easy part for me. I am really unfamiliar with audio editing software and I had to get the hang of it. Then my audio got deleted so I had to redo all the audio.

With this podcast I wanted to see if anyone knew anything about the country singer Johnny Cash. I choose the audio from the song Folsom Prison Blues for when CL was talking about the railroad beat I knew that would be perfect.

I knew who I wanted to choose for the interview the day it was assigned. I wanted the opinion of a younger audience (being DS) and I wanted the opinion of an older one knowing that he grew up with his music this being (CL)

I recommend trying to find a space without echo. It was hard to find anywhere in my house without this echo and the final product is edited to try to lessen it but it was still there a little.

I would recommend not using Beautiful Editor. I say this because you can't do certain things with it. For example saving your work is very hard to figure out. Also I couldn't drag multiple audio sample at once which made it very annoying at some points. If I were to do this project again I would for sure use Garageband.

The script was a challenge for me. I was time consuming and I didn't really see a point to doing it but I got through it and it is accurate. I did use the help from a website to get the exact timing of conversions.