Dylan, Cash producer Bob Johnston dies at 83

Bob Johnston, who produced some of American music’s most enduring and beloved albums, including Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” and Johnny Cash’s “At Folsom Prison,” died Friday. He was 83 years old.

“Bob had the gift to make you — as a player or a singer — do better than you’ve ever done in your life, right then” said musician Ron Cornelius. “He had a way of drawing that out of somebody’s guts, no matter how many credits (a musician had). Whether you were a big-timer or a first-timer, he could stand there and talk to you and you’d want to do better. I’ve worked with a lot of producers, but only one had that talent.”

Mr. Johnston was born May 14, 1932, in Texas, and grew up in a musical family. After a stint in the U.S. Navy, he, too, began pursuing a career in music. He had a short career as a rockabilly artist, then, in the early 1960s, began writing songs for placement in Elvis Presley movies, and traveling to Nashville to record demos.

Eventually, he got a job at Columbia Records in New York. One of the first recordings he produced there was Patti Page’s “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte,” which became a Top 10 hit in 1964. Following that success, he began working with Dylan.

Legendary session musician Charlie McCoy fondly remembers how Mr. Johnston used him to lure Dylan to Nashville. “Bob (Johnston) told me that if I ever got to New York, to give him a call, because he could get me theater tickets,” McCoy said. “I was in town and called about (the tickets). He said, ‘No problem. But first, I’m having a session with Bob Dylan this afternoon. I’d like you to come over and meet him.’

“So I went over to the studio that afternoon and Dylan said to me, ‘Listen, I’m getting ready to record this song. Why don’t you grab that other guitar and play along?’” That song was “Desolation Row,” an 11-minute masterpiece from 1965’s “Highway 61 Revisited.”

Later, McCoy remembered, Mr. Johnston called him and said, “Thanks for coming. I don’t know if you knew, but I was using you as bait: I want Dylan to come record in Nashville but, he isn’t too keen on the idea.”

Mr. Johnston’s tactics apparently worked. In Nashville, Dylan, joined by McCoy and other local session musicians, recorded songs for the 1966 release “Blonde on Blonde,” one of the first double albums in American pop music, and one of several recordings Dylan and Mr. Johnston made in Nashville. Mr. Johnston is who Dylan is referring to when he asks, “Is it rolling, Bob?” at the beginning of “To Be Alone with You” on “Nashville Skyline."

“Blonde on Blonde” “played a key role in opening up Music City in the ‘60s,” said Michael Gray of the Country Music Hall of Fame, which opened “Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats,” an exhibit celebrating this era, earlier this year. “It radically (changed) Nashville’s image, which would have a huge impact on country and folk music and in particular, singer-songwriters.”

Gray added, “I think one of (Mr. Johnston’s) strengths was giving artists their creative freedom. He allowed things that many established producers would have opposed.”

Label executives repeatedly rejected Cash’s idea of recording a live album inside a prison. But Mr. Johnston approved it, and in 1968, Cash put on an incendiary performance for the inmates of Folsom State Prison. The resulting LP would go on to sell more than 3 million copies and revitalize Cash’s career.

Over the course of his lengthy and distinguished career, Mr. Johnston also produced multiple stellar albums by Leonard Cohen, Simon and Garfunkel, Flatt & Scruggs, Pete Seeger, Marty Robbins and several other now-legendary artists, all within a 10-year span. This track record of classics will likely never be duplicated. His career continued through the 1990s, when he produced albums for Willie Nelson and Carl Perkins, and into the new millennium.

Mr. Johnston was preceded in death by his sons Andy and Bobby. He is survived by his wife, Joy Byers, and son Kevin. Funeral arrangements are unknown at this time.