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JOHNNY CASH SANG ABOUT “SEPTEMBER” WITH HIS DAUGHTER. 171 DAYS AFTER THE SONG WAS RELEASED, SEPTEMBER CAME — AND HE WAS GONE. Rosanne Cash had written “September When It Comes” years earlier, a song about growing older, letting go and finally finding rest. When she recorded it for her 2003 album Rules of Travel, her father joined her. Johnny Cash was already frail. In his verse, he sang about a man who could no longer move mountains or run the way he once had. Then came the image of being carried to a place where he could rest. The song was released on March 25, 2003. Less than two months later, Johnny lost his wife of 35 years, June Carter Cash. He kept going for a little while longer. Then, on September 12, Johnny Cash died at 71. The song had been out for 171 days. Rosanne had called it “September When It Comes.” For her father, September really did come.

Johnny Cash Sang About “September” With His Daughter. 171 Days After the Song Was Released, September Came — and He Was Gone.

Some songs feel personal the moment you hear them. Others become even heavier when time catches up with them. “September When It Comes” was one of those songs.

Rosanne Cash wrote it as a reflection on aging, memory, and the calm acceptance that can come at the end of a long life. When she recorded it for Rules of Travel, released on March 25, 2003, she invited her father, Johnny Cash, to sing with her. His voice was already frail, but that fragility gave the song a quiet truth that no studio polish could replace.

A Father and Daughter in the Same Song

The song does not rush. It moves like someone looking back over a long road. Rosanne Cash’s lyrics speak of seasons changing and a person waiting for the moment when rest finally arrives. Johnny Cash answers with the deep, weathered weight of a man who has lived enough to understand the words without needing to explain them.

That is part of why the recording stays with people. It is not dramatic in a loud way. It is intimate. It sounds like a conversation between generations, and maybe also like a family quietly preparing for what they already know life will one day ask of them.

“I cannot move a mountain now / I can no longer run.”

Those lines land differently now than they did then. In 2003, they were part of a song. Later, they became part of Johnny Cash’s final chapter.

What Happened After the Release

Less than two months after the song came out, June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003. Johnny Cash lost the partner he had loved for decades, and the blow was enormous. He continued for a little while longer, but the last stretch of his life was marked by grief, frailty, and the slow closing of a story that had lasted far beyond music alone.

Then, on September 12, 2003, Johnny Cash died at age 71. By then, September When It Comes had been released for 171 days. The title had become more than a title. It had become a timestamp on fate.

Why the Song Still Matters

It would be easy to turn this into a neat piece of tragedy, but the deeper truth is gentler. Johnny Cash did not simply sing about dying. He sang about arrival, rest, and the dignity of time passing. Rosanne Cash gave the song its shape, and Johnny Cash gave it its final ache.

That is why listeners still return to it. Not because it predicts the future, but because it understands something everyone eventually meets: the seasons keep turning, and no one gets to stay in summer forever.

For Johnny Cash, September really did come. And when it did, the song he sang with his daughter suddenly felt less like a performance and more like a farewell spoken in advance.

 

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KRIS KRISTOFFERSON MADE AN ALBUM ABOUT DYING AT 76. THREE YEARS LATER HE LEARNED THE DOCTORS HAD BEEN WRONG ABOUT HIM THE WHOLE TIME. In January 2013, Kris Kristofferson released an album called Feeling Mortal. He was 76. He and producer Don Was cut twenty songs in three days and kept ten. The title song is an old man looking at his own face in the mirror, wide awake, counting what time is left. What the listeners didn’t know was why he was writing that way. For years his doctors had told him he had Alzheimer’s, or dementia from all the boxing and football of his younger days. His memory was going. His wife Lisa later said there were stretches when he couldn’t hold on to what he had just done a minute before. He was singing about the end because he had been told he was already in it. Then in February 2016, Lisa took him to a different doctor, who looked at the muscles twitching in his forearms and ordered a blood test. It came back positive for Lyme disease — a tick-borne illness the family believes he had carried for decades. It was never Alzheimer’s. Within three weeks of proper treatment, Lisa said her husband started coming back to her. Kris Kristofferson died at home on Maui on September 28, 2024, at 88 — eleven years after he made the record he thought was his goodbye.

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JOEY FEEK SANG ABOUT LEAVING HER HUSBAND BEHIND. FOUR YEARS LATER, THE MUSIC VIDEO THEY MADE BECAME THEIR REAL LIFE. On May 17, 2012, Joey + Rory filmed the video for “When I’m Gone” on their Tennessee farm. Joey sang from the point of view of a woman preparing the man she loved for life after her death. In the video, Rory was left alone in their farmhouse while Joey was imagined buried beneath the sassafras trees in their backfield. At the time, neither of them knew how painfully real those scenes would become. Joey was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2014. After the disease returned and became terminal, she died on March 4, 2016, at just 40 years old. Rory went home without his wife — though this time, he had their little daughter Indiana beside him. Years later, Rory looked back at that old video and wrote that three and a half years after they filmed it, “that video would come true.” What had once been acting was now his life. And Joey’s voice was still there, telling him he would somehow be alright when she was gone.

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HE WAS TOO SICK TO STAND. THEN JESSI COLTER WALKED OUT — AND WAYLON SANG HIS LAST FULL CONCERT FROM A CHAIR. January 6, 2000. The Ryman Auditorium. Waylon Jennings was 62, and his health was already failing badly enough that he could no longer stand through a full show. He sat on a chair and addressed it before anyone else could. “I guess y’all noticed I’m sittin’ on this chair, and that ain’t all old age,” he told the crowd. His back and legs were hurting. Then came the old Waylon defiance: “Y’all don’t worry about me. I can still kick ass.” And he did. John Anderson, Montgomery Gentry and Travis Tritt joined him that night. But the most personal stretch came when his wife, Jessi Colter, walked out. They shared four songs — “Love’s the Only Chain,” “I’m Not Lisa,” “Storms Never Last,” and “Suspicious Minds.” “Storms Never Last” carried a different weight now. Jessi had written it years earlier, and the two had sung it together long before Waylon’s body began failing him. That night, they sang it together again. Waylon never performed another full concert. Two years later, he was gone.

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KRIS KRISTOFFERSON MADE AN ALBUM ABOUT DYING AT 76. THREE YEARS LATER HE LEARNED THE DOCTORS HAD BEEN WRONG ABOUT HIM THE WHOLE TIME. In January 2013, Kris Kristofferson released an album called Feeling Mortal. He was 76. He and producer Don Was cut twenty songs in three days and kept ten. The title song is an old man looking at his own face in the mirror, wide awake, counting what time is left. What the listeners didn’t know was why he was writing that way. For years his doctors had told him he had Alzheimer’s, or dementia from all the boxing and football of his younger days. His memory was going. His wife Lisa later said there were stretches when he couldn’t hold on to what he had just done a minute before. He was singing about the end because he had been told he was already in it. Then in February 2016, Lisa took him to a different doctor, who looked at the muscles twitching in his forearms and ordered a blood test. It came back positive for Lyme disease — a tick-borne illness the family believes he had carried for decades. It was never Alzheimer’s. Within three weeks of proper treatment, Lisa said her husband started coming back to her. Kris Kristofferson died at home on Maui on September 28, 2024, at 88 — eleven years after he made the record he thought was his goodbye.

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JOEY FEEK SANG ABOUT LEAVING HER HUSBAND BEHIND. FOUR YEARS LATER, THE MUSIC VIDEO THEY MADE BECAME THEIR REAL LIFE. On May 17, 2012, Joey + Rory filmed the video for “When I’m Gone” on their Tennessee farm. Joey sang from the point of view of a woman preparing the man she loved for life after her death. In the video, Rory was left alone in their farmhouse while Joey was imagined buried beneath the sassafras trees in their backfield. At the time, neither of them knew how painfully real those scenes would become. Joey was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2014. After the disease returned and became terminal, she died on March 4, 2016, at just 40 years old. Rory went home without his wife — though this time, he had their little daughter Indiana beside him. Years later, Rory looked back at that old video and wrote that three and a half years after they filmed it, “that video would come true.” What had once been acting was now his life. And Joey’s voice was still there, telling him he would somehow be alright when she was gone.

Uncategorized

HE WAS TOO SICK TO STAND. THEN JESSI COLTER WALKED OUT — AND WAYLON SANG HIS LAST FULL CONCERT FROM A CHAIR. January 6, 2000. The Ryman Auditorium. Waylon Jennings was 62, and his health was already failing badly enough that he could no longer stand through a full show. He sat on a chair and addressed it before anyone else could. “I guess y’all noticed I’m sittin’ on this chair, and that ain’t all old age,” he told the crowd. His back and legs were hurting. Then came the old Waylon defiance: “Y’all don’t worry about me. I can still kick ass.” And he did. John Anderson, Montgomery Gentry and Travis Tritt joined him that night. But the most personal stretch came when his wife, Jessi Colter, walked out. They shared four songs — “Love’s the Only Chain,” “I’m Not Lisa,” “Storms Never Last,” and “Suspicious Minds.” “Storms Never Last” carried a different weight now. Jessi had written it years earlier, and the two had sung it together long before Waylon’s body began failing him. That night, they sang it together again. Waylon never performed another full concert. Two years later, he was gone.

Uncategorized

JOHNNY CASH SANG ABOUT “SEPTEMBER” WITH HIS DAUGHTER. 171 DAYS AFTER THE SONG WAS RELEASED, SEPTEMBER CAME — AND HE WAS GONE. Rosanne Cash had written “September When It Comes” years earlier, a song about growing older, letting go and finally finding rest. When she recorded it for her 2003 album Rules of Travel, her father joined her. Johnny Cash was already frail. In his verse, he sang about a man who could no longer move mountains or run the way he once had. Then came the image of being carried to a place where he could rest. The song was released on March 25, 2003. Less than two months later, Johnny lost his wife of 35 years, June Carter Cash. He kept going for a little while longer. Then, on September 12, Johnny Cash died at 71. The song had been out for 171 days. Rosanne had called it “September When It Comes.” For her father, September really did come.