RING OF FIRE .- SONG ... Curiosities
(Written by Merle Kilgore & June Carter).
Issued on SINGLE Mercury 72073 A. (Released 1963)
From LP "Anita Carter Sings Folk Songs Old And New" (1963).
NOTE : LP Shows "Love's Ring Of Fire"
Recorded 24 October 1962 - [14:00-17:00] - Columbia Recording Studio, 804 16th Ave. South, Nashville, TN -- Anita Carter [vcl solo], Jerry Kennedy [ac gt], Ray Edenton [ac gt], Harold Bradley [ac gt], Bob Moore [bass], Unknown [lute].
Producers : Shelby Singleton and Jerry Kennedy.
Born Ina Anita Carter in Maces Spring VA (1933 - 1999)... Anita Recorded 173 Songs from 1950 to 1972 And 1996...She Performed for nearly 50 Years as Lead Vocalist w/The String Bass and Guitar.
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"Ring of Fire" is a song written by the American singer-songwriters June Carter and Merle Kilgore. It was originally recorded as "(Love's) Ring of Fire" by June's sister, Anita Carter, on her 1962 album Folk Songs Old and New. It was popularized by Carter's future husband, the country singer Johnny Cash, after it appeared on his 1963 compilation album Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash.
Cash's version became one of his biggest hits, staying at No. 1 on the country chart for seven weeks. It was certified gold by the RIAA on January 21, 2010, and has sold over 1.2 million downloads.It was named the fourth-greatest country song by Country Music Television, while Rolling Stone called it the greatest country song and the 87th-greatest song of all time. In 1999, Cash's version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Description
The lyrics compare the passions of love to a "ring of fire". The narrator describes being burned, and the flames rising, as he continues falling a long distance ("down, down, down"), using the vocabulary of "falling in love". The song concludes without resolution.
Some sources claim that June Carter had seen the words "Love is like a burning ring of fire" underlined in an Elizabethan poetry book owned by her uncle A. P. Carter. She worked with Merle Kilgore on writing a song inspired by this imagery, as she had seen her uncle do in the past. In her words: "There is no way to be in that kind of hell, no way to extinguish a flame that burns, burns, burns".
The song was originally recorded by June's sister, Anita Carter, on her Mercury Records album Folk Songs Old and New (1963) as "(Love's) Ring of Fire". Mercury released Anita's version as a single and it was a featured "pick hit" in Billboard magazine. After hearing Anita's version, Johnny Cash claimed he had a dream where he heard the song accompanied by "Mexican horns". The mariachi horn sound had recently been popularized on American radio with 1962 hit song "The Lonely Bull" by Herb Alpert. Cash said, "[...] I'll give you about five or six more months, and if you don't hit with it, I'm gonna record it the way I feel it."Cash noted that adding trumpets was a change to his basic sound.
When the song failed to become a major hit for Anita, Cash recorded it his own way, adding the mariachi-style horns from his dream. This sound was later used in the song "It Ain't Me Babe", which was recorded around the same time. Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters are prominently featured in the Cash recording singing harmony. Cash tinkered with a few of the original phrases in Anita Carter's version of the song. Cash's daughter Rosanne said, "The song is about the transformative power of love and that's what it has always meant to me and that's what it will always mean to the Cash children."
Other accounts and uses
In 2004, Merle Kilgore, who shared writing credit for the song with June Carter, proposed licensing the song for a hemorrhoid cream commercial. When performing the song live, Kilgore would often "mock dedicate" the song to the "makers of Preparation H". However, June's heirs were not of a like mind, and they refused to allow the song to be licensed for the ad.
In her 2007 autobiography, Cash's first wife, Vivian, wrote: "One day in early 1963, while gardening in the yard, Johnny told me about a song he had just written with Merle Kilgore and Curly [Lewis] while out fishing on Lake Casitas. 'I'm gonna give June half credit on a song I just wrote,' Johnny said. 'It's called "Ring of Fire."' 'Why?' I asked, wiping dirt from my hands. The mere mention of her name annoyed me. I was sick of hearing about her. 'She needs the money,' he said, avoiding my stare. 'And I feel sorry for her.'" Vivian also noted: "To this day, it confounds me to hear the elaborate details June told of writing that song for Johnny. She didn't write that song any more than I did. The truth is, Johnny wrote that song, while pilled up and drunk, about a certain private female body part. All those years of her claiming she wrote it herself, and she probably never knew what the song was really about.
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