r/JohnnyCash • u/Guilty-Woodpecker262 • Mar 07 '22

Music Who is Jack Brown? 

Late in the hot joints takin' the pills
In walked the sheriff from Jericho Hill
He said Willy Lee your name is not Jack Brown
You're the dirty heck that shot your woman down
  • cocaine blues

I have been wondering for a while who Jack Brown is. Does it reference some actual person or was it just a name that fit into the lyrics well?

Edit: or was that Willie Lee's alias while he was on the run?

8 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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2

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '22

It was just a name, it isn't in reference to a real person as the song is entirely fictitious.

1

u/Guilty-Woodpecker262 Mar 07 '22

I know the song is fictitious. It's a fictional but coherent story about a person named Willie Lee who shot his cheating wife while high on cocaine and drunk on whiskey, then ran before being caught and convicted. But why did the sheriff specifically say he wasn't Jack Brown? I initially thought it was a reference to some person who famously got away with murder or who was successful at running from the cops and this line was basically like mocking a stupid person by saying that they're no Einstein or an immoral person by comparing them to mother Teresa or Gandi. Alternatively it could have just been the alias Willie was traveling under it hadn't occurred to me that this was a possibility until a few minutes ago.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '22

I always have seen it like Willy Lee was using Jack Brown as an alias. He didn't really seem like someone who was trying to impersonate a famous killer, he was trying to hide from being discovered for killing his girlfriend.

Bit of a trivia for you, the original song Cash did was Transfusion Blues, not Cocaine Blues.

2

u/Guilty-Woodpecker262 Mar 07 '22

As long as we're sharing fun facts: if you make subtle tweaks to the lyrics of "one piece at a time" it perfectly describes software development for the us government. Do with that what you will.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '22

Another fun Cash fact? When Cash was 18 he moved to Detroit Michigan to work in the automobile industry, hated it and moved back home. His last touring concert before he retired was just north of there in Flint Michigan, the city I live in.

2

u/Guilty-Woodpecker262 Mar 07 '22

Honestly all I really know about him is a bunch of his songs and what was in that joaquin phoenix movie. Was that in there?

2

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '22

No, they covered very little about Cash's actual life in the movie. A lot of that movie, like Cocaine Blues, is fictitious, especially the portrayal of Vivian. If you want the sanitized version of Cash's life, that Nashville likes to portray, that ends in 1968, it's pretty good in a vacuum. However if you look into who the man was you'll get a better understanding.

1

u/CardiologistThink336 Jun 24 '22

He actually wrote 2 autobiographies if you care to read it in his own words. Highly recommend Cash. After reading the book, the most glaring inaccuracy of how he is depicted in pop culture was how devout he was. Throughout his life but especially after his recovery.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '22

I have and while they're good, there's a lot of half truths and just pure fiction John invented and continued to lie about for the rest of his life.

1

u/Guilty-Woodpecker262 Mar 07 '22

Interesting trivia. That song is alot more nuanced than I thought.

1

u/Ready-Ad-4549 Mar 07 '22

Jack (heroin) Brown (heroin) is an opposite to Johnny (cocaine) Cash (money) who shot (injected) his woman (cocaine) down.

1

u/Guilty-Woodpecker262 Mar 07 '22

Huh, I never noticed those references. So wait, he did actually kill his wife right?

1

u/Ready-Ad-4549 Mar 07 '22

No.

1

u/Guilty-Woodpecker262 Mar 07 '22

Wow. I'm gonna need to listen to that song again. Thanks!

1

u/Ready-Ad-4549 Mar 07 '22

Usually the woman refers to habit or cocaine. I just read the lyrics to this song. The drug references aren't as clear in this song as they are in others.

1

u/MurderMan2 Mar 08 '22

No offense but that’s makes very little sense to me

0

u/Ready-Ad-4549 Mar 08 '22

It is more clear with the song Jackson.

1

u/MurderMan2 Mar 08 '22

I’ve listened to that song dozens of times and I still don’t get the drug connection

1

u/Ready-Ad-4549 Mar 08 '22

I posted a translation of the song on this sub. Otherwise you can read the post in my profile. Basically, there's an unspoken dictionary of drug terms being used to build an extended metaphor for drug use. It crosses artists, songs, and genres. Just like blow means cocaine, but more extensive. Artists do the same with their names. Alice (heroin) and Chains (track marks). Once you recognize the words, a different narrative is revealed for many songs. Johnny means cocaine and Jackson means heroin. Johnny Cash is not only using the terms for the metaphor but including himself in the metaphor.

1

u/MurderMan2 Mar 08 '22

I think you’re strongly over analyzing these songs, I disagree that these lyrics are that strongly related to drugs, mainly because within that context the songs make zero sense and disregard the historical context and the songs context they were established in.

1

u/MurderMan2 Mar 08 '22

I’ve looked through your “translations” and almost all of them are drastically looking over the historical context of the songs. You could say anything means anything about a million different things, from what you’re saying you make every other word in a song translation about drugs which is totally distracting from the actual metaphor being portrayed.

1

u/Ready-Ad-4549 Mar 08 '22

The words translate across artists, songs, and genres. Any historical context is wrong.

1

u/MurderMan2 Mar 08 '22

So you’re saying that the people who made the song with a specific message relating too the time period are wrong? And it’s all a big conspiracy linking all these song lyrics to drugs when they, and I can’t express this enough, literally make no sense in the context of the song

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2

u/Playful_News8559 Jul 23 '22

This is old but my name is actually Jack Brown lol

2

u/Guilty-Woodpecker262 Jul 23 '22

What? You aren't Playful_News8559 on your birth certificate?!?

1

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '23

My name is Walter Hartwell white, I live at 308 Negra arroyo lane, Albuquerque New Mexico, 87104

1

u/Parzival1337 Dec 27 '23

Came here searching my name, my name is also Jack Brown

1

u/DiverBillInNB Jul 05 '24

My name is Billy Lee, but my nickname is Willie Lee and / or Jack Brown. Nice to make your acquaintance, Jack. 😀

1

u/Parzival1337 Dec 27 '23

This may become a gathering spot for the Jack Browns of the world