When inspiration strikes, a song can come out of you in one fell swoop, which is exactly what happened when a biblical miracle inspired Johnny Cash to write an iconic song in a matter of minutes. Cash was as known for his Christian faith and gospel music as he was for his clad-in-black country persona, so it’s unsurprising the singer-songwriter would find a trip to the Holy Land especially moving.
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Cash visited Israel with his wife, June Carter Cash, in the mid-1960s, and seeing one biblical artifact affected the musician so deeply that he wrote a song about it in the car between tourist attraction stops.
This Biblical Miracle Inspired Johnny Cash To Write A Song in Minutes
During his trip to Israel with June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash visited a church in Canaan that held cisterns tied to one of Jesus Christ’s first Biblical miracles. Even non-believers are familiar with the famous miracle, detailed in John 2:1-11, during which Jesus turned water into wine for a poor bride and groom’s wedding feast. The church the couple visited housed the containers Jesus used.
“We went into the church, saw the cisterns,” Cash recalled during his 1969 performance at San Quentin prison. “You can hear the sounds of the water in there, hear the echo. I was so impressed when I came out of the church. If I ever had an inspiration, I had one then from seeing what I had just seen and heard. I said under my breath, ‘He turned the water into wine,’ of all things. On the way to Tiberius in the car in the next few minutes, I wrote this song.”
Thus, “He Turned the Water Into Wine” was born on the 20-minute car ride from the historical town of Canaan, now called Kafr Kanna, to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Cash included the song in multiple live recordings, like his iconic San Quentin concert, as well as a studio album titled The Holy Land, which featured narrations from Cash in Israel amidst the various gospel-oriented songs.
The Singer Used His Experience to Reach His Inmate Audiences
Johnny Cash’s studio version of “He Turned the Water Into Wine” features his distinct baritone voice and haunting backing vocals by the Carter family, offering an even more poignant element to the reflective Christian tune. During his San Quentin performance in 1969, Cash capitalized on the opportunity to spread a message of positivity and global awareness to the audience of California inmates.
“We’d like to hit one serious note for you,” Cash began in his introduction of the song. “Even if the note is out of tune, we’d like to hit a serious note right now. There are some things in this world that everybody wants to see or hear at one time or another in their life. Especially for you fellas, I think it would be real good if we could bring back sounds of the people and the places.”
“I know a lot of you just like I was, they were always dear to you, the stories and the songs about Israel,” he continued. “We went to Nazareth and went to the Sea of Galilee, to Tiberius, we went to Jerusalemn, the way of the cross, went to the Wailing Wall. All these sounds are on the album for you to hear. We hope that you’ll enjoy some of it.”
Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
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