Is that a rhetorical question? Because the song pretty much explains it all.

Johnny Cash is great because he speaks to everyone: liberal and conservative, religious and nonreligious, rural and urban, country and rock-and-roll, young and old.

I'm about to get a bit swoony here, but I have a good excuse -- I'm talking about Johnny Cash.

I love life experiences that transport me into another life. Like a good book where you feel like you really are a peasant living in the Middle Ages. Or travel experiences where you actually feel the energy of the people who had once been there (like the way I felt when I walked into Congress Hall in Philadelphia).

And some people can take you there in song. Johnny Cash's voice can make even a sheltered, clean-living, middle-class, city-dwelling black female feel into the soul of a struggling, world-weary, Appalachian man.

I guess you can tell that I kinda like the guy. When he died, I went to his AOL radio channel and listened to it all day, just like I did with Ray Charles.

Cash is indeed an amazing musicisan. However, I suspect this song was Cash's not so subtle way of distancing himself from musicians blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. Pete Seeger's "The Weavers" are one prominent example of musicians who were completely marginalized for "mixing politics with the folk songs of our land."

While Cash tells musicians "keep your political convictions to yourselves" with a wink and a smile, the House Un-American Activities Committee were the enforcers who were anything but light-hearted in their attempts to squash the long standing tradition of political folk music. They kept Pete Seeger off of television for 17 years. While this did untold damage to the American folk tradition, it also sent Seeger into the elementary schools where he helped nurture a whole new generation of folk musicians. I highly recommend the PBS documentary on Seeger to anyone wants to better understand this amazing era.