June Carter Cash documentary celebrates a musical icon 'hiding in plain sight'

An auto-harp-playing entertainer from Maces Spring, Virginia, was actually a legend hiding in plain sight.

As a stellar compendium of the most earnest truths of June Carter Cash's life, the Paramount+ documentary "June," out Tuesday, highlights that she was much more than the small-town-born wife of an iconic musician once regarded as one of the five most recognizable men on Earth.

In the annals of history, Carter was iconically the daughter of country music's quintessential musical matriarch, "Mother" Maybelle Carter. Her third husband was Johnny Cash.

In the modern era, the romance of "Mother" Maybelle's daughter and "The Man In Black" was venerated by an award-winning and critically acclaimed 2005 film starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon that earned revenue six times the budget it cost to create it.

Emmy-winning director Kristen Vaurino's "June" repositions Carter as a cosmopolitan rock star passionately driven by mastering the art of entertainment. Along the way, she learns an almost angelic sense of empathy and humility. The film is executive produced by Carlene Carter and John Carter Cash.

This reimagining — in an era when country music is again soaring to America's cultural pinnacle while women are struggling for broader, sustainable appeal in the genre — is both unique and vital.

To wit, it's Kacey Musgraves — a country-to-pop crossover star whose artistry and life mirror much of June Carter Cash's — who refers to her by a much more demonstrative moniker in the documentary:

A "bad-a** b***h."

It's a deserved honor.

The impact of Carter's life is difficult to calculate because she set standards that redefined the progression of popular culture and American society. In short, June Carter was a rock star before rock 'n' roll was a way of life. Thus, many fundamental elements of popular music's various historical arcs reach back to her.

June and her 'babies' redefine country

The Carter Family played the Grand Ole Opry radio program with Carter Cash's first husband, country hitmaker Carl Smith. Upon divorcing Carl when rock was on the rise, Carter toured with Elvis Presley. A decade after first meeting Cash, she befriended and took her family on the road with him, too.

The first decade of their marriage was a storybook romance that saw the tandem fuse the heart of folk and country storytelling with rock's rebellious aesthetics.

With Merle Kilgore, June Carter Cash wrote her husband's career-defining hit "Ring of Fire."

From their Hendersonville estate overlooking the Cumberland River, the couple financed the careers, filled the bellies and developed the songcraft of artists that Carter Cash lovingly referred to as her "babies," including Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson.

For rock's wayward troubadours of the late 1960s and early 1970s, their blue velvet couch served as a space for career revivals.

It's where Bob Dylan saw the most precise view of the "Nashville Skyline," Paul McCartney's post-Beatles career took wing, Roy Orbison survived his decline from mainstream appeal, and George Jones and Tammy Wynette spent lovestruck moments singing country classics.

Johnny Cash recorded 15 No. 1 country singles and 26 albums during that era.

Country icons, rock stars and June Carter Cash

"A great comedienne, performer and singer-songwriter was one of the godmothers of modern country music — and also saved Johnny Cash's life," says country and gospel star Larry Gatlin about Carter Cash.

When Gatlin arrived in Nashville from Seminole, Texas, in 1973, Carter Cash lent more than a helping hand.

"Were it not for June cooking dinner for ten — when there were only four people at the table — each week and sending my wife Janis and I home with the leftovers in Tupperware bowls, we would've starved the first two years we were in Nashville," Gatlin says.

The circular den in Hendersonville had the same impact on popular music's evolutions as Gertrude Stein's intellectual Parisian salons had for creators like John Dos Passos, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso.

Gatlin then quotes an unfinished song.

"Whenever we were lost-er than a three-dollar bird-dog and didn't know what to do or say, we'd drive down an old dirt road and find an old woman to shut up, sit down and listen to," he says.

Carter was sharp-minded but empathetic

Ronnie Dunn of Brooks & Dunn can also claim being one of Carter Cash's "babies."

In 1989, he had yet to marry June's longtime friend Janine. However, the pair arrived in Nashville as Tim DuBois prepared to launch the Music City chapter of Arista Records, with Dunn signed as one of the label's key singer-songwriters.

Until they could find their own home (Tammy Wynette had initially arranged a garage apartment for their dwellings), Dunn and his eventual wife stayed at Carter Cash's mountain cabin in Gallatin, Tennessee.

"It wasn't just a regular cabin," recalls Dunn, in conversation with The Tennessean. "For $600 a month, we lived in this gorgeous pre-Civil War log house that looked like something out of Architectural Digest. That was half of my draw from Sony/Arista, and we stayed there until Kix [Brooks] and I became a duo and started recording."

Carter Cash did offer Janine some relationship advice.

"[Carter Cash] was a dynamic and super cool person, but she also took my [eventual] wife shopping to tell her, honestly, that I might have a hit or two, but that musicians had to be 'a little bit crazy' to have some staying power," he says. "She didn't want any of her friends to potentially end up in some of the same situations in which she and Johnny had ended up over the years."

'Press On'

The making of Carter Cash's 2000 album "Press On" is also chronicled in the Paramount+ documentary.

In 1997, music industry executive Vicky Hamilton, who had been the manager for hair metal acts Guns N' Roses and Poison, was working as in A&R for Geffen Records.

Hamilton tells The Tennessean that another band she worked with during that era, The Freewheelers, were opening for Johnny Cash (backed by Carter Cash) at Los Angeles' House of Blues. Hamilton was impressed by the charisma in Carter Cash's performance.

At the behest of Rick Rubin, who was working on Johnny Cash's career-reviving "American Recordings" series, Hamilton and Carter Cash began a yearlong courtship.

The executive had minimal knowledge of country music or Nashville but was still shocked that interest was tepid, at best, for a Carter Cash album. She was perceived as a has-been, 70-year-old performer and famous wife more than a godmother of rock 'n' roll.

However, Hamilton "fell in love" with Carter Cash's personality and decided to fund a record independently.

Carter assembled her husband, Rodney Crowell, Marty Stuart, Benmont Trench of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, and many others. She enlisted her son, John Carter Cash, then 29 years old, as co-producer.

The recording became a timeless showcase of what Hamilton calls June Carter Cash's ability to charmingly communicate with the soul.

"A unique situation emerged where a born entertainer sat in a circle of outstanding musicians in a log cabin and made magic," Hamilton says.

June Carter Cash's legacy

"There was Carter Family music and then there was everything else. What was Carter Family music? Well, my mother loved Broadway show tunes, classical, country, pop, rock, everything — there were no fences," Carter Cash's daughter Carlene Carter tells The Tennessean.

She notes that her mother's is best remembered as someone able to maintain such a broad focus yet funnel it through the Carter Family's timeless roots.

That's as well as being "a strong-willed, natural rock star who stood up for herself as a free-thinking creator" and influenced multiple generations of pop music.

Carlene cackles as she remembers a story about her parents.

"Mom dominated the cultural conversation, for sure," she says. I'll never forget one night where a fan greeted my mother and father. He turned to Johnny and said, 'You're married to that June Carter, aren't you?' Johnny smiled a huge smile and said, 'I sure am.'"

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Takeaways from June Carter Cash documentary 'June' on Paramount+