Spending a snug evening with songwriter and guitar player Chance Martin inevitably leads to him telling you his favorite anecdote about his old buddy Johnny Cash. It’s the story about a trip to Las Vegas. The whole entourage – Martin then acting as Cash’s stage manager – was put up at Caesar’s Palace and the hotel management had provided a stretched limousine for Johnny Cash to use for free.

In a kind of boozy atmosphere, Chance, feeling a bit cocky, assumed Cash’s voice and called the front desk to bring the stretched limousine around, please. When – after four hours of painting Las Vegas red – they returned to Caesar’s Palace, they found the “Man in Black” waiting for them, fuming. The great man was not amused at all for, instead of befi tting his social status as a country star and using the limo, Cash had had to call an ordinary cab to go to a scheduled interview with a local TV station. Today, Chance Martin can have a giggle over the incident, then, though, he didn’t feel much like laughing anymore when Cash had expressed his feelings quite bluntly."