Johnny Cash always said that the idea for the Mexican trumpets in “Ring of Fire” came from a dream he had, and there is no reason to question him. But the seed for the dream was planted during a trip to Mexico in the summer of 1962. June had spent several years of her childhood growing up with the culture and sounds of Mexico, when the Original Carter Family lived in Texas and performed on the mega-watt radio stations which operated south of the border, blasting their signals clear across the continent. It was in a town square during a festival that she was taken with the tiovivo (merry-go-round) and its swirling music. That’s how she wrote “Love’s Ring of Fire,” just like the ride, round and round, surging and roiling, then an interlude before the whorl began again. It was the story of her life, and this is the context in which Cash first heard it. It would always stick with him, eventually invading his very dreams.

Don Law and Frank Jones were stunned. They had put everything on the line for Cash’s Last Stand, and now he was talking about using trumpets. Trumpets! They tried talking him out of the idea, but Johnny Cash knew exactly what he wanted. The session was scheduled for early March. But on March 5, 1963 tragedy struck country music. An airplane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Hawshawk Hawkins crashed outside Nashville, virtually paralyzing the town. June was close to all of them: Hawkins was married to her friend Jean Shepherd; Copas was a fellow performer on the Prince Albert segment of the Opry and also an alumnus of the WNOX Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round in Knoxville, the Carters’ first job after they left Richmond 15 years before. And Patsy. Of course, June and Patsy were chums, buddies. Patsy’s leaving the Cash tour created the opening which June took. June didn’t go to the funeral. She stayed behind and babysat for Patsy’s young children as their mother was buried. Forty years later, her widower, Charlie Dick, remembered June with a floral tribute at her own funeral. The circle comes back around.

The crucial recording session was reset for March 25. But Cash, too, was having doubts, although of a different kind. This was going to be a revolutionary recording, and he was not sure his producers really “go it.” But they had gone to bat for him, big time, and he knew their credibility was at stake. His solution was unexpected and unconventional, which is to say, completely in keeping with this project.

Jack Henderson Clement was a year older than Cash, born in Memphis, which is where the two would meet when Clement joined Sun Records in 1956. Clement wrote Cash’s biggest Sun hits, “Ballad of Teenage Queen,” and “Guess Things Happened That Way.” Problem was, Cash despised those songs. It could be said that Clement, with his anathematic (to Cash) production, helped chase Cash from Sun. In fact, in a fit of pique, Cash signed with Columbia just days after being required to record “Guess Things,” and everything he had recorded since then was anti-Sun. But it was also true that “Guess Things” was his first #1 song (yes, “I Walk the Line” only reached #2), and it had been a long time since Cash had had a pop hit like that—in fact, he hadn’t had a pop hit like that at all since then. So when he considered who to get to help him with his off-beat, off-the-wall, out of left-field, swing-for-the-fences-or-strikeout-valiantly-while-trying idea, there was only one person: he called from California down to Beaumont, Texas and brought forth the former Arthur Murray dance instructor cum renegade. But even Clement thought he was nuts.

It was inspired casting. Careful not to disrespect the venerable Don Law (who would get official credit for producing), Clement assembled the very best session players to accompany the Tennessee Three and the Carters. Pianist Bill Purcell was A-Team. He had played with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and with Patsy Cline, and his instrumental “Our Winter Love” was actually in the Top 10 on the pop charts when he walked into the studio that day. (In 1969 he would play on Dylan’s “Self Portrait” sessions, including on Dylan’s recording of “Ring of Fire.” Today, he is an associate professor of music at Belmont University.) Bill McElhiney (who just died in 2002) was the trumpet player of choice in Nashville. He had worked with Patsy, too, and with Floyd Cramer, Jim Reeves, Hank Snow, Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, Danny Davis and even Perry Como. He was Clement’s first call when Cash told him he heard trumpets. (Later, McElhiney would be the trumpet you hear on Ray Charles’ “Seven Spanish Angels.”) Karl Garvin was McElhiney’s cohort, and was one of the most respected musicians in town. Although he, too, was part of the cadre of top-tier players who produced the Nashville Sound, he himself actually preferred jazz, and would later make (another) name for himself doing jazz recordings.

The atmosphere in the studio that afternoon was electric. Columbia had allocated one day, and this was it. There were no more sessions scheduled; it had all come down to this. The artists huddled in small groups, each working on their parts in this complex, unusual arrangement. Although the ledger sheets would say that it only took a few hours, it was actually longer. But what came out of Columbia’s Studio A on Music Row that Monday afternoon would reverberate much, much longer. And it was nothing like June or Anita had sung it; it surely reflected how Johnny Cash felt it. Anita’s original, folk version (which had been released just the previous month) spoke of an almost sweet pain. Her descent into the fire was incremental; in fact she took more steps to get there: in her version, she goes “down, down, down, down into the deepest mire.” Likewise, as it “burns, burns, burns, burns,” she is almost reflective, pleading. In contrast, Cash’s ring is ominous; it doesn’t merely draw you in, it forces. No baby steps, him. He goes “down, down, down and the flames went higher.” He falls with full force, provoking an even more intense reaction. Nothing like the real thing to clarify the issue. And when he booms out, “It burns, burns, burns,” it is no mere singe; it takes the breath away. Kilgore may have advised June to put something about a “child” in that second verse, but this was no puppy-love. It was take-no-prisoners.

The year before, people were “running around the room, bouncing off the walls,” when they first heard what June had written. And, as Cash, Clement, Carter and crew left for dinner, everyone felt the same: something momentous had occurred. Columbia rushed the record onto its production schedule, releasing it in less than month. By June, it was Number One, where it would stay for almost two months, reaching the Top 20 on the pop charts as well. The song became so identified with Cash that Anita Carter would rarely ever sing it solo again; it would be more than three decades before June would step forward and tell of its intensely personal beginnings. But Cash would always associate his most audacious success with the woman who wrote it about him, and because of that, his entire life would never be the same. Out in California, Vivian Liberto Cash had been waiting for her husband to come to his senses and come home. After “Ring of Fire” she knew that was never going to happen.