Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #10 - "When the Master Calls the Roll," Rosanne Cash

To kick off the Top Ten - THE TOP TEN! - we have, without a doubt, the best Civil War ballad that's been written in the 21st Century.  And one with a fascinating back story - after all, it's not every day that an artist collaborates on a song with her husband and her ex-husband.



The song began as a collaboration between John Leventhal (Cash's husband) and Rodney Crowell (Cash's ex-husband) even before Rosanne herself entered the picture, with Leventhal giving the melody to Crowell for potential use on one of his albums with Emmylou Harris.

But let's let Ms. Cash tell the story:

We kept the first four lines that Rodney had—it was an actual 19th century personals ad. I wanted to keep that and then turn the rest of it into the Civil War song, where she found him through a personals ad. It’s based on two of my own ancestors. I researched them and we wrote it together. He came over to my house, we wrote part of it at the table, and then we wrote part of it by email.

So maybe it's also the best song ever (at least partly) written by email?  I can't really answer that question, since I have no idea how many songs have been written by email.  There can't be that many, right?  By the way, for a more complete picture of how the song was written, please check out the excellent interview with Cash and Leventhal by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, here.

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #10 - "When the Master Calls the Roll," Rosanne Cash.