The Late Show With David Letterman had only been on the air for five weeks when Johnny Cash visited the program in October of 1993, marking the program’s first performance by a major country star.
With no album to promote, Cash was throwing his weight behind two off-the-wall projects: the first, an appearance on U2’s experimental Achtung Baby follow-up, Zooropa, and the second, a children’s book and accompanying cassette called The Good, the Bad and the Two Cookie Kid, in which Cash sings the tale of a sweet-toothed pre-teen who steals all the cookies in the Rio Grande Valley. Maybe that’s why Cash decided to reach back into his catalog and sing “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” one of his first Number One hits.
