Book explores joy and pain of Saul Holiff, Johnny Cash’s Canadian manager
VICTORIA — When an impaired Johnny Cash crashed his girlfriend June Carter’s Cadillac into a telephone pole in Nashville 52 years ago, Canadian Saul Holiff managed to keep the accident quiet.
It was Holiff who organized a successful tour of Eastern Canada — including a moose hunt in Newfoundland — when the star singer’s addiction to pills and reputation for missing concerts led to a decline in U.S. bookings.
After Cash was found unconscious in the back of a camper in a Toronto parking lot with no sign of a pulse, Holiff decided the show must go on and drove the star across the border for a show in Rochester, N.Y. Hours later, a miraculously revived Cash greeted Holiff and offered him a fresh cup of coffee.
In her new book “The Man Who Carried Cash,” Julie Chadwick explores the complex personal and business relationship between Cash and Holiff, his London, Ont.-born manager.