About The Song
Before Johnny Cash released “Ring Of Fire” as a single, he had a steadily growing career. His now-legendary 1957 debut album Johnny Cash With His Hot And Blue Guitar established a buzz that eluded the singer in his prior attempts at a gospel career.
But despite a flourishing career (before the launch of The Johnny Cash Show), he only had one album release that charted. 1958’s The Fabulous Johnny Cash hit No. 19. And to make matters worse, his string of top 10 radio hits was in decline, and the early 1960s felt like something of a dry spell for the new star.
And yet his personal life couldn’t have been more interesting. Tours with the Carter Family resulted in a blossoming creative relationship with June Carter, which also led to problems at home with his first wife, Vivian Liberto, and their young family.
A talented entertainer, singer, instrumentalist, and writer, June Carter and Johny Cash shared an early mutual fascination. But the original inspiration behind the song may have been as much their budding relationship as old Elizabethan poetry.
Carter first found inspiration from the song thanks to a line in a poetry book owned by her uncle A.P. She and songwriter Merle Kilgore penned the tune together after adopting the poetry into a love story.
But she didn’t give the song to Johnny first. Instead, she offered what was at the time called “(Love’s) Ring Of Fire” to her sister Anita, who put a folksy spin on the tune.
Though the song earned early praise, it never quite reached the level of success the Carter sisters or Anita’s label were hoping for. After sitting on it for a few months, the “Folsom Prison Blues” and “A Boy Named Sue” singer decided to record his version with the help of Columbia producers Don Law and Frank Jones.
“When I first fell in love with Johnny Cash, it was a scary thing,” June Carter Cash once said. “I never knew what he was going to do. I didn’t know him too well and he was just kind of a wild man — a big kind of a wild man. But God was truly good and [Cash] is a great husband. He’s a great daddy to the children…he’s just a nice man and I wanted you to know that.”
Video
Lyrics
Love is a burnin’ thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire
I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire
I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire
The taste of love is sweet
When hearts like ours meet
I fell for you like a child
Oh, but the fire went wild
I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire
I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire
The ring of fire, the ring of fire
The ring of fire
