Stream It Or Skip It: ‘June’ on Paramount+, A Doc That Spotlights The Life, Loves, And Long Career of Country Legend June Carter Cash

June (Paramount+), directed by Kristen Vaurio, features archival interviews with singer, songwriter, comedian, and all-around entertainer June Carter Cash and her third husband, Johnny Cash, testimonials from Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Kasey Musgraves, and Reese Witherspoon, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of June in Walk the Line – “The movie,” Witherspoon says, “is about a period of time this big in a life so large” – and the observations of friends and family to tell the story of a woman whose nearly 60-year career was forever enmeshed with her roles as a wife, mother, and matriarch of country music.

JUNE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: In the 1930s and early ’40s, when June Carter was just a little girl, she was already a featured performer onstage. June sang, played the autoharp, and took on the role of lead comedian for radio gigs with her mother, Maybelle Carter of the country music pioneers The Carter Family, and by 1950 the Carters and their act had joined The Grand Ole Opry. In other words, June grew up in show business, and she’d remain in the spotlight for the rest of her days. Which for the purposes of June means there’s a ton of live performances, archival television and radio studio footage to access, as well as extensive interviews with its subject throughout her life, all of which forms the doc’s vibrant patchwork of illustrated biography. Appearances from stars like Parton and Musgraves also fill out the story of June Carter Cash, who they revere as a personal influence but also as a nurturing force for the spirit of country music.

She married country singer Carl Smith in 1952, Edwin “Rip” Nix in 1957, and finally Johnny Cash in 1968, who famously proposed while they were onstage together at a gig in Canada. June explores how the entertainment business was key to all of these relationships, but in significantly different ways. June Carter’s career was already established when she married Smith, who suddenly didn’t want her going out on the road to perform. Getting married to Nix and having a daughter put her burgeoning acting career on an indefinite hold. And though her eventual marriage to Johnny Cash was professionally and personally fruitful, in many ways their life together served to overshadow her own accomplishments and lifelong sense of ambition. June, whose executive producers include her children Carlene Carter and John Carter Cash, at times feels like a statement doc to remove terms like “underappreciated” and “underrated” from June Carter Cash’s reputation.

In 1998, Carter Cash entered a recording studio to record her first solo album in 25 years, and footage of the lively sessions for the Grammy-winning Press On becomes a frame for June in the present. The doc returns again and again to June, then aged 70, holding court with fellow musicians like Marty Stuart and strumming her autoharp beautifully as songs both new and old materialize out of thin air. It’s a means of revealing how Carter Cash always sang “from the gut and heart,” as Parton puts it, and forms the connective tissue to her life as an entertainer, which came to end in 2003. Johnny Cash would pass away five months later – they could not live apart – a fact that made the inclusion of June’s version of “Ring of Fire” on Press On that much more important. Often considered a Cash-penned classic, the song was actually written by June Carter Cash (with Merle Kilgore) as she interpreted in song their fiery love for one another. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? American Masters on PBS features the 2016 documentary Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl, parts of which take place at Cash Cabin, the same Hendersonville, Tennessee recording studio where the Press On recording sessions included in June occur. And Paramount+ also features Reinventing Elvis: The ‘68 Comeback, which explores that transitional moment in his career when The King turned to television and a black leather jumpsuit for inspiration, as well as the four-part docuseries Willie Nelson & Family.    

Performance Worth Watching: Much of the archival footage here stands as timeless proof of June Carter Cash’s sheer, uncut vitality as an entertainer. As a singer and autoharp player, of course. But also as a constant wit, lovable comic cut-up, and all-time master of onstage banter. 

Memorable Dialogue: June Carter’s 1968 marriage to Johnny Cash was a mark of their love for one another, but it was also a union of two people who at the time were country music royalty. “They did buy into their own myth, for better or worse,” Roseanne Cash says in June. “Maybe that kept them going – ‘We have this thing together that’s bigger than us.’”   

Sex and Skin: None, though it’s interesting to note the conservatism and strict roles for women that defined the Grand Ole Opry in the mid-1950s, when June Carter began to perform there. especially when contrasted with her 1956 divorce from popular country crooner and fellow Opry star Carl Smith. In conservative Nashville, observers say, it was a scandal that for some time earned June a scarlet letter. 

Our Take: The strength of June is in the rich details it adds to a life lived largely in the public eye. Reese Witherspoon is right – the 2005 biopic Walk the Line is probably still what most people think of when they think of June Carter Cash, even though her career thrived before she married The Man in Black. (Or “Ol’ Golden Throat,” as June refers to Cash during a funny bit of stage banter dating from their iconic 1969 performance at San Quentin.) In addition to the insight we can gain from the 1998 recording sessions for Press On, the old footage here featuring June cutting it up on the Opry stage is highly entertaining as we get to watch her work. The banter, the bits, the dancing, the hamming – in her hands it all worked, and would probably work even now. That so much of this archival material is included in June reinforces Carter Cash’s talent. But the doc also brings her life around these appearances into greater focus. A family biographer notes how she was required to interact with her first husband onstage even as she sought a divorce in the courts. And once the split was final, when she and her daughter moved to New York City, June observes how her path was always her own. She wasn’t just the duet partner for Cash on “Jackson” and other classics. June Carter Cash was out there doing it for herself because she believed in it, because she had to do it, because she was driven to do it. 

As the archival footage in June makes clear, that dedication always drove her. “I created her,” Carter Cash says, offering some detail of her own towards her comedic persona. “She would do anything for a laugh, and did, and I don’t think it was sincerely me. No, it’s just a crazy little country girl I played.” 

Our Call: Stream June to be mesmerized by old footage of June Carter Cash, who was always known as a singer but was certainly funnier than a lot of people working in 1950s and ’60s show business. Sturdily made and sensitive, June reveals the details In Carter Cash’s professional and personal story with lots of access to those old recordings and the benefit of loving family memories.  

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.