Johnny Cash & the Ill-fated "Girl in Saskatoon": Western Canada 1959-1961
- olsonsteve10
- Mar 22
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 19
Johnny Cash wrote a song that would be destined for tragic obscurity called "Girl in Saskatoon", inextricably tied to his Western Canada tours from 1959-1961. He composed the song with friend Johnny Horton after their concert in Saskatoon on his 1959 tour, debuted the song in Saskatoon on his 1960 tour, and performed it on his 1961 tour including a promotional beauty contest awarding Miss Alexandra Wiwcharuk the "Girl in Saskatoon". Tragically in 1962, Alexandra would be killed in one of Canada’s most notorious unsolved murder mysteries, and Johnny Cash vowed to never perform the song in concert again.
“The late Johnny Horton was one of my best friends and I remember one night, after the show we played in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, we were driving that old car across the snow, across the ice, the icy roads…and driving along that night, without accompaniment, we wrote and sang, for the first time, this song – ["Girl in Saskatoon"] -- Johnny Cash (Bootleg Volume 1: Personal Files)
Johnny Cash and Johnny Horton had first toured Western Canada together on the 1956 tour (Nov 27-30), but that tour hadn't included a concert in Saskatoon. Cash toured Western Canada again on the 1957 (May 1-11) & 1958 tours (March 11-14), that did include concerts in Saskatoon, but without Horton. Therefore we can pinpoint the inception of “Girl in Saskatoon” to the 1959 Western Canada tour (Feb 17-23) – the only occasion that both Cash and Horton performed in Saskatoon on the same bill. Cash had a new single out with “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”, and Horton had recently released his first hit song “When It’s Springtime in Alaska (It’s Forty Below)”. The 1959 tour followed Johnny’s now standard route of starting in Winnipeg before heading west to Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Calgary (and included a stop in Prince George, BC). Cash and Horton performed in Saskatoon on February 19, for two shows at 7:00 and 9:30pm at the Capitol Theatre.
When the Saskatoon shows ended at around midnight, on a cold clear night with wind chill of -29C, Cash and Horton began the long overnight drive to Edmonton together (and perhaps reflected on the dangers of undertaking a Western Canada tour in the dead of winter – Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson had all died two weeks prior during a snowstorm in Iowa). With snow drifting across the icy highways and gravel roads, enchanted by the name of the city (and perhaps by a girl in the crowd that night), Cash and Horton began composing a song about a lovesick traveller on the wintry prairie landscape…fighting with “the wind across the barren waste and crystal dunes”, “moving west” he was travelling “by the light of the morning moon”, and feeling so cold that he was “freezin’ but (I’m) burnin’ for the Girl in Saskatoon”. After driving their car all night, Cash and Horton arrived in Edmonton around dawn on February 20, and a photo was taken of them later that day in their stage clothes before the show at Edmonton Gardens.
Cash continued to refine the song, phoning his Saskatoon radio station contacts for representative prairie plants, weaving prairie lilies (otherwise known as Western Red Lily, the official floral emblem of Saskatchewan) and caragana (the shrub planted by settlers as windbreaks around farmyards) into the song for authenticity. However, Cash did not record the song just yet, perhaps he just filed it away during a busy creative period in his life -- he had recently signed with Columbia Records and would release three LPs in just 8 months. The next year on the 1960 Western Canada tour (March 4-10), this time without Horton, Cash debuted an early version of the still unrecorded “Girl in Saskatoon” during the Saskatoon concert on March 10.
Exactly two months later, Cash recorded a demo of this early version of “Girl in Saskatoon” with dreary, even spooky, sound to the music, and the lyrics have an old-western storytelling quality, similar to “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”. The lyrics included another Canadian place name, “a little town, a little south of Hudson Bay", revealed in the final line as Fort Severn, Ontario, and ends with an unfortunate mix-up with two lovers each leaving their own towns (Fort Severn and Saskatoon, respectively) to find the other already gone, ending without resolution:
I left a little town, a little south of Hudson Bay,
I couldn’t find the thing, to make a rounder want to stay
I fought the wind across the barren waste and crystal dunes,
Going for to marry the Girl in Saskatoon
Movin’ west and followin’, the cold December sun,
I bedded down in the caragana when my daily trek was done
Then up and on I travelled, by the light of the morning moon,
I’m freezin’ but I’m burnin’ for the Girl in Saskatoon
My heart was gettin’ heavy, and I was gettin’ lean,
When the land began to level, and the fields began to green
The traffic of the city I knew I’d be hearing soon,
Goin’ for to marry the Girl in Saskatoon
And then I found a trail that had packed beneath the snow,
I made the final miles, where the prairie lilies grow
I walked into a boarding house, and got a dollar room,
Then began to ask about the Girl in Saskatoon
They told me that she’d waited, but then she’d gone away,
To look for me in a little town, a little south of Hudson Bay
Her heart was true and faithful, but she went a little soon,
And I should’ve left Fort Severn, for the Girl in Saskatoon
Later that year, on November 5, 1960, Johnny Horton died in a head-on collision with a drunk driver on a railroad overpass. Cash organized and spoke at Horton’s funeral, and organized and performed at a tribute concert with proceeds going to the bereaved family. Cash knew that music royalties would generate long-term income for Horton's widow and two children, so he re-recorded “Girl in Saskatoon” just three weeks after Horton’s death and it was quickly released as Cash's next single (with co-writer credits to J. Horton). This single version converted the song into a posthumous homage, in a pop style almost exactly like Horton’s “When It’s Springtime in Alaska (It’s Forty Below)” (also recorded that day was “Jeri and Nina's Melody”, an instrumental dedicated to Horton's two children). Cash also made significant revisions to the lyrics, removing the obscure Fort Severn reference, and ending instead with a wedding "'neath the steeple" of a Saskatoon church, resolving the travellers long journey through the wintry ice and snow where he was successfully reunited with his sweetheart and “found eternal spring”:
...then I found the trail that had packed beneath the snow,
I made the final miles, where the prairie lilies grow
A steeple on a church glistened by the prairie moon,
I'm freezin’ but I'm burnin’ for the Girl in Saskatoon
My journey was forgotten when I held her in my arms,
My wanderlust was stifled by possession of her charms
And even 'neath the steeple where we couldn't wait 'til June [the month],
I found eternal spring with the Girl in Saskatoon
By early 1961, "Girl in Saskatoon" was selling quite well locally as a novelty record in Saskatoon, but was not destined to become one of Cash’s enduring songs.
The 1961 tour to Western Canada (April 3-14) fittingly began in Saskatoon, to celebrate the release of “Girl in Saskatoon” and promote the single. Someone from a local Saskatoon radio station had a promotional idea: they would recreate the beauty contest from the wildly popular 1958 Western Canada “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” tour, and choose a winner to become the “Girl in Saskatoon”. On Monday, April 3, Cash boarded a flight from his home in Hollywood to Saskatoon, but poor weather grounded the plane in Swift Current, and he had to continue the journey by car --- delaying his appearance by an incredible four hours (ironically recreating yet another moment from the 1958 Saskatoon concert, when a blizzard delayed Cash's arrival). Johnny finally arrived in Saskatoon after midnight, and only performed for 10-15 minutes to the exhausted crowd, including his new single “Girl in Saskatoon”.
After Johnny’s short performance, the “Girl in Saskatoon” beauty contestants were brought up on stage, and nursing student Alexandra Wiwcharuk was chosen as the winner, making her somewhat of a local celebrity. The finalists all received a copy of Johnny’s album The Fabulous Johnny Cash, and Alexandra was presented with a stack of Johnny’s Columbia LP records, and a record player, by a local radio host.
In a gruesome epilogue, Alexandra Wiwcharuk would be the victim of a horrific murder. At sunset on May 18, 1962, just over a year after being celebrated at the Johnny Cash concert as the “Girl in Saskatoon”, Alexandra was sexually assaulted, beaten and buried in a shallow sandy grave on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River. Once Cash heard the news, out of respect for the family, he never sang the song again. Her murder remains unsolved to this day.
In later years, Johnny Cash would incorrectly claim that former Saskatonian Joni Mitchell had been a runner-up in the "Girl in Saskatoon" contest. The confusion dates back to the debut television episode of The Johnny Cash Show (broadcast on June 7, 1969), where Cash reminisced about touring with Horton and writing "Girl in Saskatoon", and asked Mitchell if she was at the 1961 concert and beauty contest. Mitchell recalled that she was, and that her friend, Rosanne, was chosen the "Girl in Saskatoon". However, Mitchell must have been recalling the 1958 "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" contest, which was won by Miss Rosanne Sorkowsky (read about the 1958 tour here).
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