Saul Holiff, 80, Johnny Cash’s Manager
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Saul Israel Holiff, a concert promoter and Johnny Cash’s manager for 17 years, died March 17 at his home in Nanaimo, British Columbia. He was 80.
Holiff also managed the Statler Brothers and Tommy Hunter, Canada’s biggest TV star of the early 1970s.
He grew up in London, Ontario, dropped out of high school at age 15, served as a rear air gunner in the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II, had a fruit and vegetable business, and dabbled in acting before becoming a concert promoter and manager with offices in his hometown, Los Angeles, and Nashville, Tenn.
Holiff began working as Cash’s manager in about 1960.
“He didn’t start out to be Johnny Cash,” Holiff recalled in an interview after Cash died in 2003. “Sometimes he sang dreadfully, if he had too much to drink or too many pills. We were treated with casual indifference for much of the time for a long time.”
Then, as Cash’s material evolved, he said, “Suddenly he was another American hero.”
Holiff quit as Cash’s manager in 1973, when he thought the Man in Black’s career had peaked.
“I was guilty for underestimating him repeatedly,” he said.
