johnny cash

Cash was known for his deep and distinctive voice, the boom-chick-a-boom or "freight train" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band, and his dark clothing and demeanor, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black." He started all his concerts with the simple introduction "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."

Much of Cash's music, especially that of his later career, echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption. His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", and "Man In Black". He also recorded several humorous songs, such as "One Piece at a Time", "The One on the Right Is on the Left", and "A Boy Named Sue"; bouncy numbers such as "Get Rhythm"; and various train-related songs, such as "The Rock Island Line".

He sold over 50 million albums in his nearly 50 year career and is generally recognized as one of the most important musicians in the history of American popular music.

Early life

See also: Johnny Cash family

"The Man in Black" was born J.R. Cash in Kingsland, Arkansas, and raised in Dyess, Arkansas. By age five he was working in the corn fields, singing along with his family as they worked. The family farm was flooded on at least one occasion, which later inspired him to write the song "Five Feet High And Rising."^[1] His older brother Jack died in a tragic on-the-job accident, working a high school shop table saw, in 1944.^[1] His family's economic and personal struggles during the Depression shaped him as a person and inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing personal struggles.

Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. He began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy, and in high school sang on a local radio station. Decades later, he would release an album of traditional gospel songs, called "My Mother's Hymn Book". Traditional Irish music that he heard weekly on the Jack Benny radio program, as performed by Dennis Day, influenced him greatly.^[2]

He was reportedly^{citation needed]} given the name J.R. because his parents could not agree on a name, only on initials. (Giving children such names was a relatively common practice at the time.) He enlisted as a radio operator in the United States Air Force. The military would not accept just initials as his name, so he adopted John R. Cash as his legal name. When he signed for Sun Records in 1955, he took "Johnny" Cash as a stage name. His friends and in-laws generally called him John, and his blood relatives often still called him by his birth name, J.R.

Early career

After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Cash was sent to a U.S. Air Force Security Service unit at Landsberg Air Base, Germany. There, he founded his first band, the Landsberg Barbarians.^[3]

After his term of service ended, Cash married Vivian Liberto, whom he met while training at Brooks. In 1954, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he sold appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. At night, he played with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant (together known at first as the Tennessee Two). Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to garner a recording contract. After auditioning for Sam Phillips, singing mainly gospel tunes, Phillips told him to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell." Cash eventually won over Phillips with new songs delivered in his early frenetic style. His first recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and "Cry Cry Cry," were released in 1955 and met with reasonable success on the country hit parade.

Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues," made the country Top 5, and "I Walk the Line" was No. 1 on the country charts, making it into the pop charts Top 20. Following "I Walk the Line" was Johnny Cash's "Home of the Blues," recorded in July 1957. In 1957, Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. Although he was Sun's most consistently best-selling and prolific artist at that time, Cash felt constrained by his contract with the small label. Elvis Presley had already left Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on Jerry Lee Lewis. The following year, Cash left the label to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records, where his single "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" would become one of his biggest hits.

Cash's first child, a daughter, Rosanne, was born in 1955. Although he would have three more daughters (Kathleen in 1956, Cindy in 1959 and Tara in 1961) with his wife, as he was constantly touring their relationship began to sour, eventually ending in divorce. It was during one of these tours that he had met June Carter, whom he would later marry in 1968.

Drug addiction

As his career was taking off in the early 1960s, Cash began drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates. For a brief time, Cash shared an apartment in Nashville with Waylon Jennings, himself heavily addicted to amphetamines. Cash used the uppers to stay awake during tours. Friends joked about his "nervousness" and erratic behavior, many ignoring the signs of his worsening drug addiction.

Although in many ways spiraling out of control, his frenetic creativity was still delivering hits. His song "Ring of Fire" was a major crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on the country charts and entering the Top 20 on the pop charts. The song was written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore and originally performed by Carter's sister, but the signature mariachi-style horn arrangement was provided by Cash, who says it came to him in a dream. The song describes the personal hell Carter went through as she wrestled with her forbidden love for Cash (they were both married to other people at the time) and as she dealt with Cash's personal "ring of fire" (drug dependency and alcoholism).

Cash sometimes spoke of his erratic, drug-induced behavior with some degree of bemused detachment. In one incident, his truck caught fire, triggering a forest fire that burnt down half of a national forest. When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said in his then-flippant style, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead so you can't question it."^[1]

Although he carefully cultivated a romantic outlaw image, he never served a prison sentence, although he landed in jail seven times for misdemeanors, each stay lasting a single night. His most serious and well-known run-in with the law occurred while on tour in 1965, when he was arrested by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas. Although the officers suspected that he was smuggling heroin from Mexico, he was actually smuggling amphetamines inside his guitar case. (One report said that he was carrying a total of 1,163 pills). Because they were prescription drugs rather than illegal narcotics, he received a suspended sentence.

He was arrested the following year in Starkville, Mississippi, for trespassing late at night onto private property to pick flowers. (This incident gave the spark for the song "Starkville City Jail", which he spoke about on his live At San Quentin prison album.)

The mid-1960s saw Cash release a number of concept albums, including Ballads Of The True West (1965), an experimental double record mixing authentic frontier songs with Cash's spoken narration; and Bitter Tears (1964), with songs highlighting the plight of the Native Americans. His drug addiction was at its worst at this point, however, and his destructive behavior led to a divorce from his wife and canceled performances.

"Folsom Prison Blues"

While an airman in West Germany, Cash saw the B-movie Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951), which inspired him to write an early draft of one of his most famous songs, "Folsom Prison Blues".

Cash felt great compassion for prisoners. He began performing concerts at various prisons starting in the late 1950s.^[1] These performances led to a pair of highly successful live albums, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) and Johnny Cash at San Quentin (1969).

The Folsom Prison record was introduced by a powerful rendition of his classic "Folsom Prison Blues," while the San Quentin record included the crossover hit single "A Boy Named Sue," a Shel Silverstein-penned novelty song that reached No. 1 on the country charts and No. 2 on the US Top Ten pop charts. The AM versions of the latter contained a couple of profanities which were blipped out in that more-sensitive era. The modern CD versions are unedited and uncensored, and thus also longer than the original vinyl albums, giving a good flavor of what the concerts were like, with their highly receptive audiences of convicts.

Apart from his performances at Folsom Prison and San Quentin, and various other U.S. correctional facilities, Cash also performed at Österåkeranstalten (The Österåker Prison) north of Stockholm, Sweden in 1972. The recording was released in 1973. Between the songs Cash can be heard speaking Swedish which was greatly appreciated by the inmates.

After he quit using drugs in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cash rediscovered his Christian faith, taking an "altar call" in Evangel Temple, a small church in the Nashville area. Cash chose this church over many other larger, celebrity churches in the Nashville area because he said he was just another man there, and not a celebrity.

"The Man in Black"

From 1969 to 1971, Cash starred in his own television show on the ABC network. The singing group The Statler Brothers got their start on the show, opening up for him in every episode. Notable rock artists appeared on his show, including Neil Young, The Monkees and Bob Dylan. Cash had been an early supporter of Dylan even before they had met, but they became friends while they were neighbors in the late 1960s in Woodstock, New York. Cash was enthusiastic about reintroducing the reclusive Dylan to his audience. Cash also sang a duet with Dylan on Dylan's country album Nashville Skyline, and also wrote the album's Grammy-winning liner notes. Another artist who received a major career boost from The Johnny Cash Show was songwriter Kris Kristofferson. During a live performance of Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," Cash made headlines when he refused to change the lyrics to suit network executives, singing the song with its controversial references to marijuana intact: "On the Sunday morning sidewalks / Wishin', Lord, that I was stoned."

Immensely popular, and an imposingly tall figure, by the early 1970s he had crystallized his public image as "The Man in Black." He regularly performed dressed all in black, wearing a long black knee-length coat. This outfit stood in stark contrast to the costumes worn by most of the major country acts in his day: rhinestone Nudie suits and cowboy boots. In 1971, Cash wrote the song "Man in Black" to help explain his dress code: "I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, / Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town, / I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, / But is there because he's a victim of the times."

He and his band had initially worn black shirts because that was the only matching color they had among their various outfits.^[1] He wore other colors onstage early in his career, but he claimed to like wearing black both on and off stage.

In the mid-'70s, Cash's popularity and hit songs began to decline, but his autobiography (the first of two), titled Man in Black, was published in 1975 and sold 1.3 million copies. (A second, Cash: The Autobiography, appeared in 1997). His friendship with Billy Graham led to the production of a movie about the life of Jesus, The Gospel Road, which Cash co-wrote and narrated. The decade saw his religious conviction deepening and he made many public appearances in an evangelical capacity.

He also continued to appear on television, hosting an annual Christmas special on CBS throughout the 1970s. Later television appearances included a role in an episode of Columbo. He also appeared with his wife on an episode of Little House on the Prairie entitled "The Collection" and gave a stirring performance as John Brown in the 1985 Civil War television mini-series North and South.

He was friendly with every U.S. President starting with Richard Nixon. He was least close with the last two, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, because of a personal distrust for both men and because of his declining health. He was probably closest with Jimmy Carter, who was actually a very close friend (but not related to his wife, June Carter Cash). None of these friendships were about politics, as he never particularly supported any administration but was just friendly with the nation's leaders. He stated that he found all of them personally charming, noting that that fact was probably essential to getting oneself elected.^[1]

When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1972, President Richard Nixon's office requested that he play "Okie from Muskogee" (a Merle Haggard song that negatively portrays youthful drug users and war protesters) and "Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song that derides the integrity of welfare recipients). Cash declined to play either song and instead played a series of his own more left-leaning, politically-charged songs, including "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" (about a brave Native-American World War II veteran, one of the men memorialized on the famous flag raising photograph taken on Iwo Jima, who was racially mistreated upon his return to Arizona), "Man in Black" and "What is Truth?"

Highwaymen

In 1980, Cash became the Country Music Hall of Fame's youngest living inductee at age 48, but during the 1980s his records failed to make a major impact on the country charts, though he continued to tour successfully. In the mid-1980s he recorded and toured with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson as The Highwaymen, making two hit albums.

During this period, Cash appeared as an actor in a number of television films. In 1981, he starred in The Pride Of Jesse Hallam. Cash won fine reviews for his work in this film that called attention to adult illiteracy. In 1983, Cash also appeared as a heroic sheriff in Murder In Coweta County, which co-starred Andy Griffith as his nemesis. This film was based on a real life Georgia murder case; Cash had tried for years to make the film, which would win him acclaim. (Coincidentally, in 1974 Cash starred as a country-singer/killer in a Columbo movie, "Swan Song.")

Cash relapsed into addiction after a serious stomach injury in 1983 caused by a bizarre incident in which he was kicked and critically wounded by an ostrich he kept on his farm. He was administered painkillers as part of the recovery process, which led to a return to substance abuse.^[4] During his recovery at the Betty Ford Clinic in 1986, he met and befriended Ozzy Osbourne, one of his son's favorite singers.^[1]

At another hospital visit in 1988, this time to watch over Waylon Jennings (who was recovering from a heart attack), Jennings suggested that Cash have himself checked into the hospital for his own heart condition. Doctors recommended preventive heart surgery, and Cash underwent double bypass surgery in the same hospital. Both recovered, although Cash refused to use any prescription painkillers, fearing a relapse into dependency. Cash later claimed that during his operation, he had what is called a "near death experience". He said he had visions of Heaven that were so beautiful that he was angry when he woke up alive.

Cash's recording career and his general relationship with the Nashville establishment was at an all-time low in the 1980s. He realized his record label of nearly 30 years, Columbia, was growing indifferent to him and wasn't properly marketing him (he was "invisible" during that time, as he said in his autobiography). So, in a real-life scenario reminiscent of the Mel Brooks movie The Producers, Cash recorded an intentionally awful song, a self-parody. "Chicken in Black" was about Johnny's brain being transplanted into a chicken. Ironically the song turned out to be a larger commercial success than any of his other recent material. Nevertheless, he was hoping to kill the relationship with the label before they did, and it was not long after "Chicken in Black" that Columbia and Cash parted ways.

In 1986, Cash returned to Sun Studios in Memphis to team up with Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins to create the album, Class of '55. This was not the first time he had teamed up with Lewis and Perkins at Sun Studios. On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on Phillips to pay a social visit while Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks with Lewis backing him on piano. The three started an impromptu jam session and Phillips left the tapes running. He later telephoned Cash and brought him in to join the others. These recordings, almost half of which were gospel songs, survived and have been released on CD under the title Million Dollar Quartet. Tracks also include Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," Pat Boone's "Don't Forbid Me" and Elvis doing an impersonation of Jackie Wilson (who was then with Billy Ward and the Dominoes) singing "Don't Be Cruel."

In 1986, Cash published his only novel, Man in White, a book about Saul and his conversion to become the Apostle Paul.

American Recordings

After Columbia Records dropped Cash from his recording contract, he had a short and unsuccessful stint with Mercury Records from 1987 to 1991 (see Johnny Cash discography).

His career was rejuvenated in the 1990s, leading to unexpected popularity and iconic status among a younger audience not traditionally interested in country music, such as aficionados of indie rock and even hip-hop. In 1993, he sang the vocal on U2's "The Wanderer" for their album Zooropa. Although he was no longer sought after by major labels, Cash was approached by producer Rick Rubin and offered a contract with Rubin's American Recordings label, better known for rap and hard rock than for country music. Under Rubin's supervision, he recorded the album American Recordings (1994) in his living room, accompanied only by his guitar. The album featured several covers of contemporary artists, and saw much critical and commercial success. Cash wrote that his reception at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival was one of the highlights of his career. This was the beginning of a decade of music industry accolades and surprising commercial success. Cash and his wife appeared on a number of episodes of the popular television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman starring Jane Seymour. The actress thought so highly of Cash that she later named one of her twin sons after him. He did a cameo in an episode of The Simpsons, playing the voice of a coyote that guides Homer on a spiritual quest. In 1996, Cash released a sequel, Unchained, and enlisted the accompaniment of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which won a Grammy for Best Country Album. In 1997, Cash believing he did not explain enough of himself in his 1975 autobiography Man in Black wrote another autobiography entitled Cash: The Autobiography.

Sickness and death

In 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome, a diagnosis that was later altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. His illness forced Cash to curtail his touring. He was hospitalized in 1998 with severe pneumonia, which damaged his lungs. The albums American III: Solitary Man (2000) and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002) contained Cash's response to his illness in the form of songs of a slightly more somber tone than the first two American albums. The video for "Hurt" from American IV received particular critical and popular acclaim.

June Carter Cash died of complications following heart valve replacement surgery on May 15, 2003 at the age of 73. June had told Cash to keep working, so he continued to record, and even performed a couple of surprise shows at the Carter Family Fold outside Bristol, Virginia. On Cash's eldest daughter's birthday, Roseanne, Vivian, his first wife and mother to Roseanne died from surgery to remove a lung. (The July 5, 2003 concert was his final public appearance). At the June 21, 2003 concert, before singing "Ring of Fire", Cash read a statement about his late wife that he had written shortly before taking the stage. He spoke of how June's spirit was watching over him and how she had come to visit him before going on stage. He barely made it through the song. Despite his health issues, he talked of looking forward to the day when he could walk again and toss his wheelchair into the lake near his home.

Less than four months after his wife's death, Johnny Cash died at the age of 71 due to complications from diabetes, which resulted in respiratory failure, while hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. He was interred next to his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

In June of 2005, his lakeside home on Caudill Drive in Hendersonville, Tennessee, went up for sale by the Cash estate. In January 2006, the house was sold to a corporation owned by Bee Gees vocalist Barry Gibb for $2.5 million. The listing agent was Cash's younger brother Tommy.

One of Johnny Cash's final collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, entitled American V: A Hundred Highways, was released posthumously on July 4, 2006. The vocal parts of the track were recorded before Cash's death, but the instruments were not recorded until about 2005. American VI is expected to be released in late 2006.

Legacy

From his early days as a pioneer of rockabilly and rock and roll in the 1950s, to his decades as an international representative of country music, to his resurgence to fame as both a living legend and an alternative country icon in the 1990s, Cash has influenced countless artists and left a body of work matched only by the greatest artists of his time. Upon his death, Cash was revered by many of the greatest popular musicians of his time.

But he was also valued outside his genre. According to the (extensive) liner notes for Unearthed:

Cash, to his amusement had been declared "The Godfather of Gangsta Rap." Bob Johnston, Johnny's old friend and legendary producer who also came by to visit, recalls "one of the rap guys telling me, 'You're talking about us being bad? I grew up on Johnny Cash singing 'I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die!'"

Cash nurtured and defended artists on the fringes of what was acceptable in country music, even while serving as the country music establishment's most visible symbol. At an all-star concert in 1999, a diverse group of artists paid him tribute, including Bob Dylan, Chris Isaak, Wyclef Jean, Norah Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and U2. Two tribute albums were released shortly before his death; Kindred Spirits contains works from established artists, while Dressed In Black contains works from many lesser-known artists.

In total, he wrote over a thousand songs and released dozens of albums, a box set, titled Unearthed, was issued posthumously. It included four CDs of unreleased material recorded with Rubin, as well as a "Best of Cash on American" retrospective CD.

In recognition of his lifelong support of SOS Children's Villages, his family invited friends and fans to donate to that charity in his memory. He had a personal link with the SOS village in Diessen, at the Ammersee-Lake in Southern Germany, near where he was stationed as a GI, and also with the SOS village in Barrett Town, by Montego Bay near his holiday home in Jamaica. The Johnny Cash Memorial Fund was founded and contributions can be made here.

In tribute of Cash's passing, country music superstar Gary Allan included the song Nickajack Cave (Johnny Cash's Redemption) on his 2005 album entitled Tough All Over. The song chronicles Cash hitting rock bottom, and subsequently resurrecting his life and career.

For a period of time, there was a museum called the "House of Cash", but it is no longer in operation. Highway 31E, Hendersonville's Main Street, is known as "Johnny Cash Parkway".

Portrayals

Walk the Line, an Academy Award-winning biopic about Johnny Cash's lifetime starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash (for which he won the 2006 Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical), and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash (for which she won the 2006 Best Actress Oscar), was released in the U.S. on November 18, 2005 to considerable commercial success and great critical acclaim. Both Phoenix and Witherspoon have won various other awards for their roles, including the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy and Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, respectively. They both performed their own vocals in the film, and Phoenix learned to play guitar for his role as Johnny Cash. Before their deaths in 2003, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash selected Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon to play their respective parts.^{citation needed]}

Ring of Fire, a jukebox musical of the Cash oeuvre, debuted on Broadway on March 12, 2006 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Since before his death, several artists have begun performing in tribute, highlighted by Johnny Combs - the Man in Black, who is widely known for his haunting vocal resemblance to the Man in Black himself.

Lists of accomplishments

Cash received multiple Country Music Awards, Grammys, and other awards, in catagories ranging from vocal and spoken performances to album notes and videos. For detailed lists of music awards, see Johnny Cash discography

In a career that spanned almost five decades, Cash was the personification of country music to many people around the world, despite his distaste for the Nashville mainstream. Cash was a musician who was not tied to a single genre. He recorded songs that could be considered rock and roll, blues, rockabilly, folk and gospel, and exerted an influence on each of those genres. Moreover, he had the unique distinction among country artists of having "crossed over" late in his career to become popular with an unexpected demographic, young indie and alternative rock fans. His diversity was evidenced by his presence in three major music halls of fame: the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1977), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1980), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1992). Only ten performers are in both of the last two, and only Hank Williams Sr. and Jimmie Rodgers share the honor with Cash of being in all three. His pioneering contribution to the genre has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame^[5]. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1996.

Cash stated that his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980 was his greatest professional achievement.^[1]

Cash was the father of musicians Rosanne Cash and John Carter Cash, and stepfather to Carlene Carter. See Johnny Cash family

Discography

See the Johnny Cash Discography, and the Johnny Cash Sun Discography.

In over 50 years, hundreds of Johnny Cash singles and albums have been released.

Sample

• Download sample "I Walk the Line"

Selected books

• Man in Black: His Own Story in His Own Words (1975) Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ISBN 99924-31-58-X.
• Cash: The Autobiography (with Patrick Carr) (1997) New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-101357-9.
• Love liner notes. (with June Carter Cash) (2000) New York: Sony. ASIN B00004TB8A.

Cash has also published many music books.

Notes

References

External links

• Official Website
• Academy of Achievement Profile
• at the Country Music Hall of Fame
• at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• at the Rockabilly Hall of Fame
• Johnny Cash Lost Highway Artist Page
• Johnny Cash at the Internet Movie Database
• Performance at the Carter Family Fold