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Recording is the process of capturing data or translating information to a recording format stored on some storage medium, which is often referred to as a record or, if an auditory medium, a recording.

Types[link]

This section requires expansion with: <nowiki /> Recording of image and film Sound recording Links to main articles.

Historical records of events have been made for thousands of years in one form or another. Amongst the earliest are cave painting, runic alphabets and ideograms.

Ways of recording text suitable for direct reading by humans includes writing it on paper. Other forms of data storage are easier for automatic retrieval, but humans need a tool to read them. Printing a text stored in a computer allows keeping a copy on the computer and having also a copy that is human-readable without a tool.

Technology continues to provide and expand means for human beings to represent, record and express their thoughts, feelings and experiences.

Analog and digital[link]

Analog recording records analog signals only.

Digital recording records both analog signals and digital signals.

See also[link]

Look up recording in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Recording (real estate)
• Recording consciousness
• Sound recording
• Writing

Eefje de Visser (Gouda, 8 February 1986) is a Dutch singer/songwriter. She won the Grote Prijs van Nederland, a national competition for musicians, in 2009.^[1] She released her first album, De Koek, in 2011, a breakthrough year in which she performed (accompanied by a four-man band called Most Unpleasant Men) at three major Dutch festivals:^[2] the Oerol Festival, Lowlands,^[3] and the Uitmarkt.^[2]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

This article about a Dutch singer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings from 1936–37 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including a Faustian myth. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson enjoyed little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.

His records sold poorly during his lifetime, and it was only after the first reissue of his recordings on LP in 1961 that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived."^[1][2] Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "Early Influence" in their first induction ceremony in 1986.^[3] In 2003, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone 's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.^[4]

Life and career[link]

Early life[link]

Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, possibly on May 8, 1911,^[5] to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker with whom she had 10 children. Charles Dodds had been forced by a mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert but after some two years sent him to live in Memphis with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.^[6]

Around 1919, Robert rejoined his mother in the area around Tunica and Robinsonville, Mississippi. Julia's new husband was known as Dusty Willis; he was 24 years her junior. Robert was remembered by some residents as "Little Robert Dusty,"^[7] but he was registered at Tunica's Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census he is listed as Robert Spencer, living in Lucas, Arkansas with Will and Julia Willis. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927^[8] and the quality of his signature on his marriage certificate^[9] suggests that he was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. One school friend, Willie Coffee, has been discovered and filmed, recalling that Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp.^[10] He also remembers that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying in Memphis.^[11]

After school, Robert adopted the surname of his natural father, signing himself as Robert Johnson on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth shortly after.^[12] Surviving relatives of Virginia told the blues researcher Robert "Mack" McCormick that this was a divine punishment for Robert's decision to sing secular songs, known as 'selling your soul to the Devil'. McCormick believes that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.^[13]

Around this time, the noted blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville where his musical partner, Willie Brown, lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a 'little boy' who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Soon after, Johnson left Robinsonville for the area around Martinsville, close to his birthplace Hazlehurst, possibly searching for his natural father. Here he perfected the guitar style of Son House and learned other styles from Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman.^[14] Ike Zimmerman was rumoured to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight.^[15] When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he had seemed to have acquired a miraculous guitar technique.^[16] House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson's pact with the Devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson's technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.^[5]

While living in Martinsville, Johnson fathered a child with Vergie Mae Smith. He also married Caletta Craft in May 1931. In 1932, the couple moved to Clarksdale in the Delta. Here Caletta fell ill and Johnson abandoned her for a career as a 'walking' (itinerant) musician.^[17]

Itinerant musician[link]

David "Honeyboy" Edwards was one of several blues guitarists whose testimony has been used to piece together Johnson's history

From 1932 until his death in 1938, Johnson moved frequently between large cities like Memphis, Tennessee and Helena, Arkansas and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas.^[18][19] On occasion, he travelled much further. Fellow blues musician Johnny Shines accompanied him to Chicago, Texas, New York, Canada, Kentucky, and Indiana.^[20] Henry Townsend shared a musical engagement with him in St Louis.^[21] In many places he stayed with members of his large extended family, or with women friends.^[22] He did not marry again but formed some long term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically. One was Estella Coleman, the mother of the blues musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. In other places he stayed with a woman seduced at his first performance.^[23][24] In each location, Johnson's hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere. He used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.^[25]

Biographers have looked for consistency from musicians who knew Johnson in different contexts: Shines, who travelled extensively with him; Lockwood who knew him as his mother's partner; David "Honeyboy" Edwards whose cousin Willie Mae Powell had a relationship with Johnson.^[26] From a mass of partial, conflicting, and inconsistent eye-witness accounts,^[27] biographers have attempted to summarize Johnson's character. "He was well mannered, he was soft spoken, he was indecipherable".^[28] "As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way".^[29] "Musicians who knew Johnson testified that he was a nice guy and fairly average—except, of course, for his musical talent, his weakness for whiskey and women, and his commitment to the road."^[30]

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Musical associates have said that in live performances Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day^[31] – and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries later remarked on Johnson's interest in jazz and country music. Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Fellow musician Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters' Robert Johnson, the author quotes Shines as saying:

"Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of a peculiar fellow. Robert'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd be coming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks ... So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along."

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman about fifteen years his senior and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. Johnson supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was 'yes'...until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in the Clarksdale, Mississippi area.^[32] By 1959, historian Samuel Charters could only add that Will Shade of the Memphis Jug Band remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him in West Memphis, Arkansas.^[33] In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois, and then to some states in the East.

In 1938, Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who owned some of Johnson's records, had record producer Don Law seek out Johnson out to book him for the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson's death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but still played two of Johnson's records from the stage.^[34]

Recording sessions[link]

Robert Johnson records

Johnson's recordings were released on several labels: "Milkcow's Calf Blues" on Perfect Records (top), "Love in Vain Blues" on Vocalion Records (middle), and "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" by Conqueror Records (bottom)

In Jackson, Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. The recording session was held on November 23, 1936 in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio,^[35][36][37] which Brunswick Records had set up to be a temporary recording studio. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played sixteen selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall, which has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer. This conclusion was played up in the inaccurate liner notes of the 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers. Ry Cooder speculates that Johnson played facing a corner to enhance the sound of the guitar, a technique he calls "corner loading".^[38]

Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "Come On In My Kitchen", "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and "Cross Road Blues". The first songs to appear were "Terraplane Blues" and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear. "Terraplane Blues" became a moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies.

His first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", was part of a cycle of spin-offs and response songs that began with Leroy Carr's "Mean Mistreater Mama" (1934). According to Wald, it was "the most musically complex in the cycle"^[39] and stood apart from most rural blues as a through-composed lyric, rather than an arbitrary collection of more-or-less unrelated verses.^[40] In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78 rpm side.^[41] Most of Johnson's "somber and introspective" songs and performances come from his second recording session.^[42]

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Vitagraph (Warner Brothers) Building, 508 Park Avenue, where Brunswick Record Corporation was located on the third floor.^[43] Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Johnson did two takes of most of these songs and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his time and place.^[44]

By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as race records.

Playback issues in extant recordings[link]

The accuracy of the pitch and speed of the extant recordings has been questioned. In The Guardian's music blog from May 2010, Jon Wilde states that "the common consensus among musicologists is that we've been listening to [Robert] Johnson at least 20% too fast;" i.e., that "the recordings were accidentally speeded up when first committed to 78 [rpm records], or else were deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting."^[45] He does not give a source for this statement. Former Sony music executive Lawrence Cohn, who won a Grammy for the label's 1991 reissue of Johnson's works, "acknowledges there's a possibility Johnson's 1936–37 recordings were speeded up, since the OKeh/Vocalion family of labels, which originally issued the material, was 'notorious' for altering the speed of its releases. 'Sometimes it was 78 rpms, sometimes it was 81 rpms,' he says. It's impossible to check the original sources, since the metal stampers used to duplicate the original 78 discs disappeared years ago."^[46]

Death[link]

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood. Differing accounts and theories attempt to shed light on the events preceding his death. A story often told is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance, the wife of the juke joint owner, according to rumor, unaware that the bottle of whiskey she gave to Johnson had been poisoned by her husband. In another version, she was a married woman unrelated to the juke joint owner. Johnson was allegedly offered an open bottle of whiskey that was laced with strychnine. Fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson allegedly advised him never to drink from an offered bottle that had already been opened. According to Williamson, Johnson replied, "Don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand." Soon after, he was offered another open bottle of whiskey, also laced with strychnine, and accepted it. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain—symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning.

Musicologist Robert "Mack" McCormick claims to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson, and to have obtained a confession from him in a personal interview. McCormick has declined to reveal the man's name, however.^[47]

In his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, Tom Graves uses expert testimony from toxicologists to dispute the notion that Johnson died of strychnine poisoning. He states that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor. He also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison would occur within hours, not days. This observation was also noted in a recent Guitar World comment from contemporary David "Honeyboy" Edwards, who said that it couldn't have been strychnine, since he would have died much sooner than the three days he suffered.

Gravesite[link]

Alleged gravesite showing one of Robert Johnson's two tombstones

The exact location of his grave is officially unknown; three different markers have been erected at possible church cemetery burial sites outside of Greenwood.^[48]

• Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church near Morgan City, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A one-ton cenotaph in the shape of an obelisk, listing all of Johnson's song titles, with a central inscription by Peter Guralnick, was placed at this location in 1990, paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.
• In 1990 a small marker with the epitaph "Resting in the Blues" was placed in the cemetery of Payne Chapel near Quito, by the cemetery's owner. This alleged burial site, in an apparent attempt to strengthen a claim, happens to be located in the center of Richard Johnson's family plot.
• More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church, north of Greenwood along Money Road. Sony Music has placed a marker at this site.

An interviewee in the documentary The Search for Robert Johnson (1991) suggests that due to poverty and lack of transportation Johnson is most likely to have been buried in a pauper's grave (or "potter's field") very near where he died.

Devil legend[link]

According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Robert Johnson was branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician. He was "instructed" to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The "Devil" played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This was in effect, a deal with the Devil mirroring the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous. ^[49]

Various accounts[link]

This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,^[50] Edward Komara^[51] and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson's rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death.^[52] Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.^[53] Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House's observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus^[54] and Robert Palmer.^[55] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Blues musician Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.^[56] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in David Evans's 1971 biography of Tommy,^[57] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.^[58]

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zimmerman of Hazelhurst, Mississippi learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zimmerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson.^[59] Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth uncovered Ike Zimmerman's daughter and the story becomes clearer. Johnson and Zimmerman did practice in a graveyard at night because it was quiet and no one would disturb them, but it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed. Johnson spent about a year living with and learning from Zimmerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back to the Delta to look after him. Conforth's article in Living Blues magazine goes into much greater detail.^[60] There are now tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" at Clarksdale and in Memphis.^[61]

The legendary "Crossroads" at Clarksdale, Mississippi.

His own account[link]

Most musicians who knew Johnson well, such as Johnny Shines, never heard him claim that he had sold his soul to the Devil. Different accounts give contradictory information in this regard, but there is no conclusive evidence one way or another.

"Me And The Devil" begins, "Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/And I said, 'Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,'" and continues with, "You may bury my body down by the highway side/You may bury my body down by the highway side/So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride."

Johnson's lyrics to "Cross Road Blues" ("Standin' at the crossroads, tried to flag a ride") suggest he was hitchhiking rather than selling his soul to the Devil.

Interpretations[link]

Folklorist Alan Lomax was instrumental in preserving Johnson's recordings and spreading the mythology around his skill

The Devil in these songs may not solely refer to the Christian story of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba, himself associated with crossroads—though author Tom Graves deems the connection to African deities tenuous.^[62] As folklorist Harry M. Hyatt discovered during his research in the South from 1935–1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early-20th century said they or anyone else had "sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads," they had a different meaning in mind. Ample evidence indicates African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the making of a "deal" (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with this so-called "devil" at the crossroads.^[63]

"The Blues and the Blues singer has really special powers over women, especially. It is said that the Blues singer could possess women and have any woman they wanted. And so when Robert Johnson came back, having left his community as an apparently mediocre musician, with a clear genius in his guitar style and lyrics, people said he must have sold his soul to the devil. And that fits in with this old African association with the crossroads where you find wisdom: you go down to the crossroads to learn, and in his case to learn in a Faustian pact, with the devil. You sell your soul to become the greatest musician in history."

—Bill Ferris, American Public Media: The Story with Dick Gordon^[64]

Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African-American and European traditions and were adapted into literature. Two well-known examples are Washington Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker" in 1824 and Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster" in 1936. In the 1930s Hyatt recorded many tales of banjo players, fiddlers, card sharks, dice players, guitarists, and one accordionist selling their souls at crossroads. Folkorist Alan Lomax considered that every African American secular musician was "in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".^[65]

Musical style[link]

Robert Johnson is today considered a master of the blues, particularly of the Delta blues style; Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones said in 1990, "You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it."^[66] But according to Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta, Johnson in his own time was most respected for his ability to play in such a wide variety of styles—from raw country slide guitar to jazz and pop licks—and to pick up guitar parts almost instantly upon hearing a song.^[67] His first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues," in contrast to the prevailing Delta style of the time, more resembled the style of Chicago or St. Louis, with "a full-fledged, abundantly varied musical arrangement."^[68] Unusual for a Delta player of the time, a recording exhibits what Johnson could do entirely outside of a blues style. "They're Red Hot," from his first recording session, shows that he was also comfortable with an "uptown" swing or ragtime sound similar to the Harlem Hamfats but, as Wald remarks, "no record company was heading to Mississippi in search of a down-home Ink Spots ... [H]e could undoubtedly have come up with a lot more songs in this style if the producers had wanted them."^[69]

"To the uninitiated, Johnson's recordings may sound like just another dusty Delta blues musician wailing away. But a careful listen reveals that Johnson was a revisionist in his time . . Johnson's tortured soul vocals and anxiety-ridden guitar playing aren't found in the cotton-field blues of his contemporaries."

—Marc Myers, Wall Street Journal^[70]

Voice[link]

An important aspect of Johnson's singing was his use of microtonality. These subtle inflections of pitch help explain why his singing conveys such powerful emotion. Eric Clapton described Johnson's music as "the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice." In two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues" he shows a high degree of precision in the complex vocal delivery of the last verse: "The range of tone he can pack into a few lines is astonishing."^[71] The song's "hip humor and sophistication" is often overlooked. "[G]enerations of blues writers in search of wild Delta primitivism," writes Wald, have been inclined to overlook or undervalue aspects that show Johnson as a polished professional performer.^[72]

Johnson is also known for using the guitar as 'the other vocalist in the song', a technique later perfected by B. B. King and his personified guitar known as 'Lucille':^[73]

". . in Africa and in Afro-American tradition, there is the tradition of the talking instrument, beginning with the drums . . the one-strand and then the six-strings with bottleneck-style performance; it becomes a competing voice . . or a complementary voice . . in the performance . . "

—Bill Ferris, American Public Media: The Story with Dick Gordon^[64]

Instrument[link]

Johnson mastered the guitar, being considered today one of the all-time greats on the instrument. His approach was highly complex and extremely advanced musically. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson's music by his band mate Brian Jones, he replied, "Who is the other guy playing with him?", not realizing it was Johnson playing on one guitar. "I was hearing two guitars, and it took a long time to actually realise he was doing it all by himself,"^[74] said Richards, who would later add "Robert Johnson was like an orchestra all by himself."^[70]

"As for his guitar technique, it's politely reedy but ambitiously eclectic—moving effortlessly from hen-picking and bottleneck slides to a full deck of chucka-chucka rhythm figures."

—Marc Myers, Wall Street Journal^[70]

Lyrics[link]

In The Story with Dick Gordon,^[75] Bill Ferris of American Public Media said:

"Robert Johnson I think of in the same way I think of the British Romantic poets, Keats and Shelley, who burned out early, who were geniuses at wordsmithing poetry."

and:

"The Blues, if anything. are deeply sexual. You know, 'my car doesn't run, I'm gonna check my oil' ... 'if you don't like my apples, don't shake my tree'. Every verse has sexuality associated with it."

Influences[link]

Johnson fused approaches specific to Delta blues to those from the broader music world. The slide guitar work on "Rambling on My Mind" is pure Delta and Johnson's vocal there has "a touch of ... Son House rawness," but the train imitation on the bridge is not at all typical of Delta blues, and is more like something out of minstrel show music or vaudeville.^[76] Johnson did record versions of "Preaching the Blues" and "Walking Blues" in the older bluesman's vocal and guitar style (House's chronology is questioned by Guralnick). As with the first take of "Come On In My Kitchen," the influence of Skip James is evident in James's "Devil Got My Woman", but the lyrics rise to the level of first-rate poetry, and Johnson sings with a strained voice found nowhere else in his recorded output.^[77]

The sad, romantic "Love in Vain" successfully blends several of Johnson's disparate influences. The form, including the wordless last verse, follows Leroy Carr's last hit "When the Sun Goes Down"; the words of the last sung verse come directly from a song Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded in 1926.^[78] Johnson's last-ever recording, "Milkcow's Calf Blues" is his most direct tribute to Kokomo Arnold, who wrote "Milkcow Blues" and who influenced Johnson's vocal style.^[79]

"From Four Until Late" shows Johnson's mastery of a blues style not usually associated with the Delta. He croons the lyrics in manner reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson, and his guitar style is more that of a ragtime-influenced player like Blind Blake.^[80] Lonnie Johnson's influence on Robert Johnson is even clearer in two other departures from the usual Delta style: "Malted Milk" and "Drunken Hearted Man". Both copy the arrangement of Lonnie Johnson's "Life Saver Blues".^[81] The two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues" show the influence of Peetie Wheatstraw, calling into question the interpretation of this piece as "the spontaneous heart-cry of a demon-driven folk artist."^[72]

Legacy[link]

Robert Johnson has had enormous impact on music and musicians, but outside his own time, place, and even genre for which he was famous. His influence on his contemporaries was much smaller, due in part to the fact that he was an itinerant performer—playing mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances—who worked in a then undervalued style of music, and who died young after recording only a handful of songs. Johnson, though well-traveled and admired in his performances, was little noted in his own time and place; his records even less so. "Terraplane Blues", sometimes described as Johnson's only hit record, outsold his others but was still only a minor success.

If one had asked black blues fans about Robert Johnson in the first twenty years after his death, writes Elijah Wald, "the response in the vast majority of cases would have been a puzzled 'Robert who?'" This lack of recognition extended to black musicians:

"As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note."^[82]

With the album King of the Delta Blues Singers, a compilation of Johnson's recordings released in 1961, Columbia Records introduced his work to a much wider audience—fame and recognition he only received long after his death.

Rock and roll[link]

Johnson's major influence has been on genres of music that weren’t recognized as such until long after his death: rock and roll and rock. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included four of his songs in a set of 500^[83] they deemed to have shaped the genre:

• “Sweet Home Chicago” (1936)
• “Cross Road Blues” (1936)
• “Hellhound on My Trail” (1937)
• “Love in Vain” (1937)

Johnson recorded these songs a decade and a half before the recognized advent of rock and roll,^[84] dying a year or two later. The Museum inducted him as an “Early Influence” in their first induction ceremony in 1986, almost a half century after his death. Marc Meyers of the Wall Street Journal wrote that, "His 'Stop Breakin' Down Blues' from 1937 is so far ahead of its time that the song could easily have been a rock demo cut in 1954."^[70]

Rock music and related genres[link]

Many of the artists who claim to have been influenced by Johnson the most, injecting his revolutionary stylings into their work and recording tribute songs and collections are prominent rock musicians. His impact and influence on these future star musicians from England—who would then come to develop and define both the rock and roll and rock music eras—resulted not from personal appearances or direct fraternization. Instead, the artistic power of his exceptional talents and original compositions would be relayed across the Atlantic many years after his death through the compilation of his works released in 1961 by Columbia Records (King of the Delta Blues Singers).

Sam Dunn's documentary Metal Evolution cites that Robert Johnson was the "great grandfather to all things heavy metal" with members of Rush and Slipknot agreeing that he played a major role in the future of rock music.

Examples of the influence he had on major musicians include:

• Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin referred to him on NPR's Fresh Air (recorded in 2004) as “Robert Johnson, to whom we all owed our existence, in some way.” His group recorded "Traveling Riverside Blues", a song that drew from Johnson's original and quoted a number of Johnson's songs in the lyrics.
• To Eric Clapton, founder and member of many legendary groups, Johnson was "the most important blues musician who ever lived."^[74] He recorded enough of his songs to make Me and Mr. Johnson, a blues-rock album released in 2004 as a tribute to the legendary bluesman (also made into the film Sessions for Robert J). He'd earlier recorded "Crossroads", an arrangement of "Cross Road Blues", with Cream in 1969, leading some to consider him "the man largely responsible for making Robert Johnson a household name."^[85]
• Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced bandmate Keith Richards to his first Robert Johnson album. The blues master's recordings would have as much impact on him as on Mick Jagger. The group would perform his "Walkin' Blues" at the Rock and Roll Circus in 1968. They arranged their own version of "Love in Vain" for their album Let It Bleed; recording "Stop Breakin' Down Blues" for Exile on Main Street.
• He was a strong influence on Fleetwood Mac in the group's early years as a British blues band. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer contributed two covers of Johnson-derived songs to the group's early albums, and lead guitarist Peter Green would later go on to record Johnson's entire catalog over the course of two albums, The Robert Johnson Songbook and Hot Foot Powder.

Alexis Korner, referred to as "the Founding Father of British Blues", co-wrote and recorded a song entitled "Robert Johnson" on his The Party Album released in 1978.

Guitar playing[link]

The L1 from Gibson Guitar Company is a tribute model to Johnson

His revolutionary guitar playing has led contemporary experts, assessing his talents through the handful of old recordings available, to rate him among the greatest guitar players of all time:

• In 1990 Spin Magazine rated him 1st in its 35 Guitar Gods listing—on the 52nd anniversary of his death.^[86]
• In 2008 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 5th on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time—70 years after he died.^[4]
• In 2010 Guitar.com ranked him 9th in its list of Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time—72 years after he died.^[87]

Musicians who proclaim his profound impact on them, i.e., Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, all rated in the top ten with him on each of these lists. The boogie bass line he fashioned for "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" has now passed into the standard guitar repertoire. At the time it was completely new, a guitarist's version of something people would only ever have heard on a piano.^[88]

Lifetime achievement[link]

The Complete Recordings, a double-disc box set released by Sony/Columbia Legacy on August 28, 1990, containing almost everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, with all 29 recordings (and 12 alternate takes) won a Grammy Award for “Best Historical Album” that year. In 2006 he was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (accepted by his son Claud).^[89]

Problems of biography[link]

"The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend."

—Martin Scorsese, Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson

Very little is known of Johnson's early life with any certainty. Two marriage licenses for Johnson have been located in county records offices. The ages given in these certificates point to different birth dates, as do the entries showing his attendance at Indian Creek School, Tunica, Mississippi. That he was not listed among his mother's children in the 1910 census^[8] casts further doubt on these dates. Carrie Thompson claimed that her mother, who was also Robert's mother, remembered his birth date as May 8, 1911. The 1920 census suggests he was born in 1912.^{[citation needed]} Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936, at a recording session in San Antonio, Texas. Seven months later, on Saturday and Sunday, June 19–20, 1937, he was in Dallas at another session. His death certificate was discovered in 1968, and lists the date and location of his death.^[90]

The two confirmed images of Johnson were located in 1973, in the possession of the musician's half-sister Carrie Thompson, and were not widely published until the late 1980s. A third photo, purporting to show Johnson posing with fellow blues performer Johnny Shines, was published in the November 2008 edition of Vanity Fair magazine.^[91] The same article claims that other photographs of Johnson, so far unpublished, may exist.

"We don't know much, really . . there's so little known about this musician, other than these recordings that were made, and the fact that he died early, poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he was hanging out with."

—Bill Ferris, American Public Media: The Story with Dick Gordon^[64]

Johnson's records were greatly admired by record collectors from the time of their first release and efforts were made to discover his biography, with virtually no success. Noted blues researcher Mack McCormick began researching his family background, but was never ready to publish. McCormick's research eventually became as much a legend as Johnson himself. In 1982, McCormick permitted Peter Guralnick to publish a summary in Living Blues (1982), later reprinted in book form as Searching for Robert Johnson.^[92] Later research has sought to confirm this account or to add minor details. A revised summary acknowledging major informants was written by Stephen LaVere for the booklet accompanying the compilation album Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings (1990), and is maintained with updates at the Delta Haze website.^[93] The documentary film The Search for Robert Johnson contains accounts by Mack McCormick and Gayle Dean Wardlow of what informants have told them: long interviews of David Honeyboy Edwards and Johnny Shines, and short interviews of surviving friends and family. These published biographical sketches achieve coherent narratives, partly by ignoring reminiscences and hearsay accounts which contradict or conflict with other accounts.

A relatively full account of Johnson's brief musical career emerged in the 1960s, largely from accounts by Son House, Johnny Shines, David Honeyboy Edwards and Robert Lockwood. In 1961, the sleeve notes to the album King of the Delta Blues Singers included reminiscences of Don Law who had recorded Johnson in 1936. Law added to the mystique surrounding Johnson, representing him as very young and extraordinarily shy.

Discography[link]

	Traveling Riverside Blues noicon Cross Road Blues noicon
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

Eleven Johnson 78s were released on the Vocalion label during his lifetime, with a twelfth issued posthumously.^[94] All songs are copyrighted to Robert Johnson, and his estate^{[citation needed]}.

The Complete Recordings: A double-disc box set was released on August 28, 1990, containing almost everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, with all 29 recordings, and 12 alternate takes. (There is one further alternate, of "Traveling Riverside Blues," which was released on Sony's King of the Delta Blues Singers CD and also as an extra in early printings of the paperback edition of Elijah Wald's "Escaping the Delta.")^[95]

To celebrate Johnson's 100th birthday, May 8, 2011, Sony Legacy released a re-mastered 2 CD set of all 42 Robert Johnson recordings extant, entitled Robert Johnson: The Centennial Collection.^[96] In addition, there were two brief fragments: one where Johnson can be heard practicing a guitar figure; the second when Johnson can be heard saying, presumably to engineer Don Law, "I wanna go on with our next one myself."^[96] Reviewers commented that the sound quality of the 2011 release was a substantial improvement on the 1990 release.^[97][98]

Awards and recognitions[link]

Grammy Awards[link]

Grammy Hall of Fame[link]

National Recording Registry[link]

The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson (1936–1937) was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2003.^[99] The board selects songs in an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[link]

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included four songs by Robert Johnson in the 500 songs that shaped rock and roll.^[100]

The Blues Foundation Awards[link]

Honors and inductions[link]

On September 17, 1994, the U.S. Post Office issued a Robert Johnson 29-cent commemorative postage stamp.^[102]

Tribute albums[link]

There have been a number of tribute albums by guitar virtuosi, including

Films and other media[link]

• The 1986 film Crossroads is about a young white blues guitarist's search for Johnson's "missing" 30th song and the theme of blues artists selling their souls to the devil.
• Stones in My Passway: The Robert Johnson Story (1990), a biographical film by Martin Spottl.
• The Search for Robert Johnson (1991), UK documentary hosted by Blues musician John P. Hammond, son of John H. Hammond.
• Can't You Hear the Wind Howl? The Life and Music of Robert Johnson (1997)
• Hellhounds On My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson (2000, directed by Robert Mugge)
• Eric Clapton – Sessions for Robert Johnson (2004, documentary)
• Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson (published in 2008) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Hiramoto. It is a phantasmagoric reimagining of Johnson's life.
• Celebration of the music and legend of Robert Johnson: Show 502 WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Rory Block and Scott Ainslie discuss Johnson and play his music. Taped 2008-09-29; 60 minutes audio (WMA, MP3), 88 minutes video (WMV).
• To commemorate Johnson's 100th birthday, Dogfish Head Brewery released "Hellhound on My Ale", a limited edition beer, in collaboration with Sony's Legacy Recordings division.^[104]
• Crossroads by Radio Lab the myth of what happened to Robert Johnson at the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

See also[link]

Biography portal

• 27 Club

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (April 2012)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Johnson (musician)

• The Robert Johnson Blues Foundation
• Robert Johnson Mount Zion Memorial Fund
• 1980 Hall of Fame Inductee at The Blues Foundation
• The Robert Johnson Notebooks. Courtney Danforth and Adriana Rissetto. University of Virginia. 1997-07-07/2003-11-03.
• Robert Johnson Death Certificate. State of Mississippi.
• Robert Johnson at Find-A-Grave
• Robert Johnson recordings. Three Perfect Minutes – Milestone Recordings in American Music. Bryan Mangum. User-generated reviews of each of Johnson's tracks.
• Robert Johnson at Allmusic
• Works by or about Robert Johnson in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Articles

• 75 Aniversario de Robert Johnson Pablo Huguet Monfort, Mone Monkey. February 15, 2012. 75 Aniversario de Robert Johnson
• Bluesman's Son Gets His Due Ellen Barry, Los Angeles Times. June 2, 2004. Johnson legal battle.
• Portrait of a Phantom – Searching for Robert Johnson. Frank DiGiacomo, Vanity Fair. November 2008. Purported new photo of Robert Johnson with Johnny Shines.
• Steady Rollin’ Man – A Revolutionary Critique of Robert Johnson. John Gibbens, Touched Press Books. About speed adjustments.
• Escaping the Delta/Robert Johnson Elijah Wald. About the book, w/links to related material.
• Delta Guitar Player Robert Johnson. Guitarz For Ever. 2004. (Portion copied from ezinearticles.com)
• Deal with the Devil: Understanding Robert Johnson, His Music and His Impact. D.A.N. Soul of Rock 'n' Roll. 2007-04-06

Johnny Cash
Cash in 1969.
Background information
Birth name	John R. Cash
Born	(1932-02-26)February 26, 1932 Kingsland, Arkansas, United States
Origin	Kingsland, Arkansas, United States
Died	September 12, 2003(2003-09-12) (aged 71) Nashville, Tennessee, United States
Genres	Country, rock and roll, folk, americana, gospel, blues, rockabilly
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician, actor
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, harmonica, mandolin
Years active	1955–2003
Labels	Sun, Columbia, Mercury, American, House of Cash, Legacy Recordings
Associated acts	The Tennessee Three, The Highwaymen, June Carter Cash, The Statler Brothers, The Carter Family, The Oak Ridge Boys, Area Code 615, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Website	johnnycash.com
Notable instruments
Martin Acoustic Guitars[1]

John R. "Johnny" Cash (February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003), was an American singer-songwriter, actor,^[2] and author,^[2] who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.^[3] Although he is primarily remembered as a country music icon, his songs and sound spanned many other genres including rockabilly and rock and roll—especially early in his career—as well as blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal led to Cash being inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

Cash was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice;^[4][5][6] for the "boom-chicka-boom" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band; for his rebelliousness,^[7][8] coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor;^[4] for providing free concerts inside prison walls;^[9][10] and for his dark performance clothing, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black".^[11] He traditionally started his concerts by saying, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."^[12][13] and usually following it up with his standard "Folsom Prison Blues".

Much of Cash's music, especially that of his later career, echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption.^[4][14] His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", "Get Rhythm" and "Man in Black". He also recorded humorous numbers, including "One Piece at a Time" and "A Boy Named Sue"; a duet with his future wife, June Carter, called "Jackson"; as well as railroad songs including "Hey, Porter" and "Rock Island Line".^[15] Late in his career, Cash covered songs by several rock artists, most notably "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails - the resulting music video was voted one of the best of all time and is sometimes seen as Cash's epitaph.

Cash, a troubled but devout Christian,^[16][17] has been characterized as a "lens through which to view American contradictions and challenges."^[18][19][20] A Biblical scholar,^[2][21][22] he penned a Christian novel titled Man in White,^[23][24] and he made a spoken word recording of the entire New King James Version of the New Testament.^[25][26] Even so, Cash declared that he was "the biggest sinner of them all", and viewed himself overall as a complicated and contradictory man.^[27][28] Accordingly,^[29] Cash is said to have "contained multitudes", and has been deemed "the philosopher-prince of American country music".^[30][31]

Personal life[link]

Early life[link]

Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas,^[32] the fourth of seven children to Ray Cash (May 13, 1897, Kingsland, Arkansas – December 23, 1985, Hendersonville, Tennessee)^[33] and Carrie Cloveree Rivers (March 13, 1904, Rison, Arkansas – March 11, 1991, Hendersonville, Tennessee).^[34][35] Cash was named John R. Cash because his parents couldn't think of a name, but he went by J. R. all throughout his childhood as a shortened version of his real name. When Cash enlisted in the Air Force, they wouldn't let him use initials as his name, so he began to use his legal name of John R. Cash. In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he took Johnny Cash as his stage name.^[36]

The Cash children were, in order: Roy, Margaret Louise, Jack, J. R., Reba, Joanne and Tommy.^[37][38] His younger brother, Tommy Cash, also became a successful country artist.

In March 1935, when Cash was three years old, the family settled in Dyess, Arkansas. He started working in cotton fields at age five, singing along with his family simultaneously while working. The family farm was flooded on at least two occasions, which later inspired him to write the song "Five Feet High and Rising".^[39] His family's economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing similar difficulties.

Cash was very close to his older brother, Jack.^[40] In May 1944, Jack was pulled into a whirling head saw in the mill where he worked and was almost cut in two. He suffered for over a week before he died on May 20, 1944, at age 15.^[39] Cash often spoke of the horrible guilt he felt over this incident. According to Cash: The Autobiography, his father was away that morning, but he and his mother, and Jack himself, all had premonitions or a sense of foreboding about that day, causing his mother to urge Jack to skip work and go fishing with his brother. Jack insisted on working, as the family needed the money. On his deathbed, Jack said he had visions of heaven and angels. Decades later, Cash spoke of looking forward to meeting his brother in heaven.

Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. Taught by his mother and a childhood friend, Cash began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy. In high school he sang on a local radio station; decades later he released an album of traditional gospel songs, called My Mother's Hymn Book. He was also significantly influenced by traditional Irish music that he heard performed weekly by Dennis Day on the Jack Benny radio program.^[41]

Cash enlisted in the United States Air Force on July 7, 1950.^[42] After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Texas, Cash was assigned to a U.S. Air Force Security Service unit, assigned as a Morse Code Intercept Operator for Soviet Army transmissions at Landsberg, Germany "where he created his first band named The Landsberg Barbarians."^[43] He was the first radio operator to pick up the news of the death of Joseph Stalin.^[44] After he was honorably discharged as a Staff Sergeant on July 3, 1954, he returned to Texas.^[45]

Marriages and family[link]

On July 18, 1951, while in Air Force training, Cash met 17-year-old Vivian Liberto at a roller skating rink in her native San Antonio. They dated for three weeks, until Cash was deployed to Germany for a three year tour. During that time, the couple exchanged hundreds of pages of love letters.^[46] On August 7, 1954, one month after his discharge, they were married at St. Anne's Catholic church in San Antonio. The ceremony was performed by her uncle, Father Vincent Liberto. They had four daughters: Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara. Cash's drug and alcohol abuse, constant touring, and affairs with other women, and his close relationship with future wife June Carter, led Liberto to file for divorce in 1966.^[47]

In 1968, 13 years after they first met backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, Cash proposed to June Carter, an established country singer, during a live performance in London, Ontario,^[48] marrying on March 1, 1968, in Franklin, Kentucky. They had one child together, John Carter Cash (born March 3, 1970). They continued to work together and tour for 35 years, until June Carter died in 2003. Cash died just four months later. Carter co-wrote one of Cash's biggest hits, "Ring of Fire," with singer Merle Kilgore. She and Cash won two Grammy awards for their duets.

Vivian Liberto claims a different version of the origins of "Ring of Fire" in I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny, stating that Cash gave Carter the credit for monetary reasons.^[49]

Heritage[link]

Cash's heritage was a British Isles mix. He learned upon researching his heritage that he was of Scottish royal descent on his father's side, traced back to Malcolm I of Scotland.^[50][51][52] After meeting with now-dead laird Major Michael Crichton-Stuart of Falkland, Fife, Scotland, Johnny traced the Cash family tree to eleventh-century Fife;^[53][54][55] Cash Loch and other locations in Fife bear the name of his family.^[53]

Cash also had English and Scots-Irish ancestry. Though he did not have American Indian ancestry, his empathy and compassion for Native American Indians were unabated. These feelings were expressed in several of his songs, including "Apache Tears" and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes", and on his album, Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. Through his maternal grandmother, Rosanna Lee (Hurst) Rivers, Cash is distantly related to millionaire William Randolph Hearst and socialite Patty Hearst.^{[citation needed]}

Friends[link]

Cash was a long time friend of Woody Hayes (ex Ohio State Buckeyes football coach). The lyrics "I braided Twigs of Willows Made a String of Buckeye Beads" from the song Flesh and Blood was for Woody.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

Early career[link]

In 1954, Cash and Vivian 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. Perkins and Grant were known as the Tennessee Two. Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to get a recording contract. After auditioning for Sam Phillips, singing mostly gospel songs, Phillips told him that he didn't record gospel music any longer. It was once rumored that Phillips told Cash to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell," though in a 2002 interview Cash denied that Phillips made any such comment.^[56] Cash eventually won over the producer with new songs delivered in his early rock'a'billy style. In 1955 Cash made his first recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and "Cry! Cry! Cry!", which were released in late June and met with reasonable success on the country hit parade.

On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on studio owner Sam Phillips to pay a social visit while Carl Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks, with Jerry Lee Lewis backing him on piano. Cash was also in the studio and the four started an impromptu jam session. Phillips left the tapes running and the recordings, almost half of which were gospel songs, survived and have since been released under the title Million Dollar Quartet.

Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues", made the country Top 5, and "I Walk the Line" became No. 1 on the country charts and entered the pop charts Top 20. "Home of the Blues" followed, recorded in July 1957. That same year Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. Although he was Sun's most consistently selling and prolific artist at that time, Cash felt constrained by his contract with the small label partly due to the fact that Phillips wasn't keen on Johnny recording gospel, and he was only getting a 3% royalty as opposed to the standard rate of 5%. Presley had already left Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on 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" became one of his biggest hits.

In the early 1960s, Cash toured with the Carter Family, which by this time regularly included Mother Maybelle's daughters, Anita, June and Helen. June, whom Cash would eventually marry, later recalled admiring him from afar during these tours. In the 1960s he appeared on Pete Seeger's short lived Rainbow Quest.^[57]

He also acted in a 1961 film entitled Five Minutes to Live, later re-released as Door-to-door Maniac. He also wrote and sang the opening theme.

Outlaw image[link]

As his career was taking off in the late 1950s, Cash started drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates. For a brief time, he shared an apartment in Nashville with Waylon Jennings, who was heavily addicted to amphetamines. Cash used the uppers to stay awake during tours. Friends joked about his "nervousness" and erratic behavior, many ignoring the warning signs of his worsening drug addiction. In a behind-the-scenes look at The Johnny Cash Show, Cash claims to have "tried every drug there was to try."

Although in many ways spiraling out of control, Cash's frenetic creativity was still delivering hits. His rendition of "Ring of Fire" was a 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. The song was originally performed by June's sister, but the signature mariachi-style horn arrangement was provided by Cash, who said that it had come to him in a dream.

In June 1965, his truck caught fire due to an overheated wheel bearing, triggering a forest fire that burnt several hundred acres in Los Padres National Forest in California.^[58][59] When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it."^[39] The fire destroyed 508 acres (206 ha), burning the foliage off three mountains and killing 49 of the refuge's 53 endangered condors. Cash was unrepentant: "I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards." The federal government sued him and was awarded $125,172 ($923,127 today). Cash eventually settled the case and paid $82,001.^[60] He said he was the only person ever sued by the government for starting a forest fire.^[39]

Although Cash carefully cultivated a romantic outlaw image, he never served a prison sentence. Despite landing in jail seven times for misdemeanors, each stay lasted only a single night. His most infamous run-in with the law occurred while on tour in 1965, when he was arrested October 4 by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas. The officers suspected that he was smuggling heroin from Mexico, but it was 688 Dexedrine capsules and 475 Equanil tablets that the singer had hidden inside his guitar case. Because they were prescription drugs rather than illegal narcotics, he received a suspended sentence.

Johnny Cash and his second wife, June Carter

Cash was later arrested on May 11, 1965, 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.)

In the mid 1960s, Cash released 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, and his destructive behavior led to a divorce from his first wife and canceled performances.

In 1967, Cash's duet with June Carter, "Jackson", won a Grammy Award.

Johnny Cash's final arrest was in Walker County, Georgia where he was taken in after being involved in a car accident while carrying a bag of prescription pills. Cash attempted to bribe a local deputy, who turned the money down, and then spent the night in a LaFayette, Georgia jail. The singer was released after a long talk with Sheriff Ralph Jones, who warned him of his dangerous behavior and wasted potential. Johnny credited that experience for saving his life, and he later came back to LaFayette to play a benefit concert that attracted 12,000 people (the city population was less than 9,000 at the time) and raised $75,000 for the high school.^[61]

Cash curtailed his use of drugs for several years in 1968, after a spiritual epiphany in the Nickajack Cave, when he attempted to commit suicide while under the heavy influence of drugs. He descended deeper into the cave, trying to lose himself and "just die", when he passed out on the floor. He reported to be exhausted and feeling at the end of his rope when he felt God's presence in his heart and managed to struggle out of the cave (despite the exhaustion) by following a faint light and slight breeze. To him, it was his own rebirth. June, Maybelle, and Ezra Carter moved into Cash's mansion for a month to help him conquer his addiction. Cash proposed onstage to June at a concert at the London Gardens in London, Ontario on February 22, 1968; the couple married a week later (on March 1) in Franklin, Kentucky. June had agreed to marry Cash after he had "cleaned up".^[62] He rediscovered his Christian faith, taking an "altar call" in Evangel Temple, a small church in the Nashville area, pastored by Rev. Jimmie Rodgers Snow, son of country music legend Hank Snow.

According to longtime friend Marshall Grant, Cash's 1968 rebirth experience did not result in his completely stopping use of amphetamines. However, in 1970, Cash ended all drug use for a period of seven years. Grant claims that the birth of Cash's son, John Carter Cash, inspired Cash to end his dependence. Cash began using amphetamines again in 1977. By 1983, he was once again addicted, and entered the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, California for rehabilitation. Cash managed to stay off drugs for several years, but by 1989, he was dependent again and entered Nashville's Cumberland Heights Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center. In 1992, he entered the Loma Linda Behavioural Medicine Centre in Loma Linda, California for his final rehabilitation (several months later, his son followed him into this facility for treatment).^[63][64][65]

Folsom Prison Blues[link]

Cash felt great compassion for prisoners. He began performing concerts at various prisons starting in the late 1950s. His first ever prison concert was held on January 1, 1958 at San Quentin State Prison.^[66] 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 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 U.S. Top Ten pop charts. The AM versions of the latter contained a couple of profanities which were edited out. The modern CD versions are unedited and uncensored and thus also longer than the original vinyl albums, though they still retain the audience reaction overdubs of the originals.

In addition to his performances at U.S. prisons, Cash also performed at the Österåker Prison in Sweden in 1972. The live album På Österåker ("At Österåker") was released in 1973. Between the songs, Cash can be heard speaking Swedish, which was greatly appreciated by the inmates.

"The Man in Black"[link]

Cash advocated prison reform at his July 1972 meeting with United States President Richard Nixon.

From 1969 to 1971, Cash starred in his own television show, The Johnny Cash Show, on the ABC network. The Statler Brothers opened up for him in every episode; the Carter Family and rockabilly legend Carl Perkins were also part of the regular show entourage. However, Cash also enjoyed booking more mainstream performers as guests; such notables included Neil Young, Louis Armstrong, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition (who appeared a record four times on his show), James Taylor, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton (then leading Derek and the Dominos), and Bob Dylan. During the same period, he contributed the title song and other songs to the film Little Fauss and Big Halsey, which starred Robert Redford, Michael J. Pollard, and Lauren Hutton. The title song, The Ballad of Little Fauss and Big Halsey, written by Carl Perkins, was nominated for a Golden Globe award.

Cash had met with Dylan in the mid 1960s and became closer friends when they were neighbors in the late 1960s in Woodstock, New York. Cash was enthusiastic about reintroducing the reclusive Dylan to his audience. Cash 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, who was beginning to make a name for himself as a singer/songwriter. During a live performance of Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", Cash refused to change the lyrics to suit network executives, singing the song with its references to marijuana intact: "On a Sunday morning sidewalk / I'm wishin', Lord, that I was stoned."^[67]

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 contrast to the costumes worn by most of the major country acts in his day: rhinestone suit and cowboy boots. In 1971, Cash wrote the song "Man in Black", to help explain his dress code: "We're doing mighty fine I do suppose / In our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes / But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back / Up front there ought to be a man in black."

Cash attired in black performing in Bremen, Northern Germany, in September 1972

He wore black on behalf of the poor and hungry, on behalf of "the prisoner who has long paid for his crime",^[68] and on behalf of those who have been betrayed by age or drugs.^[68] "And," Cash added, "with the Vietnam War as painful in my mind as it was in most other Americans', I wore it 'in mournin' for the lives that could have been.' ... Apart from the Vietnam War being over, I don't see much reason to change my position ... The old are still neglected, the poor are still poor, the young are still dying before their time, and we're not making many moves to make things right. There's still plenty of darkness to carry off."^[68]

He and his band had initially worn black shirts because that was the only matching color they had among their various outfits.^[39] He wore other colors on stage early in his career, but he claimed to like wearing black both on and off stage. He stated that, political reasons aside, he simply liked black as his on-stage color.^[39] To this day, the US Navy's winter blue uniform is referred to by sailors as "Johnny Cashes", as the uniform's shirt, tie, and trousers are solid black.^[69]

In the mid 1970s, Cash's popularity and number of hit songs began to decline. He made commercials for Amoco, an unpopular enterprise in an era in which oil companies made high profits while consumers suffered through high gasoline prices and shortages. However, 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 film about the life of Jesus, The Gospel Road, which Cash co-wrote and narrated.

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 (Swan Song). He also appeared with his wife on an episode of Little House on the Prairie entitled "The Collection" and gave a performance as John Brown in the 1985 American Civil War television mini-series North and South. Johnny and June also appeared in Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman (TV series) as a recurring couple. Cash also had a starring role in a Columbo film.

He was friendly with every US President starting with Richard Nixon. He was closest to Jimmy Carter, with whom he became close friends.^[39] He stated that he found all of them personally charming, noting that this was probably essential to getting oneself elected.^[39]

When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1970,^[70] Richard Nixon's office requested that he play "Okie from Muskogee" (a satirical Merle Haggard song about people who despised youthful drug users and war protesters) and "Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song which denies the integrity of welfare recipients). Cash declined to play either and instead selected other songs, including "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" (about a brave Native American World War II veteran who was mistreated upon his return to Arizona), and his own compositions, "What Is Truth" and "Man in Black". Cash wrote that the reasons for denying Nixon's song choices were not knowing them and having fairly short notice to rehearse them, rather than any political reason.^[39] However, Cash added, even if Nixon's office had given Cash enough time to learn and rehearse the songs, their choice of pieces that conveyed "antihippie and antiblack" sentiments might have backfired.^[71]

Highwaymen[link]

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, although 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 three hit albums which were released beginning with the originally titled "Highwaymen" in 1985, followed by "Highwaymen 2" in 1990, and concluding with "Highwaymen - The Road Goes on forever" in 1995.

During that period, Cash appeared in a number of television films. In 1981, he starred in The Pride of Jesse Hallam, winning fine reviews for a film that called attention to adult illiteracy. In the same year, Cash appeared as a "very special guest star" in an episode of the Muppet Show. In 1983, he appeared as a heroic sheriff in Murder in Coweta County, based on a real-life Georgia murder case, which co-starred Andy Griffith as his nemesis. Cash had tried for years to make the film, for which he won acclaim.

Cash relapsed into addiction after being administered painkillers for a serious abdominal injury in 1983 caused by an unusual incident in which he was kicked and wounded by an ostrich he kept on his farm.^[72]

At a 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.^{[citation needed]}

Cash's recording career and his general relationship with the Nashville establishment were at an all-time low in the 1980s. He realized that his record label of nearly 30 years, Columbia, was growing indifferent to him and was not properly marketing him (he was "invisible" during that time, as he said in his autobiography). Cash recorded an intentionally awful song to protest, a self-parody.^{[citation needed]} "Chicken in Black" was about Cash'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. Also in 1986, Cash published his only novel, Man in White, a book about Saul and his conversion to become the Apostle Paul. He also recorded Johnny Cash Reads The Complete New Testament in 1990.

American Recordings[link]

Johnny Cash sings a duet with a Navy lieutenant c.1987.

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 popularity with an audience not traditionally interested in country music. In 1991, he sang a version of "Man in Black" for the Christian punk band One Bad Pig's album I Scream Sunday. In 1993, he sang "The Wanderer" on U2's album Zooropa. Although no longer sought after by major labels, he was offered a contract with producer Rick Rubin's American Recordings label, better known for rap and hard rock.

Under Rubin's supervision, he recorded American Recordings (1994) in his living room, accompanied only by his Martin Dreadnought guitar – one of many Cash played throughout his career.^[73] The album featured covers of contemporary artists selected by Rubin and had much critical and commercial success, winning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. 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 commercial success. Cash teamed up with Brooks & Dunn to contribute "Folsom Prison Blues" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. On the same album, he performed the Bob Dylan favorite "Forever Young".

Cash and his wife appeared on a number of episodes of the 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 lent his voice for a cameo role in The Simpsons episode "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)," as the "Space Coyote" that guides Homer Simpson on a spiritual quest. In 1996, Cash enlisted the accompaniment of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and released Unchained, which won the Best Country Album Grammy. Believing he did not explain enough of himself in his 1975 autobiography Man in Black, he wrote Cash: The Autobiography in 1997.

Last years[link]

In 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome, a form of multiple system atrophy. The diagnosis was later altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. This 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 that was released for "Hurt", a cover of the song by Nine Inch Nails, fits Cash's view of his past and feelings of regret. The video for the song, from American IV, is now generally recognized as "his epitaph,"^[74] and received particular critical and popular acclaim.

Cash's grave (top) and the Cash/Carter memorial (bottom)

June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003, at the age of 73. June had told Cash to keep working, so he continued to record, completing 60 more songs in the last four months of his life, and even performed a couple of surprise shows at the Carter Family Fold outside Bristol, Virginia. At the July 5, 2003, concert (his last public performance), before singing "Ring of Fire", Cash read a statement about his late wife that he had written shortly before taking the stage:

The spirit of June Carter overshadows me tonight with the love she had for me and the love I have for her. We connect somewhere between here and heaven. She came down for a short visit, I guess, from heaven to visit with me tonight to give me courage and inspiration like she always has.

Death[link]

Cash died of complications from diabetes at approximately 2:00 a.m. CT on September 12, 2003, while hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville - less than four months after his wife. It was suggested that Johnny's health worsened due to a broken heart over June's death.^[75][76] He was buried next to his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

On May 24, 2005, Vivian Liberto, Cash's first wife and the mother of Rosanne Cash and three other daughters, died from surgery to remove lung cancer at the age of 71. It was her daughter Rosanne's 50th birthday.^[77]

In June 2005, Cash's lakeside home on Caudill Drive in Hendersonville was put up for sale by his estate. In January 2006, the house was sold to Bee Gees vocalist Barry Gibb and wife Linda and titled in their Florida limited liability company for $2.3 million. The listing agent was Cash's younger brother, Tommy Cash. During a major restoration of the property by the new owner, Cash's home was accidentally destroyed by workers using linseed oil products in a spontaneous combustion-ignited fire on April 10, 2007.^[78]

One of Cash's final collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, entitled American V: A Hundred Highways, was released posthumously on July 4, 2006. The album debuted in the No.1 position on the Billboard Top 200 album chart for the week ending July 22, 2006.

On February 23, 2010, three days before what would have been Cash's 78th birthday, the Cash Family, Rick Rubin, and Lost Highway Records released his second posthumous record, titled American VI: Ain't No Grave.

Legacy[link]

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 in the 1990s as a living legend and an alternative country icon, Cash influenced countless artists and left a large body of work. Upon his death, Cash was revered by the greatest popular musicians of his time. His rebellious image and often anti-authoritarian stance influenced punk rock.^[79][80]

Among Cash's children, his daughter Rosanne Cash (by first wife Vivian Liberto) and his son John Carter Cash (by June Carter Cash) are notable country-music musicians in their own right.

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 which aired in 1999 on TNT, a diverse group of artists paid him tribute, including Bob Dylan, Chris Isaak, Wyclef Jean, Norah Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Dom DeLuise and U2. Cash himself appeared at the end and performed for the first time in more than a year. 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 1,000 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.^[81] The Johnny Cash Memorial Fund was founded.^[82]

In 1999, Cash received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Cash^[83] No.31 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.^[84]

In a tribute to Cash after his death, country music singer 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.

The main street in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Highway 31E, is known as "Johnny Cash Parkway"; the Johnny Cash Museum is located in the town.

On November 2–4, 2007, the Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival was held in Starkville, Mississippi. Starkville, where Cash was arrested over 40 years earlier and held overnight at the city jail on May 11, 1965, inspired Cash to write the song "Starkville City Jail". The festival, where he was offered a symbolic posthumous pardon, honored Cash's life and music, and was expected to become an annual event.^[85]

JC Unit One, Johnny Cash's private tour bus from 1980 until 2003, was put on exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum in 2007. The Cleveland, Ohio museum offers public tours of the bus on a seasonal basis (it is stored during the winter months and not exhibited during those times).

WWE Superstar The Undertaker used Cash's song "Aint No Grave" (from American VI: Ain't No Grave) to announce his return following an absence in February, 2011, and as his entrance music for Wrestlemania XXVII. Independent circuit wrestlers Tyson Dux and Brodie Lee also use "God's Gonna Cut You Down" (from American V: A Hundred Highways) as entrance music. Other professional wrestlers who have used Cash's songs as entrance music include Austin Aries, who used his cover of the Depeche Mode's song "Personal Jesus" (from American IV: The Man Comes Around), and Necro Butcher, who used both "The Man Comes Around" and "Hurt". WWE also used "Hurt" in a special video package that was aired on Monday Night RAW in November 2005 as a tribute to Eddie Guerrero, a popular WWE Superstar who had died of heart failure while he was still contracted with the company. It is also noted that current WWE Superstar Ted DiBiase, Jr. is a huge fan of Cash, as is former WWE Diva and current TNA Knockout Mickie James.

The television show "The Deadliest Catch" is using the song "Ain't No Grave" as the theme song in many of their commercials.

One of Cash's greatest hits, "Hurt", was also used to advertise Prototype 2 in the trailer called "The Power Of Revenge".

Portrayals[link]

The Canada Trust company used his name and images for their Johnny Cash automatic bank machines during the late 80s and early 90s.

In 1998, country singer Mark Collie was the first to portray Cash, in the short film, I Still Miss Someone.

In November of 2005, Walk the Line, an Academy Award-winning biopic about Cash's life starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny (for which he was nominated for the 2005 Best Actor Oscar) and Reese Witherspoon as June (for which she won the 2005 Best Actress Oscar), was released in the United States on to considerable commercial success and 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 Cash. Phoenix received the Grammy Award for his contributions to the soundtrack. John Carter Cash, the first child of Johnny and June, served as an executive producer on the film.

On March 12, 2006 Ring of Fire, a jukebox musical of the Cash oeuvre, debuted on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, but closed due to harsh reviews and disappointing sales on April 30, 2006.

On April 11, 2010, Million Dollar Quartet, a musical portraying the early Sun recording sessions involving Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins, debuted on Broadway. Actor Lance Guest portrayed Cash. The musical was nominated for three awards at the 2010 Tony Awards, and won one.

Discography[link]

See Johnny Cash discography, and Johnny Cash Sun Records discography.

Awards and honors[link]

For detailed lists of music awards, see List of Johnny Cash awards.

Cash received multiple Country Music Association Awards, Grammys, and other awards, in categories ranging from vocal and spoken performances to album notes and videos.

In a career that spanned almost five decades during which he rose to recording industry icon status, Cash was the personification of country music to many people around the world. 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 audience, 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 thirteen performers are in both of the last two, and only Hank Williams Sr., Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, and Bill Monroe share the honor with Cash of being in all three. However, only Cash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the regular manner, unlike the other country members, who were inducted as "early influences." His pioneering contribution to the genre has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.^[86] 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. In 2001, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[87] He was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for best cinematography for "Hurt" and was supposed to appear, but died during the night.

In 2007, Cash was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.^[88]

Further reading[link]

• Graeme Thomson The Resurrection of Johnny Cash: Hurt, Redemption, and American Recordings Jawbone Press ISBN 978-1-906002-36-7

Sources[link]

Notes[link]