| Name | Johnny Cash |
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| Background | solo_singer |
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| Birth name | J. R. Cash |
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| Born | February 26, 1932 |
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| Origin | Kingsland, Arkansas, U.S. |
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| Died | September 12, 2003Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. |
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| Instrument | Vocals, guitar |
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| Genre | Country, Rock and Roll , Folk , Rockabilly , Gospel , Blues |
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| Occupation | Singer-songwriter, musician, actor |
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| Voice type | Bass-baritone |
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| Years active | 1955–2003 |
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| Label | Sun, Columbia, Mercury, American, House of Cash, Legacy Recordings |
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| Associated acts | The Tennessee Three, The Highwaymen, June Carter Cash, The Statler Brothers, The Carter Family, The Oak Ridge Boys, Area Code 615 |
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| Notable instruments | Martin Acoustic Guitars and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He had believed in his younger days that he was mainly Irish and partially Native American, including Cherokee and Choctaw. Though Cash learned he was not of Native American descent, his empathy and compassion for Native Americans was unabated. Such feelings were expressed in several of his songs, including "Apache Tears" and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes", and on his album, . |
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in current dollar terms). Cash eventually
settled the case and paid $82,001.
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 by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas. The officers suspected that he was smuggling heroin from Mexico, but it was prescription narcotics and amphetamines that the singer had hidden inside his guitar case. Because they were prescription drugs rather than illegal narcotics, he received a suspended sentence.
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 Carter, "Jackson", won a Grammy Award.
Johnny Cash's final arrest was in Walker County, GA 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, GA 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. "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."
He and his band had initially worn black shirts because that was the only matching color they had among their various outfits. 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. To this day, the United States Navy's winter blue service uniform is referred to by sailors as "Johnny Cashes", as the uniform's shirt, tie, and trousers are solid black. He stated that he found all of them personally charming, noting that this was probably essential to getting oneself elected.
When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1972, 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. 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.
Highwaymen
, Johnny Cash,
Waylon Jennings,
Willie Nelson, who formed the
country music supergroup,
The Highwaymen]] In 1980, Cash became the
Country Music Hall of Fame's youngest living inductee at age forty-eight, 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 two hit albums.
During this 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.
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.
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. "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
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. 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 and death
In 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the
neurodegenerative disease
Shy-Drager syndrome, a form of
Parkinson's disease. 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
(2000) and
(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," and received particular critical and popular acclaim.
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 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:
Cash died of complications from diabetes fewer than four months after his wife, at 2:00 a.m. CT on September 12, 2003, while hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville. He was buried next to his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
His stepdaughter, Rosie (Nix) Adams and another passenger were found dead on a bus in Montgomery County, Tennessee, on October 24, 2003. It was speculated that the deaths may have been caused by carbon monoxide from the lanterns in the bus. Adams was 45 when she died. She was buried in the Hendersonville Memory Gardens, near her mother and stepfather.
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.
In June 2005, his 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. The home was destroyed by fire on April 10, 2007.
One of Cash's final collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, entitled , was released posthumously on July 4, 2006. The album debuted in the #1 position on the Billboard Top 200 album chart for the week ending July 22, 2006.
On February 26, 2010, what would have been Cash's 78th birthday, the Cash Family, Rick Rubin, and Lost Highway Records released his second posthumous record, entitled .
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 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.
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 TNT concert in 1999, 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; contains works from established artists, while 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. The Johnny Cash Memorial Fund was founded.
In 1999, Cash received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Cash #31 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
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 Hendersonville, Tennessee.
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.
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).
Portrayals
In 1998, country singer
Mark Collie portrayed Cash for the first time in a short film,
I Still Miss Someone.
Walk the Line, an Academy Award-winning biopic about Cash's life starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny and Reese Witherspoon as June (for which she won the 2005 Best Actress Oscar), was released in the United States on November 18, 2005 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.
Ring of Fire, a jukebox musical of the Cash oeuvre, debuted on Broadway on March 12, 2006 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, but closed due to harsh reviews and disappointing sales on April 30, 2006.
Million Dollar Quartet, a musical portraying the early Sun recording sessions involving Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins, debuted on Broadway on April 11, 2010. Actor Lance Guest portrayed Cash. The musical was nominated for three awards at the 2010 Tony Awards, and won one.
Discography
:
See Johnny Cash discography, and Johnny Cash Sun Records discography.
Awards and honors
:
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, 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. 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. 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.
Sources
Notes
References
D'Ambrosio, Antonino (2009). A Heartbeat and A Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears. With Original Art by Shepard Fairey and Photos by Jim Marshall. Perseus Books/Nation Books ISBN 9781568584072
Millier, Bill. (retrieved September 7, 2004). Johnny Cash Awards. JohnnyCash.com.
Streissguth, Michael. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece, Da Capo Press (2004). ISBN 0-306-81338-6.
Urbanski, Dave. The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash. New York: Relevant Books. ISBN 0-9729276-7-0.
Turner, Steve. The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love, and Faith of an American Legend. Nashville, W Publishing Group, 2004. (The Authorized Biography).
Published works
Cash, Johnny. Man in Black: His Own Story in His Own Words. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975. ISBN 99924-31-58-X.
Cash, Johnny, with Patrick Carr. . New York: Harper Collins, 1997. ISBN 0-06-101357-9.
Cash, Johnny, with June Carter Cash. Love liner notes. New York: Sony, 2000.
Cash, Johnny, The Man in White, 1986.
External links
Johnny Cash Official Label Website
Johnny Cash Radio Webcast
Official Johnny Cash Lost Highway Artist Page
Johnny Cash at the Country Music Hall of Fame
Johnny Cash at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Johnny Cash at the Rockabilly Hall of Fame
Johnny Cash at the Hit Parade Hall of Fame
Larry King's November 26, 2002 interview With Johnny Cash on CNN
Johnny Cash: Best Photos – slideshow by Life magazine
Category:1932 births
Category:2003 deaths
Category:Actors from Arkansas
Category:American autobiographers
Category:American composers
Category:American country guitarists
Category:American country singers
Category:American country songwriters
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Category:American folk singers
Category:American male singers
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Category:American performers of Christian music
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Category:Charly Records artists
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Category:Country Music Hall of Fame inductees
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Category:Rockabilly Hall of Fame inductees
Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees
Category:American musicians of Scottish descent
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![007 #4: Thunderball - Official Trailer [1965]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110409030617im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ElyENM6i0xg/0.jpg "007 #4: Thunderball - Official Trailer [1965]")
