ArizonaRealCountry.com 37 June 2019 • Born Feb. 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas, Johnny Cash was born John R. Cash, the fourth of seven children of Ray and Carrie Rivers Cash. Apparently, Johnny’s parents were indecisive about what their child’s name should be. His mother’s maiden name was Rivers, and she stumped for that; his father’s name was Ray, and he held out for that. “J.R.” was a shortcut to avoid conflict. “J.R.” is the name on his high school diploma. • When John was 3 years old, his father took advantage of a new Roosevelt farm program and moved his young family to Dyess Colony in northeast Arkansas. There they farmed 20 acres of cotton and other seasonal crops, and young John worked alongside his parents and siblings in the fields. • Cash was extremely close to his elder brother Jack, who died after almost being cut into two when, at 15 years of age, he was pulled into a rotating head saw in the mill, in 1944. Cash remained in Dyess Colony until his graduation from high school in 1950. He then set off for Detroit and ended up in Pontiac, Michigan working in an automotive plant. • His tenure in the North Country was short-lived and he soon enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. The recruiter would not accept a candidate with a name comprised of initials, so J.R. became “John R. Cash.” He was allotted the job of a Morse code intercept operator. Just the Facts JOHNNY CASH several years would take the form of performing a song or writing the theme until he starred with Kirk Douglas in A Gunfight, a dark 1971 western about two aging gunfighters who sell tickets to a duel likely to result in their deaths. • Johnny Cash was well-known for his “outlaw” image based on his reputation as a hellion, particularly in the 60s, when he would smash up hotel rooms, drive his Jeep while hopped up on pills, and have brushes with the police. This period of his life reached a head when he was drummed off the Grand Ole Opry for dragging a mic stand across the footlights of the stage in a fit of temper, disrespecting the “mother church” of country music. Afterward, he ran his car into a utility pole, knocking out several of his teeth and breaking his nose. • In 1963, Cash recorded the song “(Love’s) Ring of Fire,” a song that Anita Carter released as a single a few months earlier. The song was co-written by June Carter, Anita’s sister, and singer-songwriter Merle Kilgore. Cash heard it, decided to add Mexican-style mariachi horns to his arrangement, and released his own version of the song. It was an immediate hit, reaching #1 on the country chart and staying there for seven consecutive weeks. • His career began to spiral downwards when he began to drink excessively. He had a number of affairs, became a chronic alcoholic and a drug addict which finally ended his marriage with his first wife. He filed for divorce in 1966. • Cash and June Carter met in 1956 backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, a weekly country music show in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time, Cash was married to his first wife. Nevertheless, the attraction between them was undeniable. Recalling their first encounter, Cash stated that he knew from the very beginning that they were meant to be together and that he was so infatuated by June that he just let her “steal his heart.” • During their several years of dating and working together, Cash proposed numerous times before she finally said “yes.” She accepted his proposal at a live performance in London, in front of 7,000 fans. They married in Franklin, Kentucky on March 1, 1968, and in 1970 their only child, John Carter Cash, was born. • Cash began a decades-long re-examination of his life and re-dedication to his Christian roots once he married June. This culminated in two and a half years of study in the late- 70s, after which he received a degree in theology and became a minister. He presided at the wedding of his daughter Karen. • Johnny Cash’s most popular and best-selling albums were the live albums he recorded in prisons: namely, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison in 1968 and Johnny Cash at San Quentin in 1969. Throughout his career, he performed in prisons, sympathetic to the plight of inmates who ran afoul of society. Although he himself never spent any great length of time in jail, he was arrested seven times and spent a few nights in jail. • Originally, Johnny Cash wore black on stage because he and his backing musicians, the Tennessee Two, wanted to have matching outfits and the thing they had in common was a black shirt. Cash would often wear a white shirt with a sport coat in appearances and in photos. Sometimes he would even wear an entire suit of white. Album covers show him in stripes, plenty of blue denim, and even a grey shirt with a flower design. • In the 70s and 80s, he appeared in a few TV movies and as a guest star on TV shows like Columbo and Little House on the Prairie. His most significant TV achievement was The Johnny Cash Show, a TV variety show that ran for two seasons from 1969-1971 on ABC and featured guests like Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Rogers, and Joni Mitchell. Along with Glen Campbell’s similar program that ran during the same period, Cash’s show brought country music to a mainstream audience for the first time. • In 1973, he released the double album, The Gospel Road. He also wrote two autobiographies, Man in Black (1975) and Cash: The Autobiography (1997), which he penned in longhand on lined notebook paper. • In the 80s, he toured with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson, recording three hit albums with the group. The first, titled, Highwaymen was released in 1985. • In 1986, he quit Columbia Records and reunited with Sun Studios in Memphis and created the album, Class of 55. The same year, he authored his only novel, Man in White. • Highwaymen 2 was released in 1990. Four years later, he recorded his album, American Recordings, which is largely considered one of his greatest works. The Highwaymen- The Road Goes on Forever, was released in 1995. The following year, he released the album, Unchained, which went on to become one of his last hit albums. • In 1997, he wrote the second installment of his autobiography series titled, Cash: The Autobiography, which covered details of his life that were not mentioned in the former publication. • In 2000, he released American III: Solitary Man. One of his more somber albums American IV: The Man Comes Around was released two years later and received popular acclaim. • He won 19 Grammy Awards, including posthumous awards. In 1969, he was presented the Country Music Association Award for Entertainer of the Year. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in 1980. He won the Academy of Country Music Award for Single of the Year for “Highwayman” in 1985. In 1988, he was presented the Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award. • In 1992, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1999, he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2003, he won the Americana Music Association Award for Album of the Year for American IV: The Man Comes Around. In 2011, he was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, posthumously. • There is a street in Hendersonville, Tennessee, named after him and the Johnny Cash Museum is also located in the same place. • He was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome in his final years. In 1998, he was hospitalized for severe pneumonia which affected his lungs. • He passed away on September 12, 2003, due to problems arising from diabetes. His condition worsened towards the end because he was shattered after his wife’s death, who died four months before him. He was interred next to her in Hendersonville. • In 2013, a limited edition Forever stamp depicting a picture of him was released in his honor. • Johnny Cash wasn’t just a songwriter. He was a writer, plain and simple, writing sketches and poems as a child, stories as a teenager, and continuing to write even after joining the Air Force. In fact, his first published piece, called “Hey Porter,” appeared in Stars and Stripes, during his Air Force hitch. He was nobly discharged from service on July 3, 1954, as Staff Sergeant and he went back to Texas. He married Vivian Liberto and they had four daughters - Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara. • After his marriage, he got together with a few mechanics and formed a group called “Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two.” They approached Sun Records studio to record their gospel music, but Sam Phillips, the record producer asked them to come up with non-gospel music because he believed that the market for that genre was very limited. Cash finally convinced Philips which resulted in the release of the songs, “Hey, Porter” and “Cry! Cry! Cry!” in 1955. Other hits followed including, “Folsom Prison Blues” and “So Doggone Lonesome.” • He tasted true fame with his song “I Walk the Line” which became an instant success on music charts, in 1956. The following year, Cash became the first artist to record a long-playing album and became one of the highest-selling artists with Sun Records. • In 1958, he signed a profitable deal with Columbia Records, where his single, “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” peaked on all major music charts. • In the late 50s, he moved out to California as he had notions of following his friend Elvis Presley’s lead and making the move into motion pictures. This aspect of his career never took off in a big way. • His first appearance was in TV Civil War drama The Rebel in 1959. His first film was the low-budget crime drama Five Minutes to Live, in which he played the role of a criminal who holds a bank president’s wife hostage. The film was not a success, and Cash’s movie involvement for After basic training in Texas, he was shipped to Landsberg, Germany. His guitar, purchased in Öberammergau, cost about the same amount he’d won in a talent show years before. Soon, he was playing with a bunch of like-minded servicemen in a ragtag band branded the Landsberg Barbarians. He began to write songs, too, including the first version of his first big hit, “Folsom Prison Blues.” Musical Icons: Johnny Cash and June Carter Musical Instrument Museum: June 22-23, 2019 9am–5pm Commemorate the lives and legacies of Johnny Cash and June Carter. In honor of June Carter’s 90th birthday, come and listen to Curator Talks, enjoy film screenings, and discover more about these two American musical icons.