Johnny Cash

Born on 26th February 1932 in Arkansas, the guitarist, singer and songwriter Johnny Cash is one of the true legends of country music, a performer whose popularity transcends the boundaries of that art-form. Born into a cotton-farming family during the Great Depression, Cash moved to Detroit in 1950 where he worked in a car factory sweeping floors and then served with the US airforce in Germany. He started writing songs and playing guitar around that time.

After his discharge he signed to Sun Records in Memphis in 1955 during the rockabilly craze. The Sun roster also featured Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. Cash’s earliest country hits included ‘Cry, Cry, Cry’ and ‘Folsom Prison Blues’. ‘I Walk The Line’ brought him his first major entry into the pop chart in 1956. The distinctive combination of the Sun studio, Cash’s sepulchral tones and the simple backing of the Tennessee Two made his recordings stand out.

The ’57 album Hot And Blue Guitar really captured Cash’s primitive artistry. Improvising in the studio, Cash joined Lewis, Perkins and Presley on some familiar gospel songs, a recording later bootlegged as The Million Dollar Quartet. After augmenting his back-up band to The Tennessee Three he scored with his version of ‘Ballad Of A Teenage Queen’, his first country no. 1, followed by another number one with ‘Guess Things Happen That Way’ in ’58.

Over the next 25 years Cash enjoyed 58 top 40 country hits and 11 pop hits. His country chart number ones also included ‘Don’t Take Your Guns To Town’ (’59), ‘Ring Of Fire’ (’63), ‘Understand Your Man’ (’64), a re-recording of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘Daddy Sang Bass’ (both ’68), ‘A Boy Named Sue’ (’69), ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ and ‘Flesh And Blood’ (both ’70). Most of them also made the pop charts, ‘A Boy Named Sue’ actually going to number two.

By the early sixties Cash was so popular he was playing 300 gigs a year while depending on stimulants to keep him going. He had signed to the Columbia label in ’58 as the Sun label declined, but he had country hits on both labels through 1958-61. In fact, re-issues from the Sun vaults made the country charts at the end of the decade. Concept LPs were equally successful, including Ride This Train, a history of the USA in train songs. Bitter Tears in ’64 was based on ballads of the American Indian. 1965’s True West and From Sea To Shining Sea in ’68 also fared well.

Trains And Rivers was compiled in 1971 by Sun. Cash’s collaboration with Bob Dylan led to a country chart top five hit with ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ in 1964. In turn, Cash duetted on ‘Girl From The North Country’ on Dylan’s Nashville Skyline and penned the album sleeve-note.

Cash also took time off to encourage other budding songwriters including Kris Kristofferson, John Prine and Rodney Crowell. His marriage to fellow performer June Carter in 1968 had, helped him to kick his drug addiction. Duets with his wife resulted in five country chart hits, including. ‘Jackson’ and ‘If I Were A Carpenter’ and the couple also had a popular television series during the late sixties and early seventies.

The live album Johnny Cash At San Quentin from ’69 was also a television documentary, with a, literally, captive audience. It included ‘Wanted’, ‘San Quentin’ and his biggest hit ‘A Boy Named Sue’. He picked up the nickname ‘The Man In Black’ after his 1971 county hit and he continued to tour heavily. He collected countless Grammy awards, was elected into the prestigious Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and starred in the film A Gunfight in 1970.

And the hit singles continued with ‘A Thing Called Love’ in 1972 and ‘One Piece At A Time’ in 1976. His acting career continued with the television movie The Baron And The Kid in 1984. The 1983 album Johnny 99 included a brace of Bruce Springsteen songs from the Nebraska album, the title song and ‘Highway Patrolman’. Cash also continued to guest on recordings by other artists, including Emmylou Harris, and Paul Kennerley’s concept album The Legend Of Jesse James in 1980.,

Cash rejoined Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins to record the Survivors album in 1981, their first recording together in over twenty years. In 1985 they reunited the ‘million-dollar quartet’ with Roy Orbison on the album Class Of ’55 recorded at the old Sun Studio.

Cash recorded The Highwayman album in ’85 with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, scoring a number one country hit with the title track. The album Heroes in 1986, with Waylon Jennings, included their version of Bob Dylan’s ‘One Too Many Mornings’, but then Columbia Records dropped him from their roster after 28 years. As fellow country star Dwight Yoakum put it, ‘He paid for their Nashville building’.

By now his recorded output had far exceeded 100 albums, covering songs from such diverse sources as Gospel music and The Rolling Stones.

Cash moved to another label and has since recorded some admirable albums, but 1992 brought a remarkable Sony triple-CD compilation of 75 songs, including 15 of the legendary Sun tracks.

Called The Essential Johnny Cash (1955-1983), the Sony collection not only contains many of the above-mentioned hits, but a veritable treasure trove of country-pop classics such as ‘I Walk The Line’, ‘I Still Miss Someone’, ‘Orange Blossom Special’, ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’, ‘Ghost Riders In The Sky’, ‘Ring Of Fire’ and ‘Don’t Take Your Guns To Town’.

But a single-CD compilation, appropriately called The Man In Black, and sub-titled The Definitive Collection, was released in 1994 containing 24 tracks on one compact disc, from ‘Ring Of Fire’ to the title track. Its success is proof that The Man In Black is still casting his long shadow over the music scene.