Johnny Cash

He was registered as J.R., initials and nothing more, because his parents could not settle on a name. In March 1935 the family moved to Dyess, a New Deal colony in northeast Arkansas built to put poor families on land they might one day own, and he picked cotton there from the age of five with gospel on the radio. In 1944 his brother Jack, 15, was cut almost in two by an unguarded table saw at work and died a week later, and Cash carried it for the rest of his life. He enlisted in the Air Force on July 7, 1950, spent most of four years in West Germany copying Soviet Morse traffic, and came home to Memphis and Sam Phillips.

Sun put out Hey, Porter and Cry! Cry! Cry! in 1955, then Folsom Prison Blues, then I Walk the Line, which reached number one on the country chart and the top 20 in pop. He was the first Sun artist to release an album. What followed is unusually wide for a country singer: gospel records, Bitter Tears in 1964 about the treatment of Native Americans, which many stations refused to play, the two live prison albums at Folsom in 1968 and San Quentin in 1969, two seasons of a network variety hour on ABC that closed with a gospel special, and then, from 1994, six spare albums made with Rick Rubin, the last of them recorded from a wheelchair.

In June 1965 his camper caught fire in Los Padres National Forest. It burned 508 acres, stripped three mountains, and drove 49 of the refuge's 53 California condors off. Cash blamed a defective exhaust. His nephew, who was there, said Cash lit a fire while high and lost hold of it. Asked in court why he did it, Cash said he had not, his truck had, and the truck was dead and could not be questioned. Of the condors he said he did not care about the damn yellow buzzards. The government sued and he settled. On October 4 that year El Paso narcotics officers opened his guitar case and found 688 Dexedrine capsules and 475 Equanil tablets. He drew a suspended sentence. He was jailed seven times and never held more than a night.

June died on May 15, 2003, after heart surgery. He told Rick Rubin to keep him working or he would die, recorded until August 21, and died at Baptist Hospital in Nashville at about two in the morning on September 12, of complications of diabetes. He is buried beside her at Hendersonville Memory Gardens. Barry Gibb bought their lake house in 2006 and it burned to the ground during renovation in April 2007. The halls of fame took him five times over, from songwriting in 1977 to Memphis music in 2013. What actually carried him to a new audience was the last thing he made: the Hurt video, a dying man singing a Nine Inch Nails song.

Johnny Cash's life against the full span of the corpus.

• I Walk the Line song
  Number one country and a top-20 pop crossover 1956
• Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian album
  Songs about the treatment of Native Americans. Many stations would not play it. 1964
• At Folsom Prison album
  Recorded live in front of the inmates 1968
• At San Quentin album
  Carried A Boy Named Sue to number one country and number two pop 1969
• The Johnny Cash Show television
  Two seasons on ABC, closing with a gospel special featuring Mahalia Jackson and Billy Graham 1969
• American IV: The Man Comes Around album
  The Rick Rubin record that carried Hurt 2002

• March 1935 aged 3 The family moves to the Dyess Colony in Arkansas He was three, and picking cotton by five.
• 1944 aged ~12 His brother Jack dies of table saw injuries at 15
• July 7, 1950 aged 18 Enlists in the Air Force He spent most of four years intercepting Soviet Morse in West Germany.
• August 7, 1954 aged 22 Marries Vivian Liberto They had met at a San Antonio roller rink in 1951 and divorced in 1966.
• 1955 aged ~23 Sun Records releases Hey, Porter and Cry! Cry! Cry!
• October 4, 1965 aged 33 Arrested in El Paso with 688 Dexedrine capsules in his guitar case Because they were prescription drugs he got a suspended sentence.
• March 1, 1968 aged 36 Marries June Carter
• July 1972 aged 40 Presses Nixon on prison reform in the Oval Office
• September 12, 2003 aged 71 Dies in Nashville, four months after June

• Elvis Presley 1935–1977
  The King of Rock and Roll whose music and style revolutionized American popular culture. labelmate at Sun Records
• Bob Dylan b. 1941
  Songwriter whose poetic lyrics transformed folk, rock, and the role of popular music in public life. defended and broadcast
• Billy Graham 1918–2018
  Evangelist whose mass crusades, media reach, and presidential relationships made him a defining figure in modern American Protestantism. closed his television show
• Richard Nixon 1913–1994
  37th President whose foreign policy achievements were overshadowed by the Watergate scandal. lobbied on prison reform
• Russell Means 1939–2012
  American Indian Movement leader whose occupations drove Native activism into national view. shared the cause of Bitter Tears