The Man in Black, and me
Posted: Tuesday, September 26, 2006
by David Tanguay
Born in Kingsland, Arkansas, February 26, 1932 and raised in Dyess, Arkansas. By age, five he was working in the cotton fields, singing along with his family as they worked. The family farm was flooded on at least one occasion, which later inspired him to write the song "five feet high and rising" his older brother Jack died in a tragic on-the-job accident, working a high school shop table saw, in 1944.His family's economic and personal struggles during the depression shaped him and inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing personal struggles."Before I give reference to the " and me" in my title, let me give a brief biography of the great Johnny Cash."
Early life
Johnny Cash at 16 years old (High school photo) ‘1948
He enlisted as a radio operator in the United States Air Force. After basic training at Lakeland Air Force Base and tech training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Cash was sent to a U.S. Air Force Security unit at Landsberg Air Base, Germany. There he founded his first band, the Landsberg Barbarians.
Early career
After his term of service ended, Cash married Vivian Liberto, whom he met while training at Brooks. In 1954, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he sold appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to garner a recording contract. After auditioning for Sam Phillips, singing mainly gospel tunes, Phillips told him to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell." Cash eventually won over Phillips with new songs delivered in his early frenetic style. His first recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and "Cry Cry Cry" were released in 1955 and met with reasonable success on the country hit parade.
Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues," made the country top 5, and "I Walk The Line" was no. 1 on the country charts, making it into the pop charts Top 20. In 1957, Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. Being very successful at Sun Records, he left the label to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records, where his single "Don't Take Your Guns To Town" would become one of his biggest hits.
Cash had four daughters with his wife, as he was constantly touring their relationship began to sour, eventually ending in divorce. It was during one of these tours that he met June Carter, whom he would later marry in 1968.
Drug addiction
As his career was taking off in the early 1960s, cash began drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates. For a brief time, Cash shared an apartment with Waylon Jennings, himself heavily addicted to amphetamines.
Although in many ways spiraling out of control, his frenetic creativity was still delivering hits. (Now comes the clarification of "and me" in my title) at the age of 15 in 1964 while on summer vacation from school I had a seasonal job cutting grass at St. Hyacinth Catholic Cemetery. Although the minimum wage was $1.25 an hour back then. The church didn't have to comply with the state law, so here I was working for .50 cents an hour, and I worked hard, not only cutting grass, but also digging graves by hand. However being young, I didn't mind the hard work and low wages, or just didn't know any better.
This is when his song "Ring Of Fire" was his major 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 and originally performed by Carter's sister, but the signature mariachi-style horn arrangement was provided by Cash, who says it came to him in a dream, The song describes the personal hell Carter went through as she wrestled with her forbidden love for Cash (they were both married to other people at the time) and as she dealt with Cash's personal "ring of fire" (drug dependency and alcoholism).
A big fan
This song attracted me to Johnny Cash I would find myself singing the song as I cut grass. When I left school at the age of 16, my first full time job was at a phonograph record distributing company.our business was selling and shipping phonograph records to major stores in cities all over the state. This is how I was able to obtain every record Johnny Cash ever recorded. As a teenager in the '60s, most of my peers were fans of the Beetles, Elvis, and other Rock bans of that time. A lot of my generation never even heard of Johnny Cash. (Or perhaps the name was familiar but not too many of his songs.)
After work, I would find myself in my room singing along with Johnny Cash songs from records I played on my record player. His songs reflected a lot on the history of America and dealt with a great deal of injustices in our system. He was also recognized for having a great compassion for the prisoner. Although he, himself, never spending more than a night in jail, when he sang to prisoners at Folsom Prison, or San Quentin, they could feel every word he was singing; as if he had spent, years looked up behind bars.
Being from a hard working family I really got into the way he sang songs such as "Born To Be a Roughneck" also "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer" there was a way about his style of singing that kept me in kind of a world of my own. I suppose you could say it was a way of escaping the real world which seemed to be rushing by outside back then.
In 1967, I enlisted in the Marine Corp where I was sent to Vietnam and wouldn't you know it the first base I made contact with over there was called "The Rock Pile" so I found myself singing one of his big hits " On this old rock pile" quite fitting . Since I had a 13-month tour ahead of me, and as the song shifts to the lyrics "I got to do my time", one would think the song was written just for the occasion.
The youth movement
Released from the military in ‘69 I went to work however remained a fan listening too many of his old songs. However, in the late '60s the young had a lot to say. I had never done drugs up until the early ‘70s, however I could seem to understand why the young people were doing drugs at that time. I didn't particularly care for Merle Haggard's hit song "Okie From Muskogee" that negatively portrayed youthful drug users and war protesters. (Although myself being a Vietnam war veteran)
Invited to perform at the White House
During the Nixon administration, Cash was invited to perform at the White House. Nixon's office requested that he played "Okie From Muskogee" Cash declined to play the song instead played a song he wrote titled "What Is Truth" which was a song, which brought a lot of clarification for the rebellious behavior of the young in those days. He was supportive of and believing in the youth. Another quality I admired about Johnny Cash was "he told it like it was"
Sickness and death
In 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome, a diagnosis that was later altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. His illness forced Cash to curtail his touring. He was hospitalized in 1998 with severe pneumonia, which damaged his lungs.
June Carter Cash died of complications following heart valve replacement surgery 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. (The July 5, 2003 concert was his final appearance).
Less than four months after his wife's death, Johnny Cash died at the age of 71 due to complications from diabetes, which resulted in respiratory failure, while hospitalized in Nashville, Tennessee. He was interred with his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
(Last photo of Johnny and June Carter Cash taken at their home in 2002)
Legacy
From his early days as a pioneer of rockabilly and rock and role in the 1950s, to his decades as an international representative of country music, to his resurgence to fame as both a living legend and an alternative country icon in the 1990s, Cash has influenced countless artists and left a body of work matched only by the greatest artist of his time. Upon his death, Cash was revered by many of the greatest popular musicians of his time.
But he was also valued outside his genre. According to the (extensive) liner notes for Unearthed:
Cash to his amusement had declared "The Godfather of Gangster Rap." Bob Johnston, Johnny's old friend and legendary producer who also came by to visit. Recalls "one of the rap guys telling me, ‘You're talking about us being bad? I grew up on Johnny Cash singing ‘I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die!'''Cash nurtured and defended artist 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 in 1999, a diverse group of artist paid him tribute, including Bob Dylan, Chris Isaak, Wyclef Jean, Norah Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and U2.
In total he wrote over a thousand songs and released dozens of albums, a box set, titled Unearth, was issued posthumously. It included four Cds of unreleased material recorded with Rubin, as well as a "Best of Cash on American" retrospective CD.
List of accomplishmentsCash received multiple Country Music Awards, Grammies, 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, despite his distaste for the Nashville mainstream. Cash was a musician who was not tied down to a single genre. He recorded songs that could be considered rock and role, blues, rockabilly, folk and gospel, and exerted an influence on each of the genres. moreover, he had a unique distinction among country artist of having "crossed over" late in his career to become popular with an unexpected demographic, young indie and alternative rock fans. His diversity was evidenced by his 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 ten performers are in both the last two, and only Hank Williams Sr. and
Jimmy Rogers share the honor with Cash of being in all three. His pioneering contribution to the genre has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of fame.
"President George W. Bush congratulates Cash at DAR" (Daughters of the American Revolution) Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, where Cash was awarded the National Medal of Arts on April 22,2002
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Super article I know more about Johnny Cash than I ever thought I did.The Man In Black was truly A MAN OF HONOR --One OF YOUR READERS FROM MAINE.Please log in to respond to this comment.Well Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous, thanks for your comment. Some people may dissagree about old Johnny as being a man of honor. But to his loyal fans he was all that and more.Please log in to respond to this comment.
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