Johnny Cash
| |
|---|---|
Cash in 1970
| |
| Born |
J. R. Cash
February 26, 1932
Kingsland, Arkansas, U.S.
|
| Died | September 12, 2003 (aged 71)
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
|
| Resting place | Hendersonville Memory Gardens, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Occupation |
|
| Years active | 1954–2003 |
| Spouse(s) |
Vivian Liberto
(m. 1954; div. 1966)
June Carter
(m. 1968; died 2003) |
| Children | 5, including Rosanne and John Carter |
| Relatives | Tommy Cash (brother) |
| Musical career | |
| Genres | |
| Instruments |
|
| Labels | |
| Associated acts | |
| Website | johnnycash |
John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and author. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 90 million records worldwide. His genre-spanning songs and sound embraced country, rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal won Cash the rare honor of being inducted into the Country Music, Rock and Roll, and Gospel Music Halls of Fame.
Born in Arkansas to poor cotton farmers, Cash rose to fame in the prominent country music scene in Memphis, Tennessee, after four years in the United States Air Force. Cash was known for his deep, calm bass-baritone voice, the distinctive sound of his Tennessee Three backing band characterized by train-like chugging guitar rhythms, a rebelliousness coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor, free prison concerts, and a trademark, all-black stage wardrobe, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black". He traditionally began his concerts by simply introducing himself, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash," followed by his signature song "Folsom Prison Blues".
Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his career. His signature songs include "Folsom Prison Blues", "I Walk the Line", "Ring of Fire", "Get Rhythm", and "Man in Black". He also recorded humorous numbers like "One Piece at a Time" and "A Boy Named Sue"; a duet with his future wife, June Carter, called "Jackson" (followed by many further duets after their wedding); and railroad songs including "Hey, Porter", "Orange Blossom Special", and "Rock Island Line". During the last stage of his career, Cash covered songs by several late-20th-century rock artists, notably "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails, "Rusty Cage" by Soundgarden and "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode.
Early life
Cash's boyhood home
in Dyess, Arkansas, where he lived from the age of three in 1935 until
he finished high school in 1950. The property, pictured here in 2013, is
listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Johnny Cash was born on February 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas, to Carrie Cloveree (née
Rivers) and Ray Cash. He was the fourth of seven children, who were in
birth order: Roy, Margaret Louise, Jack, J. R., Reba, Joanne, and Tommy (who also became a successful country artist). He was primarily of English and Scottish descent; Cash's paternal grandmother also claimed Cherokee ancestry. As an adult he traced his surname to 11th-century Fife, after meeting with the then-laird of Falkland, Major Michael Crichton-Stuart. Cash Loch and other locations in Fife bear the name of his family. He is a distant cousin of British Conservative politician Sir William Cash.
At birth, Cash was named J. R. Cash. His mother wanted to name
him John and his father preferred to name him Ray; J.R. ended up being
the only compromise they could agree on. When he enlisted in the United States Air Force, he was not permitted to use initials as a first name, so he changed it to John R. Cash. In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he started using the name Johnny Cash.
In March 1935, when Cash was three years old, the family settled in Dyess, Arkansas, a New Deal colony established to give poor families the opportunity to work land that they may later own. From the age of five, Cash worked in cotton fields
with his family, singing with them as they worked. The Cash farm in
Dyess experienced a flood, which led Cash later to write the song "Five Feet High and Rising". His family's economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression
inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing
similar difficulties. Consequently, Cash had sympathy for the poor and working class throughout his life.
On Saturday, May 13, 1944,
Cash's older brother Jack, with whom he was close, was seriously
injured in an accident at his job in a high school. He was pulled into
an unguarded table saw while cutting oak into fence posts, and was almost cut in two. He died from his injuries a week later. Cash often spoke of the guilt he felt over this incident; according to Cash: The Autobiography,
his father was away that morning, but Johnny, his mother, and even Jack
himself, all had premonitions or a sense of foreboding about that day.
His mother urged Jack to skip work and go fishing with his brother, but
he insisted on working as the family needed the money. On his deathbed,
Jack said he had visions of heaven and angels. Decades later, Cash spoke
of looking forward to meeting his brother in heaven.
Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music
and radio. Taught guitar by his mother and a childhood friend, Cash
began playing and writing songs at the age of 12. When young, Cash had a
high-tenor voice, before becoming a bass-baritone after his voice changed.
In high school, he sang on a local radio station. Decades later, he released an album of traditional gospel songs, called My Mother's Hymn Book. He was also significantly influenced by traditional Irish music, which he heard performed weekly by Dennis Day on the Jack Benny radio program.
Military service
Cash enlisted in the United States Air Force on July 7, 1950. After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Texas, Cash was assigned to the 12th Radio Squadron Mobile of the U.S. Air Force Security Service at Landsberg, West Germany. He worked as a Morse code operator intercepting Soviet Army transmissions. While at Landsberg he created his first band, "The Landsberg Barbarians". On March 3, 1953, he received a telegraph noting that Soviet Premier Stalin had died making him the first westerner to be aware of the death. On July 3, 1954, he was honorably discharged as a staff sergeant, and he returned to Texas. During his military service, he acquired a distinctive scar on the right side of his jaw as a result of surgery to remove a cyst.
Career
Early career
.jpg)
Publicity photo for Sun Records, 1955
In 1954, Cash and Vivian moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he had sold appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. At night, he played with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. Perkins and Grant were known as the Tennessee Two. Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to get a recording contract. He auditioned for Sam Phillips
by singing mostly gospel songs, only to learn from the producer that he
no longer recorded gospel music. Phillips was rumored to have told
Cash to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell",
although in a 2002 interview, Cash denied that Phillips made any such
comment.
Cash eventually won over the producer with new songs delivered in his
early rockabilly style. In 1955, Cash made his first recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and "Cry! Cry! Cry!", which were released in late June and met with success on the country hit parade.
On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on Phillips while Carl Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks, with Jerry Lee Lewis backing him on piano. Cash was also in the studio, and the four started an impromptu jam session.
Phillips left the tapes running and the recordings, almost half of
which were gospel songs, survived. They have since been released under
the title Million Dollar Quartet. In Cash: the Autobiography, Cash wrote that he was the farthest from the microphone and sang in a higher pitch to blend in with Elvis.
Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues", made the country top five. His "I Walk the Line" became number one on the country charts and entered the pop charts top 20. "Home of the Blues" followed, recorded in July 1957. That same year, Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album.
Although he was Sun's most consistently selling and prolific artist at
that time, Cash felt constrained by his contract with the small label.
Phillips did not want Cash to record gospel, and was paying him a 3%
royalty rather than the standard rate of 5%. Presley had already left
Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on
Lewis.
In 1958, Cash left Phillips to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records. His single "Don't Take Your Guns to Town"
became one of his biggest hits, and he recorded a collection of gospel
songs for his second album for Columbia. However, Cash left behind a
sufficient backlog of recordings with Sun that Phillips continued to
release new singles and albums from them, featuring previously
unreleased material until as late as 1964. Cash was in the unusual
position of having new releases out on two labels concurrently. Sun's
1960 release, a cover of "Oh Lonesome Me", made it to number 13 on the C&W charts.
(When RCA Victor
signed Presley, it also bought his Sun Records masters, but when Cash
departed for Columbia, Phillips retained the rights to the singer's Sun
masters. Columbia eventually licensed some of these recordings for
release on compilations after Cash's death.)
The Tennessee Three with Cash in 1963
Early in his career, Cash was given the teasing nickname "the
Undertaker" by fellow artists because of his habit of wearing black
clothes. He said he chose them because they were easier to keep looking
clean on long tours.
In the early 1960s, Cash toured with the Carter Family, which by this time regularly included Mother Maybelle's daughters, Anita, June, and Helen. June later recalled admiring him from afar during these tours. In the 1960s, he appeared on Pete Seeger's short-lived television series Rainbow Quest. He also acted in, and wrote and sang the opening theme for, a 1961 film entitled Five Minutes to Live, later re-released as Door-to-door Maniac.
Cash's career was handled by Saul Holiff, a London, Ontario,
promoter. Their relationship was the subject of Saul's son's biopic My Father and the Man in Black.
Outlaw image
As his career was taking off in the late 1950s, Cash started drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates. For a brief time, he shared an apartment in Nashville with Waylon Jennings,
who was deeply addicted to amphetamines. Cash used the stimulants to
stay awake during tours. Friends joked about his "nervousness" and
erratic behavior, many ignoring the warning signs of his worsening drug addiction.
Although he was in many ways spiraling out of control, Cash could
still deliver hits due to his frenetic creativity. His rendition of "Ring of Fire" was a crossover
hit, reaching number one on the country charts and entering the top 20
on the pop charts. It was originally performed by June's sister, but the
signature mariachi-style horn arrangement was provided by Cash.
He said that it had come to him in a dream. Vivian Liberto claimed a
different version of the origins of "Ring of Fire". In her book, I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny, Liberto says that Cash gave Carter half the songwriting credit for monetary reasons.
In June 1965, Cash's camper caught fire during a fishing trip with his nephew Damon Fielder in Los Padres National Forest in California, triggering a forest fire that burned several hundred acres and nearly caused his death.
Cash claimed that the fire was caused by sparks from a defective
exhaust system on his camper, but Fielder thinks that Cash started a
fire to stay warm and in his drugged condition failed to notice the fire
getting out of control. When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it."
The fire destroyed 508 acres (206 ha), burned the foliage off three mountains and drove off 49 of the refuge's 53 endangered California condors. Cash was unrepentant and claimed, "I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards." The federal government sued him and was awarded $125,172. Cash eventually settled the case and paid $82,001. As of 2017 there are 463 California condors living wild or in captivity.
Although Cash cultivated a romantic outlaw image, he never served a prison sentence. Despite landing in jail seven times for misdemeanors, he stayed only one night on each stay. On May 11, 1965, he was arrested in Starkville, Mississippi, for trespassing
late at night onto private property to pick flowers. (He used this to
write the song "Starkville City Jail", which he discussed on his live At San Quentin album.) While on tour that year, he was arrested October 4 in El Paso, Texas, by a narcotics squad. The officers suspected he was smuggling heroin from Mexico, but found instead 688 Dexedrine capsules (amphetamines) and 475 Equanil
(sedatives or tranquilizers) tablets that the singer had hidden inside
his guitar case. Because the pills were prescription drugs rather than
illegal narcotics, he received a suspended sentence. Cash posted a $1,500 bond and then was released until his arraignment.
In this period of the mid-1960s, Cash released a number of concept albums. His Bitter Tears
(1964) was devoted to spoken word and songs addressing the plight of
Native Americans and mistreatment by the government. While initially
reaching charts, this album met with resistance from some fans and radio
stations, which rejected its controversial take on social issues. In
2011, a book was published about it, leading to a re-recording of the
songs by contemporary artists and the making of a documentary film about
Cash's efforts with the album. This film was aired on PBS in February
and November 2016. His Sings the Ballads of the True West (1965) was an experimental double record, mixing authentic frontier songs with Cash's spoken narration.
Reaching a low with his severe drug addiction and destructive
behavior, Cash was divorced from his first wife and had performances
cancelled, but he continued to find success. In 1967, Cash's duet with
June Carter, "Jackson," won a Grammy Award.
Cash was last arrested in 1967 in Walker County, Georgia,
after police found he was carrying a bag of prescription pills and was
in a car accident. Cash attempted to bribe a local deputy, who turned
the money down. The singer was jailed for the night in LaFayette, Georgia.
Sheriff Ralph Jones released him after giving him a long talk, warning
him about the danger of his behavior and wasted potential. Cash credited
that experience with helping him turn around and save his life. He
later returned to LaFayette to play a benefit concert; it attracted
12,000 people (the city population was less than 9,000 at the time) and
raised $75,000 for the high school.
Reflecting on his past in a 1997 interview, Cash noted: "I was taking
the pills for awhile, and then the pills started taking me."
There is an unconfirmed story that in early 1967, Cash had a spiritual epiphany in the Nickajack Cave.
The story says that Cash had attempted to commit suicide while under
the heavy influence of drugs. He descended deep into the cave, trying to
lose himself and "just die", but passed out on the floor. Utterly
discouraged, he felt God's presence in his heart and struggled out of
the cave (despite exhaustion) by following a faint light and slight
breeze.
To him, the incident represented his rebirth. June, Maybelle, and Ezra
Carter moved into Cash's mansion for a month to help him get off drugs.
Cash proposed onstage to June on February 22, 1968, at a concert at the London Gardens
in London, Ontario, Canada. The couple married a week later (on March
1) in Franklin, Kentucky. She had agreed to marry Cash after he had
"cleaned up."
Cash's journey included rediscovery of his Christian faith. He took an "altar call"
in Evangel Temple, a small church in the Nashville area, pastored by
Reverend Jimmie Rodgers Snow, son of country music legend Hank Snow.
According to Marshall Grant, though, Cash did not completely stop using
amphetamines in 1968. Cash did not end all drug use until 1970,
staying drug-free for a period of seven years. Grant claims that the
birth of Cash's son, John Carter Cash, inspired Cash to end his
dependence.
Cash began using amphetamines again in 1977. By 1983, he was deeply addicted again and became a patient at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage
for treatment. He stayed off drugs for several years, but relapsed. By
1989, he was dependent and entered Nashville's Cumberland Heights
Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center. In 1992, he started care at the Loma
Linda Behavioral Medicine Center in Loma Linda, California, for his final rehabilitation treatment. (Several months later, his son followed him into this facility for treatment).
Folsom and other prison concerts
Cash began performing concerts at prisons in the late 1950s. He
played his first famous prison concert on January 1, 1958, at San
Quentin State Prison. These performances led to a pair of highly successful live albums, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) and Johnny Cash at San Quentin (1969). Both live albums reached number one on Billboard country album music and the latter crossed over to reach the top of the Billboard pop album chart. In 1969, Cash became an international hit when he eclipsed even The Beatles by selling 6.5 million albums. In comparison, the prison concerts were much more successful than his later live albums such as Strawberry Cake recorded in London and Live at Madison Square Garden, which peaked at numbers 33 and 39 on the album charts, respectively.
The Folsom Prison record was introduced by a rendition of his "Folsom Prison Blues" while the San Quentin record included the crossover hit single "A Boy Named Sue", a Shel Silverstein-penned novelty song that reached number one on the country charts and number two on the U.S. top-10
pop charts. The AM versions of the latter contained profanities which
were edited out of the aired version. The modern CD versions are
unedited, thus making them longer than on the original vinyl albums,
though they retain the audience-reaction overdubs of the originals.
Cash performed at the Österåker Prison in Sweden in 1972. The live album På Österåker (At Österåker) was released in 1973. "San Quentin" was recorded with Cash replacing "San Quentin" with "Österåker". In 1976, a concert at Tennessee State Prison was videotaped for TV broadcast, and received a belated CD release after Cash's death as A Concert Behind Prison Walls.
Activism for Native Americans
In 1965, Cash and June Carter appeared on Pete Seeger's TV show, Rainbow Quest, on which Cash explained his start as an activist for Native Americans:
- In '57, I wrote a song called 'Old Apache Squaw' and then forgot the so-called Indian protest for a while, but nobody else seemed to speak up with any volume of voice.
Columbia, the label for which Cash was recording then, was opposed to
putting the song on his next album, considering it "too radical for the
public".
Cash singing songs of Indian tragedy and settler violence went
radically against the mainstream of country music in the 1950s, which
was dominated by the image of the righteous cowboy who simply makes the
native's soil his own.
In 1964, coming off the chart success of his previous album "I Walk The Line", he recorded the aforementioned album Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian.
We're Still Here: Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears Revisited, a documentary by Antonino D'Ambrosio (author of A Heartland and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears)
tells the story of Johnny Cash's controversial concept album "Bitter
Tears: Ballads of the American Indian", covering the struggles of Native
Americans. The film's DVD was released on August 21, 2018.
The album featured stories of a multitude of native peoples,
mostly of their violent oppression by white settlers: The Pima ("The
Ballad of Ira Hayes"), Navajo ("Navajo"), Apache ("Apache Tears"),
Lakota ("Big Foot"), Seneca ("As Long as the Grass Shall Grow"), and
Cherokee ("Talking Leaves"). Cash wrote three of the songs himself and
one with the help of Johnny Horton, but the majority of the protest songs were written by folk artist Peter La Farge (son of activist and Pulitzer prizewinner Oliver La Farge), whom Cash met in New York in the 1960s and whom he admired for his activism. The album's single, "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" (about Ira Hayes,
one of the six to raise the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima), was neglected by
nonpolitical radio at the time, and the record label denied it any
promotion due to its provocative protesting and "unappealing" nature. Cash faced resistance and was even urged by an editor of a country music magazine to leave the Country Music Association: "You and your crowd are just too intelligent to associate with plain country folks, country artists, and country DJs."
In reaction, on August 22, 1964, the singer posted a letter as an advertisement in Billboard,
calling the record industry cowardly. "D.J.s – station managers –
owners ... where are your guts?" he demands. "I had to fight back when I
realized that so many stations are afraid of Ira Hayes. Just one
question: WHY???" He concludes the letter, "Ira Hayes is strong
medicine ... So is Rochester, Harlem, Birmingham and Vietnam."
Cash kept promoting the song himself and used his influence on radio
disc jockeys he knew eventually to make the song climb to number three
on the country charts, while the album rose to number two on the album charts.
Cash in 1969
Later, on The Johnny Cash Show, he continued telling stories of Native-American plight, both in song and through short films, such as the history of the Trail of Tears.
In 1966, in response to his activism, the singer was adopted by the Seneca Nation's Turtle Clan. He performed benefits in 1968 at the Rosebud Reservation, close to the historical landmark of the massacre at Wounded Knee, to raise money to help build a school. He also played at the D-Q University in the 1980s.
Johnny Cash used his stardom and economic status to bring awareness to the issues surrounding the Native American people.
Cash sang songs about indigenous humanity in an effort to confront the
U.S. government. Many non-Native Americans stayed away from singing
about these things.
In 1970, Cash recorded a reading of John G. Burnett's 1890 80th-birthday essay on Cherokee removal for the Historical Landmarks Association (Nashville).
The Johnny Cash Show 1969–71
From June 1969 to March 1971, Cash starred in his own television show, The Johnny Cash Show, on the ABC network. Produced by Screen Gems, the show was performed at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The Statler Brothers
opened for him in every episode; the Carter Family and rockabilly
legend Carl Perkins were also part of the regular show entourage. Cash
also enjoyed booking mainstream performers as guests; including Linda Ronstadt in her first TV appearance, Neil Young, Louis Armstrong, Neil Diamond, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition (who appeared four times), James Taylor, Ray Charles, Roger Miller, Roy Orbison, Derek and the Dominos, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan.
From September 15–18, 1969, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he performed a series of four concerts at the New Mexico State Fair to promote the first season of The Johnny Cash Show. These live shows were produced with help from ABC and local concert producer Bennie Sanchez, during these sets Johnny Cash and Al Hurricane performed together. Also during The Johnny Cash Show era, he contributed the title song and other songs to the film Little Fauss and Big Halsey, which starred Robert Redford, Michael J. Pollard, and Lauren Hutton.
The title song, "The Ballad of Little Fauss and Big Halsey", written by
Carl Perkins, was nominated for a Golden Globe award in 1971.
Cash had met with Dylan in the mid-1960s and became closer friends when they were neighbors in the late 1960s in Woodstock, New York. Cash was enthusiastic about reintroducing the reclusive Dylan to his audience. Cash sang a duet with Dylan, “Girl from the North Country”, on Dylan's country album Nashville Skyline and also wrote the album's Grammy-winning liner notes.
Another artist who received a major career boost from The Johnny Cash Show was Kris Kristofferson, who was beginning to make a name for himself as a singer-songwriter. During a live performance of Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", Cash refused to change the lyrics to suit network executives, singing the song with its references to marijuana intact:
On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I'm wishin', Lord, that I was stoned.
The closing program of The Johnny Cash Show was a gospel music special. Guests included the Blackwood Brothers, Mahalia Jackson, Stuart Hamblen, and Billy Graham.
"The Man in Black"
Cash advocated prison reform at his July 1972 meeting with United States President Richard Nixon
By the early 1970s, he had crystallized his public image as "The Man
in Black". He regularly performed dressed all in black, wearing a long,
black, knee-length coat. This outfit stood in contrast to the costumes
worn by most of the major country acts in his day – rhinestone suits and cowboy boots. In 1971, Cash wrote the song "Man in Black" to help explain his dress code:
We're doing mighty fine I do suppose
In our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back
Up front there ought to be a man in black.
Cash performing in Bremen, West Germany, in September 1972
He wore 'black' on behalf of the poor and hungry, on behalf of "the prisoner who has long paid for his crime," and on behalf of those who have been betrayed by age or drugs. "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.
Cash in the "one piece at a time" Cadillac
His band and he 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. The outdated US Navy's winter blue uniform used to be referred to by sailors as "Johnny Cashes", as the uniform's shirt, tie, and trousers are solid black.
In the mid-1970s, Cash's popularity and number of hit songs began to decline. He made commercials for Amoco and STP, an unpopular enterprise at the time of the 1970s energy crisis. In 1976, he made commercials for Lionel Trains, for which he also wrote the music. However, his first autobiography, Man in Black, was published in 1975 and sold 1.3 million copies. A second, Cash: The Autobiography, appeared in 1997.
His friendship with Billy Graham led to Cash's production of a film about the life of Jesus, The Gospel Road,
which Cash co-wrote and narrated. It was released in 1973. Cash viewed
the film as a statement of his personal faith rather than a means of
proselytizing.
Cash and June Carter Cash appeared several times on the Billy Graham Crusade
TV specials, and Cash continued to include gospel and religious songs
on many of his albums, though Columbia declined to release A Believer Sings the Truth,
a gospel double-LP Cash recorded in 1979 and which ended up being
released on an independent label even with Cash still under contract to
Columbia. On November 22, 1974, CBS ran his one-hour TV special entitled Riding The Rails, a musical history of trains.
He continued to appear on television, hosting Christmas specials on CBS in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Later television appearances included a starring role in an episode of Columbo, entitled "Swan Song". June and he appeared in an episode of Little House on the Prairie, entitled "The Collection". He gave a performance as John Brown in the 1985 American Civil War television miniseries North and South. Johnny and June also appeared in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman in recurring roles.
He was friendly with every US President, starting with Richard Nixon. He was closest to Jimmy Carter, with whom he became close friends and who was a distant cousin of his wife, June.
When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1970, 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),
"Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song which denies the integrity of
welfare recipients), and "A Boy Named Sue". Cash declined to play the
first two 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.
In his remarks when introducing Cash, Nixon joked that one thing he had
learned about the singer was one did not tell him what to sing.
Johnny Cash was the grand marshal of the United States Bicentennial parade. He wore a shirt from Nudie Cohn which sold for $25,000 in auction in 2010. After the parade he gave a concert at the Washington monument.
Highwaymen and departure from Columbia Records
In 1980, Cash became the Country Music Hall of Fame's
youngest living inductee at age 48, 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 three hit albums, which were released beginning with the originally titled Highwayman in 1985, followed by Highwaymen 2 in 1990, and concluding with Highwaymen – The Road Goes On Forever in 1995.
During that 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 and featured June Carter in a small but important role.
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".
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).
In 1984, Cash released a self-parody recording titled "Chicken in Black"
about Cash's brain being transplanted into a chicken and Cash receiving
a bank robber's brain in return. Biographer Robert Hilburn, in his 2013
book Johnny Cash: The Life, disputes the claim made that Cash
chose to record an intentionally poor song in protest of Columbia's
treatment of him. On the contrary, Hilburn writes, it was Columbia that
presented Cash with the song, which Cash – who had previously scored
major chart hits with comedic material such as "A Boy Named Sue" and
"One Piece at a Time" – accepted enthusiastically, performing the song
live on stage and filming a comedic music video in which he dresses up
in a superhero-like bank-robber costume. According to Hilburn, Cash's
enthusiasm for the song waned after Waylon Jennings told Cash he looked
"like a buffoon" in the music video (which was showcased during Cash's
1984 Christmas TV special), and Cash subsequently demanded that Columbia
withdraw the music video from broadcast and recall the single from
stores—interrupting its bona fide chart success—and termed the venture
"a fiasco."
Between 1981 and 1984, he recorded several sessions with famed countrypolitan producer Billy Sherrill (who also produced "Chicken in Black"), which were shelved; they would be released by Columbia's sister label, Legacy Recordings, in 2014 as Out Among the Stars. Around this time, Cash also recorded an album of gospel recordings
that ended up being released by another label around the time of his
departure from Columbia (this due to Columbia closing down its Priority
Records division that was to have released the recordings).
After more unsuccessful recordings were released between 1984–85,
Cash left Columbia (at least as a solo artist; he continued to record
for Columbia on nonsolo projects until as late as 1990, recording a
duets album with Waylon Jennings and two albums as a member of The
Highwaymen).
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;
according to Hilburn, Columbia still had Cash under contract at the
time, so special arrangements had to be made to allow him to
participate. Also in 1986, Cash published his only novel, Man in White, a book about Saul and his conversion to become the Apostle Paul. He recorded Johnny Cash Reads The Complete New Testament in 1990.
American Recordings
Johnny Cash sings with a Navy lieutenant during a military event circa January 1987
After Columbia Records dropped Cash from his recording contract, he had a short and unsuccessful stint with Mercury Records
from 1987 to 1991. During this time, he recorded an album of new
versions of some of his best-known Sun and Columbia hits, as well as Water from the Wells of Home, a duets album that paired him with, among others, his children Rosanne Cash and John Carter Cash, as well as Paul McCartney. A one-off Christmas album recorded for Delta Records followed his Mercury contract.
Though Cash would never have another chart hit from 1991 until
his death (one of many older country acts to be derailed by changes in
the industry that year), his career was rejuvenated in the 1990s,
leading to popularity with an audience which was not traditionally
considered interested in country music. In 1988, British post-punk
musicians Marc Riley (formerly of the Fall) and Jon Langford (the Mekons) put together 'Til Things Are Brighter, a tribute album
featuring mostly British-based indie-rock acts' interpretations of
Cash's songs. Cash was enthusiastic about the project, telling Langford
that it was a "morale booster"; Roseanne Cash later said "he felt a real
connection with those musicians and very validated ... It was very good
for him: he was in his element. He absolutely understood what they were
tapping into, and loved it". The album attracted press attention on
both sides of the Atlantic. 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", the closing track of U2's album Zooropa. According to Rolling Stone
writer Adam Gold, "The Wanderer" – written for Cash by Bono, "defies
both the U2 and Cash canons, combining rhythmic and textural elements of
Nineties synth-pop with a Countrypolitan lament fit for the closing
credits of a Seventies western."
No longer sought-after by major labels, he was offered a contract with producer Rick Rubin's American Recordings label, which had recently been rebranded from Def American, under which name it was 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 including "Down There by the Train" by Tom Waits. The album had a great deal of 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. He 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. He also 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.
Cash was joined by guitarist Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, bassist Krist Novoselic of Nirvana, and drummer Sean Kinney of Alice in Chains for a cover of Willie Nelson's "Time of the Preacher", featured on the tribute album Twisted Willie, released in January 1996.
In 1996, Cash enlisted the accompaniment of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and released Unchained (also known as American Recordings II), which won the Best Country Album Grammy in 1998. The album was produced by Rick Rubin with Sylvia Massy engineering and mixing. A majority of Unchained was recorded at Sound City Studios and featured guest appearances by Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, and Marty Stuart. Believing he did not explain enough of himself in his 1975 autobiography Man in Black, he wrote Cash: The Autobiography in 1997.
Later years and death
Cash's original grave (top) and the Cash/Carter memorial
In 1997, during a trip to New York City, Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy–Drager syndrome, a form of multiple system atrophy. According to biographer Robert Hilburn, the disease was originally misdiagnosed as Parkinson's disease, and Cash even announced to his audience that he had Parkinson's after nearly collapsing on stage in Flint, Michigan,
on October 25, 1997. Soon afterwards, his diagnosis was changed to
Shy–Drager, and Cash was told he had about 18 months to live. The diagnosis was later again altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. The illness forced Cash to curtail his touring. He was hospitalized in 1998 with severe pneumonia, which damaged his lungs.
During the last stage of his career, Cash released the albums American III: Solitary Man (2000) and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002). American IV included cover songs by several late 20th-century rock artists, notably "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails and "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode. Trent Reznor
of Nine Inch Nails commented that he was initially skeptical about
Cash's plan to cover "Hurt", but was later impressed and moved by the
rendition. The video for "Hurt" received critical and popular acclaim, including a Grammy Award.
June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003, aged 73.
June had told Cash to keep working, so he continued to record,
completing 60 songs in the last four months of his life. He even
performed 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 that he had written
shortly before taking the stage:
The spirit of June Carter overshadows me tonight with the love she had for me and the love I have for her. We connect somewhere between here and Heaven. She came down for a short visit, I guess, from Heaven to visit with me tonight to give me courage and inspiration like she always has. She's never been one for me except courage and inspiration. I thank God for June Carter. I love her with all my heart.
Cash continued to record until shortly before his death. "When June
died, it tore him up," Rick Rubin recalled. "He said to me, 'You have to
keep me working because I will die if I don't have something to do.' He
was in a wheelchair by then and we set him up at his home in Virginia… I
couldn't listen to those recordings for two years after he died and it
was heartbreaking when we did." Cash's final recordings were made on August 21, 2003, and consisted of "Like the 309", which appeared on American V: A Hundred Highways
in 2006, and the final song he completed, "Engine 143", recorded for
his son John Carter Cash's planned Carter Family tribute album.
While being hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Cash died of complications from diabetes around 2:00 am CT on September 12, 2003, aged 71—less than four months after his wife. He was buried next to her in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Personal life
On July 18, 1951, while in Air Force basic training, Cash met 17-year-old Italian-American Vivian Liberto at a roller skating rink in San Antonio, Texas. They dated for three weeks until Cash was deployed to West Germany for a three-year tour. During that time, the couple exchanged hundreds of pages of love letters. On August 7, 1954, one month after his discharge, they were married at St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in San Antonio. The Wedding Mass was offered by Vivian's uncle, a Roman Catholic priest named Father Vincent Liberto. They had four daughters: Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara. In 1961, Johnny moved his family to a hilltop home overlooking Casitas Springs, California, a small town south of Ojai
on Highway 33. He had previously moved his parents to the area to run a
small trailer park called the Johnny Cash Trailer Park. Johnny's
drinking led to several run-ins with local law enforcement. Liberto
later said that she had filed for divorce in 1966 because of Cash's
severe drug and alcohol abuse, as well as his constant touring, his
repeated acts of adultery with other women, and his close relationship with June Carter. Their four daughters were then raised by their mother.
Johnny Cash and his second wife, June Carter, 1969
Cash met singer June Carter, of the famed Carter Family while on tour, and the two became infatuated with each other. In 1968, 13 years after they first met backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, Cash proposed to June, during a live performance in London, Ontario. The couple married on March 1, 1968, in Franklin, Kentucky. They had one child together, John Carter Cash,
born March 3, 1970. He was the only son for both Johnny and June. In
addition to having his four daughters and John Carter, Cash also became
step-father to Carlene and Rosie; June's daughters from her first two marriages.
Cash and Carter continued to work, raise their child, create
music, and tour together for 35 years until June's death in May 2003.
Throughout their marriage, June attempted to keep Cash off amphetamines,
often taking his drugs and flushing them down the toilet. June remained
with him even throughout his multiple admissions for rehabilitation
treatment and decades of drug addiction. After June's death in 2003, Cash believed that his only reason for living was his music. He died four months after her.
Religious beliefs
Cash was raised by his parents in the Southern Baptist denomination of Christianity. He was baptized in 1944 in the Tyronza River as a member of the Central Baptist Church of Dyess, Arkansas.
A troubled but devout Christian, Cash has been characterized as a "lens through which to view American contradictions and challenges." On May 9, 1971, he answered the altar call at Evangel Temple, an Assemblies of God congregation pastored by Jimmie R. Snow with outreach to people in the music world.
A biblical scholar, Cash penned a Christian novel, Man in White
in 1986 and in the introduction writes about a reporter, who,
interested in Cash's religious beliefs, questioned whether the book is
written from a Baptist, Catholic, or Jewish perspective. Cash replies
"I'm a Christian. Don't put me in another box."
In the mid-1970s, Cash and his wife, June, completed a course of
study in the Bible through Christian International Bible College.
Cash often performed at Billy Graham Crusades. At a Tallahassee
Crusade in 1986, June and Johnny sang his song, "One of These Days I'm
Gonna Sit Down And Talk To Paul."
At a notable performance in Arkansas in 1989, Johnny Cash spoke to
attendees of his commitment to the salvation of drug dealers and
alcoholics. He then sang, "Family Bible".
He made a spoken-word recording of the entire New King James Version of the New Testament. Cash declared he was "the biggest sinner of them all", and viewed himself overall as a complicated and contradictory man. Accordingly, Cash is said to have "contained multitudes," and has been deemed "the philosopher-prince of American country music."
Cash is credited with having converted actor and singer John Schneider to Christianity.
Legacy
The clothes and guitar of Johnny Cash on exhibit in the Artist Gallery of the Musical Instrument Museum of Phoenix
Cash's daughter Rosanne (by first wife Vivian Liberto) and his son
John Carter Cash (by June Carter Cash) are notable musicians in their
own right.
Cash nurtured and defended artists (such as Bob Dylan)
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 which aired in 1999 on TNT, a diverse group of artists paid him tribute, including 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; Kindred Spirits contains works from established artists, while Dressed in Black contains works from many lesser-known musicians.
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. The set also includes a 104-page book that discusses each track and features one of Cash's final interviews.
In 1999, Cash received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Cash number 31 on their "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" list and No. 21 on their "100 Greatest Singers" list in 2010. In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked Cash's 1968 live album At Folsom Prison and 1994 studio album American Recordings at No. 88 and No. 366 in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
In recognition of his lifelong support of SOS Children's Villages,
his family invited friends and fans to donate to the Johnny Cash
Memorial Fund 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 with the SOS village in Barrett Town, by Montego Bay, near his holiday home in Jamaica.
In January 2006, Cash's lakeside home on Caudill Drive in Hendersonville was sold to Bee Gees vocalist Barry Gibb
and wife Linda for $2.3 million. On April 10, 2007, during major
renovation works carried out for Gibb, a fire broke out at the house,
spreading quickly due to a flammable wood preservative that had been
used. The building was completely destroyed.
One of Cash's final collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, American V: A Hundred Highways, was released posthumously on July 4, 2006. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard
Top 200 album chart for the week ending July 22, 2006. On February 23,
2010, three days before what would have been Cash's 78th birthday, the
Cash Family, Rick Rubin, and Lost Highway Records released his second
posthumous record, titled American VI: Ain't No Grave.
The main street in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Highway 31E, is known as "Johnny Cash Parkway". The Johnny Cash Museum, located in one of Cash's properties in Hendersonville until 2006, dubbed the House of Cash,
was sold based on Cash's will. Prior to this, having been closed for a
number of years, the museum had been featured in Cash's music video for
"Hurt". The house subsequently burned down during the renovation by the
new owner. A new museum, founded by Shannon and Bill Miller, opened
April 26, 2013, in downtown Nashville.
On November 2–4, 2007, the Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival
was held in Starkville, Mississippi, where Cash had been arrested more
than 40 years earlier and held overnight at the city jail on May 11,
1965. The incident 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 and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio,
in 2007. The museum offers public tours of the bus on a seasonal basis
(it is stored during the winter and not exhibited during those times).
A limited-edition Forever stamp honoring Cash went on sale June 5, 2013. The stamp features a promotional picture of Cash taken around the 1963 release of Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash. The Undertaker used Cash's version of "Ain't No Grave" at WrestleMania XXVII as his entrance theme.
On October 14, 2014, the City of Folsom unveiled phase 1 of the
Johnny Cash Trail to the public with a dedication and ribbon-cutting
ceremony attended by Rosanne Cash. Along the trail, eight
larger-than-life public art pieces will tell the story of Johnny Cash,
his connection to Folsom Prison, and his epic musical career. The Johnny
Cash Trail features art selected by a committee that included Cindy Cash,
a 2-acre (0.81 ha) Legacy Park, and over 3 miles (4.8 km) of multi-use
class-I bike trail. The artists responsible for the sculptures are
Sacramento-based Romo Studios, LLC and the Fine Art Studio of Rotblatt
Amrany, from Illinois.
In 2015, a new species of black tarantula was identified near Folsom Prison and named Aphonopelma johnnycashi in his honor.
In 2016, the Nashville Sounds Minor League Baseball
team added the "Country Legends Race" to its between-innings
entertainment. At the middle of the fifth inning, people in oversized
foam caricature costumes depicting Cash, as well as George Jones, Reba McEntire, and Dolly Parton, race around the warning track at First Horizon Park from center field to the home plate side of the first base dugout.
The Johnny Cash Heritage Festival is held annually in Dyess, Arkansas.
It builds on the music festival held for four years on the Arkansas
State University campus in Jonesboro. The festival honors Johnny Cash
and explores the New Deal programs that shaped his childhood in Dyess.
The festival includes a concert in the field adjacent to the Cash home
and Arkansas roots music in the Colony Circle.
On February 8, 2018, the album Forever Words was announced, putting music to poems that Cash had written and which were published in book form in 2016.
Johnny Cash's boyhood home in Dyess was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on May 2, 2018, as "Farm No. 266, Johnny Cash Boyhood Home."
The Arkansas Country Music Awards honored Johnny Cash's legacy
with the Lifetime Achievement award on June 3, 2018. The ceremony was
held that same date, which was a Monday night at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in Little Rock, Arkansas. The nominations took place in early 2018.
In 2019, Sheryl Crow released a duet with Cash on her song "Redemption Day" for her final album Threads.
Crow, who had originally written and recorded the song in 1996,
recorded new vocals and added them to those of Cash, who recorded the
song for his American VI: Ain't No Grave album.
Portrayals
Country singer Mark Collie portrayed Cash in John Lloyd Miller's award-winning 1999 short film I Still Miss Someone.
In November 2005, Walk the Line,
a biographical film about Cash's life, was released in the United
States to considerable commercial success and critical acclaim. The film
featured Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor) and Reese Witherspoon as June (for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress). Phoenix and Witherspoon also won 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
(with their version of "Jackson" being released as a single), and
Phoenix learned to play guitar for the role. Phoenix received a Grammy
Award for his contributions to the soundtrack. John Carter Cash, the son
of Johnny and June, served as an executive producer.
On March 12, 2006, Ring of Fire, a jukebox musical of the Cash oeuvre, debuted on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, but closed due to harsh reviews and disappointing sales on April 30. 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.
Robert Hilburn, veteran Los Angeles Times
pop music critic, the journalist who accompanied Cash in his 1968
Folsom prison tour, and interviewed Cash many times throughout his life
including months before his death, published a 688-page biography with
16 pages of photographs in 2013.
The meticulously reported biography is said to have filled in the 80%
of Cash's life that was unknown, including details about Cash's battles
with addiction and infidelity.
The book reportedly does not hold back any details about the darker
side of Johnny Cash and includes details about his affair with his
pregnant wife June Carter's sister.
Awards and honors
If there were a hall
of fame for creating larger-than-life personae, Cash would no doubt have
been elected to it as well. His 1971 song “Man in Black” codified an
image that the singer had assumed naturally for more than fifteen years
at that point. Part rural preacher, part outlaw Robin Hood, he was a
blue-collar prophet who, dressed in stark contrast to the glinting
rhinestones and shimmering psychedelia of the time, spoke truth to
power.
—Johnny Cash: Remembering the Incomparable Legend of Country, Rock and Roll, Rolling Stone.
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 defined by 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.
His diversity was evidenced by his presence in five major music halls of fame: the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1977), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1980), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1992), GMA's Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2010). and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (2013). Marking his death in 2003, Rolling Stone stated other than Elvis Presley Cash was the only artist inducted as a performer into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
His contributions to the genre have been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Cash received the Kennedy Center Honors
in 1996 and 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.
"Hurt" was nominated for six VMAs at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.
The only VMA the video won was that for Best Cinematography. With the
video, Johnny Cash became the oldest artist ever nominated for an MTV
Video Music Award. Justin Timberlake, who won Best Video that year for "Cry Me a River",
said in his acceptance speech: "This is a travesty! I demand a recount.
My grandfather raised me on Johnny Cash, and I think he deserves this
more than any of us in here tonight."
