About Me
-Born J.R. Cash to Ray and Carrie Rivers Cash on February 26, 1932 in Kingsland, 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 accident, while working a high school shop table saw, in 1944. -His family's economic and personal struggles during the Depression shaped him as a person and inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing similar difficulties. -He was reportedly given the name J. R. because his parents could not agree on a name, only on initials. Giving children such names was a relatively common practice at the time. He enlisted as a radio operator in the United States Air Force. The military would not accept initials as his name, so he adopted John R. Cash as his legal name. When he signed for Sun Records in 1955, he took "Johnny" Cash as a stage name. His friends and in-laws generally called him John, and his blood relatives often still called him by his birth name, J. R. -After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Cash was sent to a U.S. Air Force Security Service unit at Landsberg Air Base, Germany. There, he founded his first band, the Landsberg Barbarians. -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. -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 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" became No. 1 on the country charts, also making it into the pop charts Top 20. Following "I Walk the Line" was Johnny Cash's "Home of the Blues," recorded in July 1957. In 1957, Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. Although he was Sun's most consistently best-selling and prolific artist at that time, Cash felt constrained by his contract with the small label. Elvis Presley had already left Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on Jerry Lee Lewis. The following year, Cash 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's first child, a daughter, Rosanne, was born in 1955. Although he would have three more daughters, Kathleen in 1956, Cindy in 1959, and Tara in 1961 his constant touring and drug use put intense strain on his marriage. Vivian and John divorced in 1966. It was during one of these tours that he had met June Carter in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada at the Ottawa Civic Center. Johnny Cash would marry June Carter in 1968. -Less than four months after his wife's death, Johnny Cash died at the age of seventy-one due to complications from diabetes, which resulted in respiratory failure, while hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. He was interred next to his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee. - His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", and "Man in Black". He also recorded several humorous songs, such as "One Piece at a Time", "The One on the Right Is on the Left", and "A Boy Named Sue"; rock-and-roll numbers such as "Get Rhythm"; and various train-related songs, such as "The Rock Island Line". -He sold over 50 million albums in his nearly 50 year career and is generally recognized as one of the most important musicians in the history of American popular music.
