… and it burns burns burns the ring of fire… Many immediately think of this song line and the melody that goes with it when they think of the American country star Johnny Cash. Ring of Fire is undoubtedly one of his most beautiful and well-known songs.
Johnny Cash always seemed a bit melancholic, at least in the last years of his career, and was also called the Man in Black because of his black clothing. He was a legend, but there were also setbacks in his career due to addiction problems.
The man with the distinctive bass-baritone voice, who was actually named J. R. Cash in real life, died in 2003 at the age of 71.
Profile: Johnny Cash
The following brief profile aims to provide an insight into the life and work of Johnny Cash and to convey the most important facts at a glance:
- Full name: J. R. Cash
- Date of birth: February 26, 1932
- Place of birth: Kingsland, Arkansas, USA
- Parents: Raymond Cash, Carrie Rivers Cash
- Education: High school diploma
- Vocal range: Bass-baritone
- Instruments: Guitar, harmonica
- Wives: Vivian Liberto, June Carter Cash
- Children: Rosanne, Kathleen, Cindy, and Tara from the marriage with Vivian, John from the marriage with June Date of death: September 12, 2003
- Place of death: Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Johnny Cash’s real first name was actually J. R. The initials were chosen as a compromise, as the mother wanted to name her son John and the father wanted to name him Ray. The surname Cash, which reminds of cash, is not a stage name, but it is real.
Childhood and Youth
Johnny Cash was born on February 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas, as the fourth of seven children. His parents were impoverished farmers.
When Johnny Cash was three years old, the family moved with him to Dyess in the state of Arkansas. As part of the New Deal, the family was provided with a farm there at a low cost under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Johnny Cash lived in the house near the Tyronza River until he graduated from high school. The house was damaged by flooding twice. And has been an officially registered historic site in the USA since May 2018. Johnny Cash later dedicated the song “Five Feet High and Rising” to it.
Johnny Cash had to work in the cotton fields at the tender age of five. When Johnny Cash was twelve years old, his two-year-older brother Jack died in a circular saw accident. The father blamed Johnny for his brother’s death. This event marked his whole life. It was reflected in his songs and was the key to guilt, dependency, and crashes.
Johnny Cash received his first guitar from his mother at the age of ten. He was also allowed to take some singing lessons. He had his first solo performance as a singer at the age of 18 in May 1950 at a high school graduation ceremony.
Education and Studies
After graduating from high school, Johnny Cash worked as an assembly line worker at the Fisher automobile factories in Pontiac, Michigan, and in a margarine factory in Texas.
He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1950. The military did not accept initials as first names. He therefore changed his first name to John R. He was stationed at the Landsberg/Lech airbase starting in October 1951 and was with the 12th Radio Squadron Mobile of the United States Air Force Security Service. At a listening station, he intercepted Morse codes of Soviet radio traffic.
At the Ballach music store in Landsberg, Johnny Cash bought himself a guitar. He also played the harmonica and founded his first band, which was named the Landsberg Barbarians as a reference to the troops’ newspaper The Landsberg Bavarian.
The Folsom Prison Blues was created after Johnny saw the film “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison” in the barracks at the Amerikino. He regularly performed as a singer at charity events for the U.S. military starting in February 1952.
After his military service in Germany, Johnny Cash moved to Memphis, where he married the two years younger Vivian Liberto. With her, he had four daughters.
Career
Johnny Cash had a meteoric career and went down in history as a country music legend. But his career was not a straight line. It was interrupted by addiction and crashes. He processed his defeats and experiences, partly from childhood and youth, in his songs.
Beginning of his career
Johnny Cash worked during the day as a sales representative for electrical appliances and played in the evenings with the Tennessee Two in clubs in Memphis. Since his band did not yet have a drummer, Johnny Cash improvised with his rhythm guitar, behind the strings of which he wedged a piece of paper.
Sam Phillips, the owner and producer of Sun Records, signed Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash’s first single reached number 14 in the US country charts. Johnny Cash performed as the opening act for Elvis Presley in August 1955.
With Folsum Prison Blues, Johnny Cash already made it to number 4 in the country charts. With “I Walk the Line” he already reached number 1 in the country charts and got a place in the top 20 in the pop charts.
In Nashville, Johnny Cash met his future wife, June Carter, backstage at a country radio show in 1956. His trademark was to open his concerts with “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”
Successes
Johnny Cash was able to achieve further successes by the end of the 1950s. His marriage to Vivian Liberto suffered from his constant touring. The tours were also a constant burden for him, which is why he increasingly turned to pills and alcohol.
After Johnny Cash moved to California with his family in 1958, he received a lucrative offer from Columbia Records and switched. He hit the top with “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” and played a festival in Frankfurt in 1959. Between 1959 and 1965, he also recorded songs in German and Spanish.
With the album “Songs of Our Soil,” he achieved another success in March 1959. His song “Ring of Fire” became a worldwide hit. Johnny Cash describes his forbidden love for June Carter in it.
The themes of other songs also included the Indian movement and the treatment of the country’s indigenous people by US citizens. He published the fate of an Indian war hero in “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.”
Dependency
Johnny Cash sold the romantic image of the outlaw and himself had to spend short periods in prison several times for minor offenses. He smuggled amphetamines into the US in his guitar case and destroyed 205 hectares of forest in the Los Padres National Park thru the exhaust of his motorhome.
Due to his pill addiction, he divorced Vivian Liberto, canceled concerts, and had violent outbursts on stage. He lost weight and developed a brittle voice.
After several days without sleep and food, he wanted to die in a cave near Chattanooga in early October 1967. However, he was aware that he could not determine the time of his own death.
Subsequently, he underwent rehabilitation, with the help of June Carter and her parents. His first concert in sobriety was on November 11, 1967, at Hendersonville High School.
Concerts
Johnny Cash wanted to convince his record label to record a live album in a prison. He succeeded in doing so in January 1968, together with June Carter and other artists. The album reached number one on the country album charts.
During a concert in London, Ontario, Canada, Johnny Cash proposed to June Carter, and she accepted. The two married in Franklin, Kentucky, on March 1, 1968.
Johnny Cash’s performance at San Quentin prison in February 1969 in the US state of California became internationally known.
One of the most legendary concerts was the performance on December 5, 1969, at Madison Square Garden in New York City in front of 21,000 spectators. His wife June was not there because she was expecting a child. The son John was born on March 3, 1970.
The Johnny Cash Show premiered on June 7, 1969, on the US network ABC. It was broadcast every Saturday. Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell were guests on the first edition. The show ran until 1971.
Johnny Cash also gave a concert at the White House in 1970 for then-US President Richard Nixon.
“The Man in Black”
Starting in the early 1970s, Johnny Cash only performed in black clothing and subsequently earned the nickname “Man in Black.” He also released a song titled “Man in Black” in 1971.
He gave concerts from the end of February to the beginning of March 1972 in Germany. He performed in Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Düsseldorf, and Saarbrücken, as well as in Bremen in September 1972. Slowly, his popularity declined.
Johnny Cash had also taken on some television roles starting in the early 1960s. The film “The Gospel Road,” for which Johnny Cash wrote the music, was a flop just like the soundtrack.
Highwayman
With his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980, Johnny Cash received the highest honor in country music. At 48, he was the youngest living artist to receive this award. In April 1980, he gave ten concerts in West Germany and participated in a show by Freddy Quinn.
The album “Rockabilly Blues” was released in June 1980. As early as the end of the 1970s, Johnny Cash became addicted to pills again. His family persuaded him to enter a rehabilitation clinic in December 1983. He did not relapse after being released six weeks later.
Johnny Cash, along with June Carter Cash, was also seen in the Western series “Dr. Quinn – Medicine Woman.”
With his songs about gunslingers and penitentiaries, Johnny Cash was considered a pioneer of the outlaw movement, which opposed the rather superficial country-pop productions.
Johnny Cash was considered a role model in this movement. Friends of his, including Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson, together with him, founded The Highwaymen.
After more than ten years, Johnny Cash achieved the number one spot in the charts again with the song “The Highwayman” and the album of the same name. With “Man in White,” Johnny Cash also wrote a novel about the Damascus experience of Paul of Tarsus.
Johnny Cash experienced a career slump in the late 1980s. He had to undergo heart bypass surgery in 1988. Since Johnny Cash and other artists were not very flexible when it came to audience taste, they were largely ignored by radio stations.
Comeback
Johnny Cash was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. The Irish rock band U2 wrote the song “The Wanderer” for him.
Rick Rubin offered Johnny Cash a record deal in 1994. He tried out various songs with Johnny Cash. When Johnny Cash recorded the album Unchained in 1996, his health was already poor.
In April and May 1997, Johnny Cash gave several concerts in Europe, including in Germany. He recorded several more albums. He landed in second place on the country charts with the album “American IV: The Man Comes Around.”
Even back then, Johnny Cash’s voice sounded fragile. He was already seriously ill.
Illness and Death
Johnny Cash nearly fainted during a performance in Flint, Michigan, in October 1997 when he bent down to pick up a guitar pick. The doctors suspected Parkinson’s disease during the subsequent examination.
Finally, the doctors found that Johnny Cash was suffering from Shy-Drager syndrome, which is incurable and resembles Parkinson’s disease. This diagnosis was later revised after an autonomic neuropathy was diagnosed.
Johnny Cash’s last stage appearance was on April 6, 1999, at a concert in his honor. He was already very weak.
Several times, Johnny Cash was hospitalized with pneumonia. In October 2001, he had to be artificially ventilated for a week. He also suffered from shortness of breath due to asthma. Since he also suffered from glaucoma, his eyesight deteriorated significantly.
June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003, at the age of 73, after having to undergo heart valve surgery. Johnny Cash was married to her for 35 years. He was already in a wheelchair at her funeral.
Just three weeks before his death, Johnny Cash recorded one last piece of music. On September 12, 2003, Johnny Cash died at the age of 71 in a hospital in Nashville from lung failure.
Honors and Awards
The greatest honors of Johnny Cash were his inductions into the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Furthermore, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
Johnny Cash was named Entertainer of the Year in 1969. He received an award for Album of the Year several times.
