Friday 21 November 2008
Johnny Cash
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Introduction
Legendary songwriter, musician and singer Johnny Cash (born J R Cash, February 26, 1932)started singing as a five-year-old in the cotton fields of Arkansas, working alongside his impoverished family.
In a music career spanning 50 years, he sold over 50 million albums, with sales still going strong after his death on September 12, 2003.
Hits such as A Boy Named Sue, Folsom Prison Blues, I Walk The line, and the eponymous The Man In Black helped secure his place among country music's Kings. A late life collaboration with rap-rock producer Rick Rubin, on the American Recordings series, won him a new generation of indie and rock fans.
His 11 Grammys included a lifetime achievement award and the 1998 Grammy for country album of the year ("Unchained"). More than 100 other recording artists and groups are reputed to have recorded I Walk the Line.
His courting of fellow country music star June Carter and their subsequent 35-year marriage was the subject of box office hit Walk The Line, released posthumously in 2005.
Early years
J R Cash was born to Ray Cash, a farmer, and Carrie Rivers (known as Reba) Cash in Kingsland, Cleveland County, Arkansas, on February 26, 1932, one of six children.
During the Depression of 1935, his father took advantage of a new Roosevelt farm program and moved his family to Dyess Colony, in northeast Arkansas, to work 20 acres of cotton and other seasonal crops.
The young John worked alongside his parents and siblings in the fields and the influence of those hard early years - and the music he heard - inspired him to write songs such as Pickin' Time, Five Feet High and Rising, and Look at Them Beans. (source: http://maninblack.net/Bio_Dyess.html)
Johnny would listen to the radio at night, picking out the Memphis stations with their mix of country and blues song, as well as soaking up the gospel and Irish folk music sung by his mother and the work songs of the fields and railroads. For his tenth birthday, he was given his first guitar. At the age of 12, he wrote his first song, encouraged by his mother, Reba. (source: http://www.johnnycash.com/cash.html)
Cash stayed in Dyess until graduating High School in 1950 and then set off looking for work in Detriot and Michigan, before joining the US Air Force on July 7, 1950, as a radio operator. The military would not accept initials as his name, so he adopted John R. Cash as his legal name on enlisting. He formed his first band, the five-man Landsberg Barbarians, while stationed at Germany.
Four years later, he finishes his service time and moves to Memphis, keen to start a career in music. He starts on a radio announcer's course while working part-time as a door-to-door salesman and at a Chevrolet dealership near to Sun Records on Union Avenue. In August 1954, he marries Vivian Liberto.
At the Chevrolet dealership he meets guitar pickers Luther Monroe Perkins and Marshall Grant and they begin working together on gospel music and new material penned by Cash.
The Sun Years
Towards the end of 1954, Cash, Perkins and Grant secure an audition with Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records which a few months before had released the debut single by one Elvis Presley.
Phillips takes them on, advising the trio t drop the gospel music and stick to country and western. They record two Cash songs: Wide Open Road and You're My Baby and, at Phillips' suggestion, J R Cash becomes Johnny Cash.
His first single, Hey Porter, is released the following year on Sun but fails to chart. However, the follow-up Cry, Cry, Cry does better, reaching number 14 in the Billboard chart.
In 1956, Folsom Prison Blues was released and made Billboard's country music Top Five, but it was Cash's fourth single for Sun: I Walk the Line, that signalled his arrival at the top of the Country Music tree. The song, released on May 1, 1956, became his first No. 1 hit and stayed in the top slot for six weeks and in the charts for 43 weeks.
In 1957, he made his first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry. (needs more)
Columbia
By 1958, he'd published 50 songs and sold more than 6 million records for Sun but decided to move to the Columbia label.