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Cash ..........VA .... GA elbert .... AR cleveland / mississippi .... TN sumner
LDS
www.familysearch.com
*
(10) William Cash
...+ Elizabeth Skinner
.(9) Robert H Cash
....+ Ruth Higginbottham
..(8) Stephen Cash (1730)VA westmoreland
.....+ hannah
...(7) John Cash (1757)VA albernale - (1836)GA henry
........+ nasncy campbell
....(6) Moses Cash (1785)VA - (1846)GA elbert
.....................+ Nancy Hudson
.............(5) Moses Reuben Cash (1814)GA - (1882)AR
.........................+ Phelishia W Taylor (1819)GA - (18??)AR
..................(4) nancy e cash (1837)GA elbert
..................(4) mary j cash (1838)GA elbert
..................(4) marcy f cash (1839)GA elbert
..................(4) john sam cash 91840)GA elbert
..................(4) virginia ann cash (1842)GA elbert
..................(4) phelicia jane cash (1844)GA elbert
..................(4) james w cash 91845)GA elbert
..................(4) francis marion cash 91847)GA elbert - (1920)AR cleveland
..............................+ eliza w rainey
..................(4) sarah p cash (1849)GA elbert
..................(4) robert cash (1851)GA elbert
..................(4) homer cash (1854)GA elbert
..................(4) louisa cash (1862)GA elbert
..................(4) Willliam Henry Cash (1852)GA elbert - (1912)AR cleveland
...............................+ Rebecca S J Overton (1855)AR cleveland - (1916)AR cleveland
........................(3) susan cash (1874)AR cleveland
........................(3) george cash 91875)AR cleveland
........................(3) rosa j w cash (1879)AR cleveland
........................(3) john r cash (1882)AR cleveland
......................................+ minnie b rotton
...............................(2) jake r cash (1905)AR cleveland - (135)AR cleveland
...............................................+ Mayselle Berry (1908) - (1997)AR jefferson
............................................... mayselle (berry) cash +2 charles h bittinger
.............................................................(1) charlene kay bittinger
..........................................................................+ glenn hendrix
........................(3) william t d cash (1884)AR cleveland
........................(3) roy cash (1885)AR cleveland
........................(3) minnie cash 9188)AR cleveland
........................(3) russell d cash (1891)AR cleveland
........................(3) mabel cash (1893)AR cleveland
........................(3) Raymond Cash (1897)AR cleveland - (1985)TN sumner
........................................+ Carrie C Rivers (1904)AR cleveland - (1991)TN
.................................(2) roy cash (1921)AR cleveland
.................................(2) rebecca ann cash (192?)AR cleveland
.................................(2) margaret louise cash (192?)AR cleveland
.................................(2) jack d cash (192?)AR cleveland - (1944)AR mississippi
.................................(2) joanne cash (12?)AR cleveland
.................................(2) cash (192?)AR cleveland
*...............................(2) John R " johnny" Cash (1932)AR cleveland - (2003)TN sumner
................................................+1 vivian liberto
.........................................(1) rosanne cash
.........................................(1) kathleen cash
.........................................(1) cindy cash
.........................................(1) tara cash
..................................................+2 valerie june carter (1929) - (2003)TN
.........................................(1) john carter cash
***
1880 census AR smith co., dorsey
Household:
Name Relation Marital Status Gender Race Age Birthplace Occupation Father's Birthplace Mother's Birthplace
* William CASH Self M Male W 28 GA Farmer GA GA
Rebeca CASH Wife M Female W 25 AR Keeping House GA TN
Susan CASH Dau S Female W 6 AR GA AR
George CASH Son S Male W 4 AR GA AR
Rosa CASH Dau S Female W 1 AR GA AR
end
******
Bittinger
http://genforum.genealogy.com/bittinger/messages/1.html
*
Cash links...
http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=fox2&id=I059244
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash
END
******
johnny cash
1932 - 2003
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) Johnny Cash, a towering
figure in American music spanning country, rock and
folk and known worldwide as "The Man in Black,"
died Friday, his manager said. He was 71.
"Johnny died due to complications from diabetes,
which resulted in respiratory failure," said Cash's
manager, Lou Robin, in a press release issued by
Baptist Hospital in Nashville.
The release said Cash died at the hospital at 1 a.m. EDT.
"I hope that friends and fans of Johnny will pray for the Cash family to
find comfort during this very difficult time," Robin said in the release.
Cash had been released Wednesday after a two-week stay at Baptist,
where he was admitted last month for an unspecified stomach ailment.
Cash had battled a disease of the nervous system, autonomic
neuropathy, and pneumonia in recent years and was once diagnosed
with a disease called Shy-Drager's syndrome, a diagnosis that was
later deemed to be erroneous.
Dozens of hit records like "Folsom Prison Blues," "I Walk the Line," and
"Sunday Morning Coming Down" defined Cash's persona: a haunted,
dignified, resilient spokesman for the working man and downtrodden.
Cash's deeply lined face fit well with his unsteady voice, which was
limited in range but used to great effect to sing about prisoners,
heartaches, and tales of everyday life. He wrote much of his own
material, and was among the first to record the songs of Bob Dylan and
Kris Kristofferson.
"One Piece at a Time" was about an assembly line worker who built a
car out of parts stolen from his factory. "A Boy Named Sue" was a
comical story of a father who gives his son a girl's name to make him
tough. "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" told of the drunken death of an
American Indian soldier who helped raised the American flag at Iwo
Jima during World War II, but returned to harsh racism in America.
Cash said in his 1997 autobiography "Cash" that he tried to speak for
"voices that were ignored or even suppressed in the entertainment
media, not to mention the political and educational establishments."
Cash's career spanned generations, with each finding something of
value in his simple records, many of which used his trademark
"boom-chicka-boom" rhythm.
Cash was a peer of Elvis Presley when rock 'n' roll was born in Memphis
in the 1950s, and he scored hits like "Cry! Cry! Cry!" during that era.
He had a longtime friendship and recorded with Dylan, who has cited
Cash as a major influence.
He won 11 Grammys most recently in 2003, when "Give My Love To
Rose" earned him honors as best male country vocal performance and
numerous Country Music Association awards. He was elected to the
Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980 and inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in 1992.
His second wife, June Carter Cash, and daughter Roseanne Cash also
were successful singers. June Carter Cash, who co-wrote Cash's hit
"Ring of Fire" and partnered with her husband in hits such as "Jackson,"
died in May.
The late 1960s and '70s were Cash's peak commercial years, and he
was host of his own ABC variety show from 1969-71. In later years, he
was part of the Highwayman supergroup with Waylon Jennings, Willie
Nelson and Kristofferson.
In the 1990s, he found a new artistic life recording with rap and hard
rock producer Rick Rubin on the label American Recordings. And he was
back on the charts in with the 2002 album "American IV: the Man
Comes Around."
Most recently, Cash was recognized for his cover of the Nine Inch Nails
song "Hurt" with seven nominations at last month's MTV Video Music
Awards. He had hoped to attend the event but couldn't because of his
hospital stay. The video won for best cinematography.
He also wrote books including two autobiographies, and acted in films
and television shows.
In his 1971 hit "Man in Black," Cash said his black clothing symbolized
the downtrodden people in the world. Cash had been "The Man in
Black" since he joined the Grand Ole Opry at age 25.
"Everybody was wearing rhinestones, all those sparkle clothes and
cowboy boots," he said in 1986. "I decided to wear a black shirt and
pants and see if I could get by with it. I did and I've worn black
clothes ever since."
John R. Cash was born Feb. 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Ark., one of seven
children. When he was 12, his 14-year-old brother and hero, Jack, died
after an accident while sawing oak trees into fence posts. The tragedy
had a lasting impact on Cash, and he later pointed to it as a possible
reason his music was frequently melancholy.
He worked as a custodian and enlisted in the Air Force, learning guitar
while stationed in Germany, before launching his music career after his
1954 discharge.
"All through the Air Force, I was so lonely for those three years," Cash
told The Associated Press during a 1996 interview. "If I couldn't have
sung all those old country songs, I don't think I could have made it."
Cash launched his career in Memphis, performing on radio station
KWEM. He auditioned with Sun Records, ultimately recording the single
"Hey Porter," which became a hit.
Sun Records also launched the careers of Presley, Roy Orbison, Jerry
Lee Lewis and others.
"Folsom Prison Blues," went to No. 4 on the country charts in 1956,
and featured Cash's most famous couplet: "I shot a man in Reno/ just
to watch him die."
Cash recorded theme albums celebrating the railroads and the Old
West, and decrying the mistreatment of American Indians. Two of his
most popular albums were recorded live at prisons. Along the way he
notched 14 No. 1 country music hits.
Because of Cash's frequent performances in prisons and his rowdy
lifestyle early in his career, many people wrongly thought he had
served prison time. He never did, though he battled addictions to pills
on and off throughout his life. He blamed fame for his vulnerability to
drug addiction.
"When I was a kid, I always knew I'd sing on the radio someday. I
never thought about fame until it started happening to me," he said in
1988. "Then it was hard to handle. That's why I turned to pills."
He credited June Carter Cash, whom he married in 1968, with helping
him stay off drugs, though he had several relapses over the years and
was treated at the Betty Ford Center in California in 1984.
June Carter Cash was the daughter of country music great Mother
Maybelle Carter, and the mother of singer Carlene Carter, whose father
was country singer Carl Smith. Together, June Carter and Cash had
one child, John Carter Cash. He is a musician and producer.
Singer Rosanne Cash is Johnny Cash's daughter from his first marriage,
to Vivian Liberto. Their other three children were Kathleen, Cindy and
Tara. They divorced in 1966.
In March 1998, Cash made headlines when his California-based record
company, American Recordings, took out an advertisement in the music
trade magazine Billboard. The full-page ad celebrated Cash's 1998
Grammy award for best country album for "Unchained." The ad showed
an enraged-looking Cash in his younger years making an obscene
gesture to sarcastically illustrate his thanks to country radio stations
and "the country music establishment in Nashville," which he felt had
unfairly cast him aside.
Jennings, a close friend, once said of Cash: "He's been like a brother to
me. He's one of the greatest people in the world."
Cash once credited his mother, Carrie Rivers Cash, with encouraging
him to pursue a singing career.
"My mother told me to keep on singing, and that kept me working
through the cotton fields. She said God has his hand on you. You'll be
singing for the world someday."
Cash lived in Hendersonville, Tenn., just outside of Nashville. He also
had a home in Jamaica.
end
******
Biography
[edit]
Early life
Born J.R. Cash 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".
Cash was one-quarter Cherokee. This Native American background later showed out in several of his songs, like "Trail of Tears", "Ballad of Ira Hayes" and his album "Bitter Tears".
Cash was very close to his brother Jack. In 1944, Jack was pulled into a whirling table saw in the mill where he worked, and almost cut in two. He suffered for over a week before he died. Cash often spoke of the horrible guilt he felt over this incident, because he had gone out fishing that day. On his deathbed, Jack said he had had visions of Heaven and angels before he died. Almost sixty years later, Cash spoke of looking forward to meeting his brother in Heaven.
Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. He began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy, and in high school sang on a local radio station. He was dubbed "John" upon enlisting as a radio operator in the Air Force, which refused to accept initials as his name. Thereafter, he was known as Johnny and sometimes as John R. While an airman in West Germany, Cash wrote one of his most famous songs, "Folsom Prison Blues," after seeing the B-movie Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison.
[edit]
Early career
After his term of service ended, Cash married Vivian Liberto in 1954 and 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 (the Tennessee Two). Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to garner a recording contract. Sun producer Cowboy Jack Clement met with the young singer first, and suggested that Cash return to meet producer Sam Phillips. After auditioning for 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 and Clement 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. 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 the label, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on Jerry Lee Lewis. The following year, Cash left Sun 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.
In 1955, Cash's daughter, Rosanne, was born. Although he would have three more daughters (Kathy, Cindy and Tara) with his wife, their relationship began to sour, as he was constantly touring. It was during one of these tours that he met June Carter. Cash proposed onstage to Carter at a concert at the London Gardens in London, Ontario on February 22, 1968; the couple married a week later in Franklin, Kentucky. By June's account, in the liner notes to the compilation album Love (2000), the song "I Still Miss Someone" was written about her.
end
*******
Previous Marriages: Before they married one another, Johnny had been married once; June had been married twice.
Johnny:
Johnny was 22 when he married Vivian Liberto of San Antonio, Texas. Vivian was 17 when they married. Their marriage lasted from August 7, 1954 until 1966 when they divorced due to Johnny's drug problems.
He pledged to remain faithful to her in his song "I Walk the Line." Johnny and Vivian had four daughters. Vivian died as a result of complications from lung cancer.
June:
June was married to Carl Smith, an actor and composer, from July 9, 1952 until they divorced in 1956. They had one child, Carlene Carter.
Carl was born on March 15, 1927 in Maynardville, Tennessee. Carl was later married to Goldie Hill, from 1957 until February 24, 2005, when she died of cancer. Goldie and Carl had three children.
June's second marriage was to Edwin L. "Rip" Nix, from November 11, 1958 to 1966 when they divorced. June and Edwin had one child, Rosanna (Rosie) Nix Adams.
Children:
Johnny and June's blended family numbered 7 children:
Roseanne Cash, daughter of Johnny and Vivian, was born on May 24, 1955 in Memphis, Tennesee. She is a country singer, married twice, and has 4 children. Her husband is John Leventhal.
Rebecca Carlene Smith, professionally known as Carlene Carter, daughter of June Carter and Carl Smith. Carlene was born on September 26, 1955 in Madison, Tenessee. Carlene is an actress and country singer. She has been married and divorced three times.
Kathleen Cash, daughter of Johnny and Vivian, was born in Memphis, Tennessee on April 16, 1956. She married to Jimmy Tittle in 1982 and they have two children.
Rozanna Lea (Rosie) Nix Adams, daughter of Edwin and June, was born on July 13, 1958. She was married to Philip Adams. She died on October 24, 2003, in Tennessee, from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. She was a singer and composer.
Cindy Cash, daughter of Johnny and Vivian, was born on July 29, 1959. She was married to Marty Stuart but the marriage ended in divorce.
Tara Cash, daughter of Johnny and Vivian, was born in 1961.
John Carter Cash was born on March 3, 1970. He is Johnny and June's only child. He has been married twice, and has two children: Anna Maybelle and Joseph. His current wife is Laura Webber.
end
*********
valerie june carter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Carter_Cash
June Carter Cash (born Valerie June Carter; June 23, 1929 – May 15, 2003), middle daughter of Ezra (Eck) Carter and Maybelle Carter (Mother Maybelle), was a singer, songwriter, a member of the first family of country music, the Carter Family, and married to legendary singer Johnny Cash. She was born in Maces Springs, Virginia and played guitar, banjo, and autoharp.
Contents
[hide]
1 With the Carter Family
2 With Mother Maybelle & the Carter Sisters
3 On her own
4 With Johnny Cash
5 References
6 External links
[edit]
With the Carter Family
In the winter of 1938-1939 the Carter Family travelled to Texas where they had a twice-daily program on border radio station XERA (later XERF) in Villa Acuña (now Ciudad Acuña), Mexico, across the border from Del Rio, Texas. Then in school, June did not accompany them. Beginning with the 1939/1940 season, June joined the Carters, this time in San Antonio, Texas, where the group's work was pre-recorded and distributed to multiple border radio stations (XELO, XEG, XERB, and XEPN). June's musical contribution to the group consisted of her autoharp playing.
In Fall, 1942, the Carters moved their program to WBT radio in Charlotte, North Carolina for a one year contract. They occupied the sunrise slot with the program airing between 5:15 and 6:15 a.m. June attended Paw Creek High School following the show on weekdays.
[edit]
With Mother Maybelle & the Carter Sisters
In March, 1943, when the Carter Family trio stopped recording together after the WBT contract, Maybelle Carter, with encouragement from her husband Ezra, formed Mother Maybelle & the Carter Sisters with her daughters Helen Carter, Anita Carter, and June. The new group first aired on radio station WRNL in Richmond, Virginia on 1 June 1943. June attended John Marshall High School during this period. In 1946, they moved to more powerful, semi clear-channel WRVA in the same city. In 1948, the group left Richmond and returned to Maces Springs.
After a short stay in southwest Virginia, Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters headed off to Knoxville, Tennessee where they had yet another radio contract on WNOX. Here they met and teamed with a young Chet Atkins. In 1949, the family travelled to Springfield, Missouri where they entertained on KWTO.
Ezra Carter declined Grand Ole Opry offers to move the family to Nashville, Tennessee a number of times because the Opry would not permit Chet Atkins to accompany the group. Finally, in 1950 Opry management relented and the group, along with Atkins, became part of the Opry company. Here the family befriended Hank Williams and Elvis Presley and June would meet Johnny Cash.
With her thin and lanky frame June often played a comedic foil during the group's performances alongside other Opry stars Faron Young and Webb Pierce.
[edit]
On her own
In the mid-1950s June moved to New York City at the urging of Elia Kazan and studied at The Actor's Studio. Kazan had seen her on stage in Tennessee and thought she had great potential. She stayed with Kazan and his wife in their apartment. During this period, she became close friends with Robert Duvall and dated James Dean. June's acting career netted her one feature film, Country Music Holiday (1958), several guest spots on TV Westerns, and a few roles on soap operas. Throughout these years, she retained her Grand Ole Opry membership.
June's first husband was singer Carl Smith and they were married from 1952 to 1957. Their daughter Rebecca Carlene Smith (known professionally as Carlene Carter) was born in 1955 and is a country singer. Her second marriage in November, 1957 was to Edwin "Rip" Nix, a policeman, and they had a daughter, Rozanna Lea (Rosie) in 1958. June married her third husband, Johnny Cash, in 1968, and they had a son, John Carter Cash.
[edit]
With Johnny Cash
In 1967, she and future husband Johnny Cash won a Grammy Award in the Best Country & Western Performance, Duet, Trio Or Group (vocal or instrumental) category for the song, "Jackson." In 1970 they won again in the Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal category for the song, "If I Were a Carpenter".
She played the part of Mrs. "Momma" Dewey in Robert Duvall's 1997 movie The Apostle.
In 1999 she won a Grammy Award for her album, Press On. Her last album Wildwood Flower was released in 2003. It contains bonus video enhancements showing extracts from the film of the recording sessions which took place at the Carter Family Estate in Virginia on 18 September, 19 and 20, 2002.
She died in May 2003 in Nashville, Tennessee, from complications following heart valve surgery two years after she had a pacemaker implanted. She was interred in Hendersonville Memory Gardens in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
She was portrayed by Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line, a 2005 biopic of Johnny Cash that focused largely on the development of their relationship from the time that they met until Carter accepted Cash's marriage proposal.
end
*****************
Johnny's Obituary
From the Tennessean:
http://www.tennessean.com/obits/
John R. CASH
Age 71
September 12, 2003
Hendersonville, TN
September 12, 2003.
The family of Johnny Cash, in this sad hour, is greatly comforted by the outpouring of love and respect for his remarkable life. We also take solace in the knowledge that he is again reunited with his dearest companion, June. Our lives and indeed, the entire planet, will forever feel the emptiness of his loss, but his music and the greatness of his spirit will endure. He is preceded in death by his parents, Carrie and Ray Cash; brothers, Jack and Roy Cash; sister, Louise Garrett; and his beloved wife of 35 years, June Carter Cash. He is survived by his daughters, Rosanne Cash Leventhal (John), Kathleen Cash Tittle (Jimmy), Cynthia Cash Panetta (Eddie) and Tara Cash Schwoebel (Frederick); son, John Carter Cash (Laura); 15 grandchildren; 3 great-grandchildren; brother, Tommy Cash; sisters, Reba Hancock and JoAnne Cash Yates; and 17 nieces and nephews. Out of respect to the family, visitation and the funeral will be private. Active Pallbearers: John Jackson Routh, Thomas Gabriel Coggins, Ted Rollins, Marty Stuart, Larry Gatlin, Randy Scruggs, Michael Rollins, Tony Bisceglia and James Dustin Tittle. Honorary Pallbearers: Tommy Cash, John Leventhal, Jimmy Tittle, Fred Schwoebel, Eddie Panetta, Harry Yates, Dr. Billy Graham, Jack Shaw, Wayne Womack, Lou Robin, Bob Sullivan, Rick Rubin, Luke Lewis, David Ferguson, Jack Clement, Earl Poole Ball and Marshall Grant. A public Memorial service will be announced at a later date.
***
Obituary
Johnny Cash
A boy from the Mississippi delta, he transcended country and western music to become an American icon
Adam Sweeting
Saturday September 13, 2003
The Guardian
Country music has grown from humble origins into one of the largest sectors in the American entertainment industry, but none of its current superstars will ever attain the mythic aura of Johnny Cash, who has died of complications from diabetes aged 71.
During the 70s and 80s Cash found himself out of favour in country music's hometown of Nashville. Yet he had, as his step-daughter Carlene Carter put it, "built that town in a lot of ways." It took the hip hop/heavy metal entrepreneur Rick Rubin to appreciate how much Cash had meant, and how much he still had to offer. Rubin invited Cash to make an album on his American record label. The result, 1994's American Recordings, featured just Cash, his acoustic guitar and that great booming baritone voice, playing songs by Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Kris Kristofferson alongside strong material of his own.
Forty years after he had begun his professional career with Sun Records in Memphis, Cash had returned to renew his claim to being a great country singer and an American legend.
He was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, and remembered, when he was three, the family moving to Dyess Colony on the Mississippi delta in 1935, where his father, Ray, worked on a federal land-reclamation scheme. "The entire family, my parents, two brothers and two sisters spent the first night in the truck under a tarpaulin," Cash recalled. "The last thing I remember before going to sleep was my mother beating time on the old Sears-Roebuck guitar, singing What Would You Give In Exchange For Your Soul." Cash's 1959 hit record, Five Feet High And Rising, recalled the night the family had to be evacuated when the river overflowed.
Living by the "Big River" as a child, Cash soaked up work songs, church music, and country & western from radio station WMPS in Memphis, or the broadcasts from Nashville's Grand Ole Opry on Friday and Saturday evenings. At night, he stayed awake to listen to music drifting up from the Mexican border stations. Cash got religion when he was 12, and the death of his brother Jack in an accident with a circular saw intensified his faith to the point of fervour.
He graduated from Dyess High School in 1950, headed north to Detroit, and found a job in a car-body factory in Pontiac, Michigan. However, he rapidly thought better of it, and signed up for the United States Air Force. He was posted to Landsberg, West Germany, and worked as a radio intercept officer, eavesdropping on Soviet radio traffic. In Germany he began to cut his musical teeth, teaching himself the guitar, trying his hand at songwriting, and playing in a band called the Landsberg Barbarians. "We were terrible," he said later, "but that Lowenbrau beer will make you feel like you're great. We'd take our instruments to these honky-tonks and play until they threw us out or a fight started. I wrote Folsom Prison Blues in Germany in 1953."
Back in the US he married Vivian Liberto, whom he had met during his basic training in Texas, and the newlyweds moved to Memphis. At first, Cash struggled to make a living as a household appliance salesman, but then his older brother Roy, also living in Memphis, introduced him to the Tennessee Three - Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant, plus AW "Red" Kernodle on steel guitar.
The foursome gained experience playing parties and church functions, while Cash mounted a persistent campaign to persuade Sam Phillips (Obituary August 28 2003), who ran Sun Studios in Memphis, to grant them an audition. Phillips finally succumbed and summoned the group to play for him in the spring of 1955. It was all too much for an overawed Kernodle, who never turned up, but the remaining three delivered a sparse, vibrant rendition of a brand new Cash song, Hey Porter. The interplay between Grant's thumping bass, Perkins's jittery lead guitar and Cash's choked strumming was, in its way, as revolutionary as anything Elvis Presley (Obituary, August 17 1977) or Carl Perkins (Obituary, January 20 1998) would accomplish with Sun.
Phillips was duly impressed, dispatched Cash to write a hit single, and by the summer Johnny Cash and the newly-named Tennessee Two had their first hit, Cry, Cry, Cry coupled with Hey Porter on the B side. Classic songs were soon pouring out of Cash. His next release was Folsom Prison Blues, then came I Walk The Line, Big River, Home Of The Blues and Guess Things Happen That Way.
While at Sun, Cash also wrote You're My Baby for Roy Orbison (Obituary December 8 1988) and Get Rhythm for Elvis Presley. "The Elvis I knew was a kid full of fun," said Cash. "He loved his work, loved his music, loved his guitar, loved gospel music and loved his mother."
Sun's first album release was Johnny Cash With His Hot And Blue Guitar, but the tight-fisted Phillips decided he wanted no further Cash albums, and also didn't fancy increasing the rising star's royalty rate. Cash's response was to move to Columbia Records in 1958, simultaneously transplanting his band, family and manager to Los Angeles. His first Columbia album, 1959's The Fabulous Johnny Cash, was also his first US album chart entry, reaching number 19, and hit singles were not long in coming, in the shape of Don't Take Your Guns To Town, I Got Stripes, Five Feet High And Rising and The Ballad Of Johnny Yuma. In January 1960, he played the first of his celebrated prison shows at San Quentin, where one of the inmates yelling him on was Merle Haggard, locked up on a burglary charge.
With growing success came mounting pressures and demands. Scheduled to play up to 300 concerts a year, Cash found himself becoming increasingly dependent on amphetamines to keep going, even though he knew they were affecting his writing and his recorded work. The quantity of his output remained high, but the quality grew erratic, with Ring Of Fire his only big hit of the early 1960s. The flip side of Cash's gritty, carved-from-stone persona was a tendency to preachiness, and this came to the fore in a string of long-winded "concept" albums such as Ride This Train (1960), Blood, Sweat And Tears (1963) and True West (1965). Whereas his original strength had been his ability to get to the point with the minimum of fuss, now he was growing pontifical.
Not that all his work form this period was without significance. His 1964 album Bitter Tears, subtitled Ballads Of The American Indian, included Cash's memorable treatment of Pete LaFarge's Ballad Of Ira Hayes, and was the first of many instances of his willingness to speak up for outcasts and underdogs.
His problems with drugs landed him in trouble through bizarre incidents such as driving a tractor into the lake behind his new house in Hendersonville, near Nashville, and inadvertently starting a forest fire which cost him an $85,000 fine. His pill-popping reached crisis point in 1965, when he was jailed for three days after being arrested in El Paso, smuggling amphetamines into the US across the Mexican border.
Perhaps inevitably, his addiction affected his family life (even though he had sired four daughters, including Rosanne who would become a respected singer and songwriter), and Vivian eventually divorced him in 1967.
Luckily for Cash, he had already met June Carter (Obituary May 17 2003), who had co-written Ring Of Fire with Merle Kilgore. The Carter clan was one of the legendary dynasties of country music, and in the 1940s, June and her sisters Helen and Anita would perform regularly with their mother, as Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.
During the 1960s, as Cash became increasingly fascinated by the scope and history of American popular music, he often included the Carter Family in his live shows. Johnny and June scored a hit with their duet version of Jackson in 1967.
They married in 1968, after he had dramatically proposed to her onstage the previous autumn. "The love that John and I share with our love for Christ is one of the most precious gifts God could have given us," she would write later. She devoted herself to the twin pillars in her life, God and Johnny Cash, and was determined to make her husband end his amphetamine addiction.
His career began to take on a broader, clearer shape. His 1968 album, Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison, was a huge success and is still widely regarded as one of the finest country records ever made. In June 1969, The Johnny Cash Show began on ABC-TV. Based in Nashville, the show pulled in artists from every conceivable genre, highlighting the breadth of Cash's tastes. Among guests who appeared on the 88 shows Cash recorded were Mahalia Jackson, the Who, Neil Young, Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan (Cash struck up a rapport with Dylan which led to them duetting on Girl From The North Country, on Dylan's 1969 country album Nashville Skyline, for which Cash also wrote sleeve notes).
Career highlights continued to accrue. Johnny Cash At San Quentin (1969) spawned a monster hit single with the tongue-in-cheek A Boy Named Sue, and the Cash/Carter duet on If I Were A Carpenter enjoyed further chart-success and scored a Grammy award. In 1971, Cash recorded the Man In Black album, the title song containing a somewhat melodramatic declaration of intent:
"I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, living in the hopeless, hungry side of town
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime... "
Cash was growing into his persona as American icon and beacon of integrity, even if there were those who found the Johnny and June act somewhat overloaded with treacly religiosity. (The Man In Black album even featured an appearance by celebrity evangelist Billy Graham.)
His commanding presence lent itself to screen appearances. Trivia buffs may recall his minor role in an episode of the 60s Clint Eastwood/Eric Fleming TV western series Rawhide, though he received greater acclaim for his appearance with Kirk Douglas in A Gunfight (1972), and appeared in a string of TV movies including The Pride Of Jesse Hallam (1980); Murder In Coweta County (1983); The Baron And The Kid (1984); and The Last Days Of Frank And Jesse (1986). He appeared in episodes of Columbo, and in 1993 popped up in the television series Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman.
He had achieved an apparently unassailable status, but by Cash's own admission, "around 1972 or 1973, the excitement went out of my recording career." He could still make hits, like One Piece At A Time or Ghost Riders In The Sky, but while he had been capable of making tosh such as The Holy Land (1970), he could still recognise that the stuff being peddled as "country" music was too middle of the road for a veteran of the hard-rockin' Sun years like himself.
Columbia's ending of their 28-year relationship with the singer in 1986 stands as one of the greatest gaffes ever perpetrated by the record business, and it rankled with Cash more than he liked to acknowledge. Still, he was rapidly signed by Mercury, with whom he recorded a batch of convincing albums including Johnny Cash Is Coming To Town (1987), Water From The Wells Of Home (1988) and Boom Chicka Boom (1990), the latter kicking off with Cash's trademark observation, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." Also during the 1980s, Cash teamed up with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson to form the successful recording and touring outfit, the Highwaymen.
In 1988, Cash underwent double heart bypass surgery in Nashville, a warning bell which triggered a re-evaluation of his remarkable career by younger generations of listeners. That year, the British Red Rhino label issued 'Til Things Are Brighter, featuring young artists covering Cash songs to raise money for Aids research, and he was greatly touched by it. In 1992, he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in New York, and that autumn Johnny and June performed It Ain't Me Babe at the Madison Square Garden concert commemorating Dylan's 30 years in the music business.
In 1993, Cash's gravelly baritone featured on The Wanderer, from U2's Zooropa album ("I was thrilled to death, because I love that song," Cash enthused), and in 1994 the American Recordings album amounted to a complete reappraisal of the legend of Johnny Cash, and one which found a ready new audience. An appearance at the Glastonbury Festival boosted his burgeoning new profile. A second album on the American label, Unchained, was released in November 1996, and found Cash mixing vintage country tunes by Jimmie Rodgers and the Louvin Brothers with "alternative rock" songs from Soundgarden and Beck.
Three more albums for American followed, with 2002's The Man Comes Around in particular earning rapturous critical acclaim for commanding reinventions of Bridge Over Troubled Water, Desperado and Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus.
Given Cash's precarious health, it was a cruel irony that he was pre-deceased by June last May, after she had undergone heart surgery. This wasn't long after Cash had guested on his daughter Rosanne's album, Rules Of Travel, singing lyrics which clearly signalled his own fragile mortality - "I cannot move mountains now, I can no longer run" .
Johnny Cash was a country musician who was too big for country music, and his work as artist, humanitarian, and patron of songs and songwriters will endure indefinitely.
He had one son, John, with June and four daughters, Rosanne, Kathleen, Cindy and Tara, with Vivian Liberto.
· Johnny Cash, musician, born February 26 1932; died September 12 2003
end
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obituary
June Carter Cash
Scion of one of American country music's leading dynasties, she was at the microphone from the age of 10
Tony Russell
Saturday May 17, 2003
The Guardian
With her husband Johnny Cash and an extended line of children and stepchildren in the business, June Carter, who has died aged 73, belonged to American country music's first family. But she herself had been born into a rich musical inheritance. Her mother was Maybelle Carter, a seminal country music guitarist and a member, with AP and Sara Carter, of the original Carter Family, one of the most successful radio and recording groups of the first age of country music.
In the late 1930s, sponsored by Kolorbak hair dye, the Carter Family's broadcasts - originating from radio station XERA in Del Rio, Texas, but transmitted, to avoid federal regulations, from just over the border in Mexico - radiated across the US and Canada. Almost all the second-generation Carters joined the family group: first Sara's children Joe and Janette, then June and her sisters, Helen (obituary, June 18, 1998) and Anita. All were singing and playing on radio before they were in their teens; when June sang the Engine 143 into the XERA microphone for the first time, she was only 10.
After the Carter Family broke up in 1943, Maybelle and her daughters, working as Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, found a new radio home on WRVA in Richmond, Virginia, where they became a leading act on the Old Dominion Barn Dance. After similar stints in Knoxville and Springfield, Missouri, now aided by a young guitarist named Chet Atkins (obituary, July 2 2001), they settled in 1950 on the leading barn-dance show, Nashville's Grand Ole Opry.
June played the autoharp in the group, but her forte was playing "Aunt Polly", singing comic numbers with an exaggerated hillbilly accent and a wide toothy grin, hitching up her gingham skirt to reveal button boots and executing a clatter ing buck-dance - "one of the silliest-looking vaudeville jigs," she said, "that a girl could ever do."
Life on the road for a teenage girl in a group was hard. "The old circuits sometimes called for five shows a day," she recalled. "While everyone [else] was dating, I was busy riding everywhere in our old Cadillac, setting up the PA system, and taking money at the door. My body ached. Then I stopped a show with a routine, and I was hooked. There would be no turning back now. I would not go to college, would not marry Freddie Fugate back home and raise children, cook three meals a day and be an average American housewife."
In 1961 the Carters went on the road with Johnny Cash. Helen and Anita took time out to raise families, but June stayed on, cowriting with Merle Kilgore one of Cash's biggest hits, Ring Of Fire, which, she claimed, symbolised her feeling of being engulfed by him. On an English tour in 1966, they drew a larger audience in Liverpool than the Beatles. Already a successful recording duet, scoring hits with It Ain't Me Babe, Jackson (which won a Grammy for Best Country Duet in 1967) and Guitar Pickin' Man, June and Johnny made their professional alliance personal when they married in 1968, after he proposed to her on stage in London, Ontario.
It was the second time for him, the third for her; she had been married in the mid-1950s to the country singer Carl Smith, and later to a contractor, Rip Nix. Her support enabled Cash to break a long drug habit and repair a faltering career. She also reinforced his Christian faith, and in later years they often appeared with the evangelist Billy Graham. By 1969 Cash's TV show, featuring the reassembled Carter sisters, was nationally networked and he had won an armful of awards.
He and June continued to record duets, such as If I Were A Carpenter (another Grammy winner, in 1970), If I Had A Hammer, The Loving Gift and Allegheny, while June had success on her own with A Good Man (1971) and the 1975 album Appalachian Pride, produced by Cash.
Meanwhile the intertwined Carter/Cash dynasty continued to produce talented artists. Carlene Carter, June's daughter by Carl Smith, deserted her country roots to make brash rock records.
In the 1950s June studied acting in New York, at the suggestion of the director Elia Kazan, who spotted her while scouting for locations in Tennessee. She took occasional movie roles, including the part of Robert Duvall's mother in The Apostle (1997).
She wrote an autobiography, Among My Klediments (1979) and a book of reminiscences, From The Heart (1987). In 1999 she recorded what was effectively a musical autobiography, the album Press On, and won another Grammy.
Earlier this month June had open-heart surgery, apparently successfully, but she went into cardiac arrest; and for several days was on life-support. This was terminated at the request of her family. She is survived by her husband, seven children and 13 grandchildren.
· Valerie June Carter Cash, country music singer, born June 23 1929; died May 15 2003.
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