Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash

Nicknamed 'The Man in Black', Cash, with his distinctive, slightly fluttery, baritone, was one of the few country performers widely known outside country music circles. Though he first achieved success in the rock'n'roll era and became a country superstar at a time when country performers were increasingly seeking to cross over into the pop market, Cash's music was largely unaffected by these trends. His style and concerns were always more folk-orientated (in the manner of Woody Guthrie). This approach led him to record with Bob Dylan and champion American Indian rights (notably Bitter Tears, 1964). In contrast to Merle Haggard, who in the course of his career established himself as a historian of country music, Cash in much of his work has functioned as a historian of the rural poor (Cash, pp.105-132).

The son of a poor cotton farmer, Cash was raised on a Federal Government resettlement colony in Dyess, Tennessee (which was flooded in 1937, an event recalled in 'Five Feet High and Rising', Columbia, 1959). He took up the guitar and songwriting while stationed in the air force in Germany, and in 1954 in Memphis joined forces with bassist Marshall Grant and guitarist Luther Perkins (no relation to Carl Perkins), who had briefly played in his elder brother Roy's Delta Rhythm Ramblers. Billed as Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two they were signed to Sam Phillips' Sun Records in 1955 and had an immediate country hit with 'Cry, Cry, Cry' and a pop hit with the pared-down simplicity of 'I Walk the Line'* (1956), his most representative Sun recording. In search of pop success Phillips paired Cash with writer/producer Jack Clement.

Later that year, unhappy at Sun because Phillips wasn't interested in albums - a projected tribute to Hank Williams was never completed - Cash joined Columbia where he was assigned Don Law as producer. Law had produced artists as varied as Robert Johnson and Flatt and Scruggs and was more traditionally orientated than most producers. He encouraged Cash's folk inclinations and returned the singer to the spare sound of his first recordings. Cash's hits of this period included 'Don't Take Your Guns to Town' (1959) and 'Ring of Fire'* (1963) (Neimark, pp.165-178). At the same time, for his personal appearances Cash (by now backed by the Tennessee Three with the addition of drummer W. S. Holland) established what one critic has called a 'folk troupe' to ...