Johnny Cash biography

However Cash eventually left the label after a disagreement with Phillips and moved to Columbia Records who teamed him up with producer Don Law who encouraged Cash's folk inclinations. As well as international hits such as Ring Of Fire, sung in Cash's by now, typical, slow western, macho half spoken drawl, Cash would release a series of challenging albums examining America's heartland. 1960's Ride This Train was a travelogue about America while 1963's Blood, Sweat & Tears was in praise of the American working man. 1964's Bitter Tears was a collection of Indian protest songs which featured the the song, The Ballad Of Ira Hayes, about the Indian who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. 1965's Orange Blossom Special also included three Bob Dylan songs. It was clear that Cash was presenting a far wider range of American music than most country artists. By now he had formed a collective which would include Carl Perkins and assorted members of the Carter family, including June Carter whom he married in 1968.

But during these artistically creative years, his rising fame ran parallel with a reputation as a hot-headed, boozer and pill-popper, leading to the disintegration of his first marriage to Vivien Liberto. He wrecked cars, missed shows and even once, accidentally set the Los Padres National Wildlife Refuge park on fire! He was also banned from the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville's home of country music, for smashing the floodlights with a mic stand. The downward spiral reached its nadir in October 1965 when Cash was hauled off a plane in El Paso, Texas, caught with 1000 pills hidden in his guitar case. In 1967 he decided to undertake recovery. He took off to Cattanooga in Tennessee, undergoing a kind of cold turkey away from the prying eyes of the world. His recovery began with his second marriage to June Carter, a member of one of country's music's greatest clans. She was the steadying anchor in Cash's life.

In 1968 and 1969 Cash recorded two albums that would come to define his career, the live discs - At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin. They were electrically charged albums, performed infront of inmates that Cash felt some empathy for. The albums reinforced Cash's rebellious rock spirit. Cash says of those albums: "I knew I had that prison audience where all I had to do was say, 'Take over! Break! And they would have!'" In 1969 Cash put in a guest appearance on Dylan's Nashville Skyline album and had\a huge pop hit with A Boy Named Sue. Now, where previously the establishment, and Nashville had frowned on him for his drug usage and outlaw rebel image, he was embraced by the powers that be and got to host his own network series TV show. Around this time, influenced by his wife, Cash became more involved in religion. By the early 70s Cash had traded in his rebel status for that of the patriotic, God-fearin' Christian. On his 1971 album Man In Black he even sang a duet with American evangelist Billy Graham. He continued to tour throughout the '70s including concerts for Vietnam draftees and shows behind the iron curtain, stopping briefly to make the film, Gospel Road, in 1973.

The 80s saw him become a member of the highly successful superstar outlaw country band The Highwaymen alongside Kris Kristoffersen, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. In 1986 they released the Highwayman album and toured the world. But the 90s saw Cash resurrected as an alternative rock icon, largely due to Def Jam producer Rick Rubin who released Cash's comeback set, American Recordings in 1994. Best known for his rap collaborations with the likes of Run DMC and the Beastie Boys, Rubin seemed like an unlikely collaborator. Cash was wary. "He looks like a hippy and dresses like the ultimate wino," said Johnny. American Recordings was a revelation. It mixed powerfully stark original songs like Delia's Gone with unusual covers like Danzig's Thirteen and Nick Lowe's The Beast In Me. The album's stark beauty gave Cash his musical dignity back. Cash garnered further critical kudos with the follow up, 1996's set Unchained, where he tackled songs by Soundgarden and Beck.

Failing health hampered his comeback though when Cash was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. (He had already undergone open heart surgery in 1988). He recovered sufficiently to record the 2000 album, American 3: Solitary Man where Cash sang astounding covers of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus and U2's The One, making them sound as if they were written for him. By the time of 2003's American IV: The Man Comes Around, Cash was suffering from diabetic neuropathy which made him susceptible to pneumonia. In the studio, sometimes he could only sing one verse at a time before becoming tired. The effect was at its most poignant in the video to the album's track, Hurt, a cover of the Nine Inch Nails track. Seated on a throne, looking frail and infirm, the video combined flashbacks of Cash in his prime, only highlighting his current lamentable state of health. The Hurt video, which featured the last appearance of his wife June before her death in May 2003, was incredibly poignant but even at death's door, Cash managed to make the song his own, imbuing it with an incredible emotive sense of loss and regret that hadn't been heard in the NIN original.

Cash died in hospital in Nashville, Tennessee in September 2003. He was 71. After nearly 50 years of making records, Cash's place among the defining voices of American music was guaranteed. As U2's Bono said of him: 'He had a voice that made John The Baptist sound like a cissy.' Discography