JOHNNY CASH
tennessean.com - The multifaceted Man in Black - Saturday, 09/13/03
J.R. Cash born in Kingsland, Ark. on Feb. 26, 1932.
To his parents, and on his birth certificate, he was J.R. Cash.
He graduated HS 1950, moved to Michigan to work in an automobile plant, then joined the Air Force. The military refused to accept ''J.R.'' as a first name, and he became ''John R. Cash.''
During basic training in Texas, he met a high school senior named Vivian Liberto. Upon his 1954 discharge, Mr. Cash moved to Memphis, married Liberto, worked as a door-to-door appliance salesman, enrolled at the Keegan School of Broadcasting and put together an upstart country group to help him become a gospel singer. ''Sun Records was between my house and the broadcasting school,'' Mr. Cash told journalist Peter Guralnick. Sun owner/producer Sam Phillips, a rock 'n' roll pioneer whose records with Elvis Presley were making pop inroads, had no use for a gospel artist. Cash went back to the studio with his Tennessee Two (guitarist Luther Perkins and bass man Marshall Grant) with homesick train song Hey Porter! and Folsom Prison Blues, a song that borrowed liberally from Gordon Jenkins' Crescent City Blues recording (Jenkins successfully sued Mr. Cash, citing similar words and an identical melody, in the late 1960s).
Phillips charged Mr. Cash to write ''an uptempo weeper love song,'' and he filled the order with Cry! Cry! Cry!, which would be paired with Hey Porter! as Mr. Cash's first single, released 1955.
''Musicians scoffed, but Cash and the Tennessee Two possessed the quality that had been lacking in country music since Hank Williams [1923-1953] died -- originality,'' wrote Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins in Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.
In January 1956, Mr. Cash followed the tradition of Elvis Presley and Hank Williams by joining the Louisiana Hayride radio show. Six months later, he was given a slot on the Grand Ole Opry. Opry star Carl Smith introduced Mr. Cash by calling him ''the brightest rising star in the country music of America.''
That December, Mr. Cash again made headlines when he and Presley were photographed with Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins during a Sun session. That photograph is said to capture ''The Million Dollar Quartet.''
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On New Year's Day 1959, Mr. Cash's travels took him to San Quentin prison, where he played a concert for the inmates. Eleven years later, the performer would record a live album at San Quentin, but this initial appearance was notable in that one of the prisoners was future country legend Merle Haggard.