Johnny Cash

Cash made only a few films, but quite a few appearances on television, both in series and made-for-TV films, and was especially effective as a rural Southern sheriff in the 1930s determined to bring to justice a wealthy landowner who committed murder because he believed he was above the law in Murder in Coweta County (1983), a drama based on a true story.

He was voted the 31st Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Artist of all time by Rolling Stone.

Johnny Cash was born February 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas, to Carrie Cash (Rivers) and Raymond Cash.

His songwriting went from a brief process to a very long one as he aged and his health declined. He wrote the song "Big River" while on a short boat ride across New York City's Hudson River in the 1950s, while he spent weeks crafting "The Man Comes Around," one of the last songs he wrote.

Contrary to popular belief, he never served more than one night in prison (he was held in jail overnight once after being caught smuggling 1,163 amphetamine tablets across from Mexico). He actually wrote "Folsom Prison Blues" after seeing the documentary Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951).

He made his first single, "Hey Porter", for Sun Records in 1955.

In 1958 he moved to Columbia Records.

He had long periods of drug abuse during the 1960s, but later that decade he successfully fought his addiction with the help of singer June Carter Cash, whom he married in 1968.

He was addicted to speed (usually with alcohol or morphine as a chaser) through much of his 20s until 1967, when June Carter Cash and numerous his friends and family members staged an arduous but successful intervention. It is thought that he had an addictive personality which he may have been genetic, as many members of his family were addicts to various substances and vices.

Cash and "American Recordings" posted a "thank you" to the Nashville country music industry in Billboard Magazine after winning the Grammy for best country record for "Unchained" in the form of the infamous photo of Johnny angrily giving the middle finger to the camera taken back in 1969 during his San Quentin prison performance. Cash did this because he was enraged by Nashville having pretty much left behind him and other aging "country" artists who had defined the genre to make room for the more pop-oriented new country artists, like Garth Brooks.

He went through much of the 1970s on a sanctimonious cloud, having associated himself with evangelists and turned his shows into gospel performances where he encouraged people to accept Jesus Christ and condemned blatant sexuality and violence in culture. He said in the 1990s that, although his faith remained as strong as ever and many of his songs expressed this, his attitudes had changed and he found his 1970s' overzealousness distasteful, having learned to respect that people should have their own beliefs.

In 1971 he appeared in the western A Gunfight (1971) with 'Kirk Douglas (I)'.

He was invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1972. President Richard Nixon's office requested that he play "Okie from Muskogee" (a Merle Haggard song that scorned "hippies", youthful marijuana users and war protesters) and "Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song that derides the integrity of welfare recipients). Reportedly he refused to play either song because he found both songs morally reprehensible. However, it was also reported that he refused to play them because he did not have enough time to learn the songs with the band before the performance. He ended up playing a series of his own more left-leaning, politically-charged songs, including "The Ballad of Ira H. Hayes" (about a Native-American World War II Marine hero who helped raise the American flag on Iwo Jima but was subjected to ferocious racism upon his return to Arizona) and "Man in Black" (which contains angry, anti-war lyrics, which Cash almost certainly wrote about the Vietnam War).

In 1975 Cash wrote his autobiography, "Man In Black", which is now out of print.

In the late 1980s he moved from Columbia Records to Mercury, then in the next decade moved again to American Recordings. Amongst his biggest hit records were "I Walk the Line", "Ring of Fire" and "A Boy Named Sue".

The band Coldplay was supposed to record a song titled "Til Kingdom Comes" with him for their album "X&Y", but Cash died before that. They added the song as a hidden track and dedicated it to him. In their "Twisted Logic Tour", they played this song in all the venues in addition to playing a cover of his famous song "Ring of Fire". On the two nights (6 & 7 September 2005) at Madison Square Garden in New York they also dedicated the song "Til Kingdom Comes" to the victims of hurricane Katrina.