Tulsa has eye on Cash archive
But singer’s roots in Arkansas
Arkansas lost Johnny Cash to Tennessee.
Now, his archive might be heading to Oklahoma.
The Washington Post reported in October that Cash’s heirs were in talks with the George Kaiser Family Foundation about putting his archive in Tulsa, a budding mecca for Americana music historians that’s home to the archives of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie.
“I’m not really in a position to comment on that,” Ken Levit, executive director of the foundation, said Wednesday.
Efforts to reach Cash’s daughter Rosanne Cash, through her agent, and son John Carter Cash, through his website, were unsuccessful.
But John Carter Cash forwarded a reporter’s email to Josh Matas, who works for the John R. Cash Revocable Trust.
“Various members of the
GOV. ASA HUTCHINSON, who said he hadn’t heard the archive might go to Tulsa “I would oppose that. My goodness, that would be very disappointing.”
Cash family own a variety of pieces that are currently and proudly on display in museums across the country, including The Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville,” Matas wrote in an email on Friday. “There is not one exclusive Cash family archive.”
When asked if the Cash family was considering consolidating the Man in Black’s artifacts in Tulsa, Matas wrote, “I can only speak to the items controlled by the Trust or with John Carter and at this time there is no collaboration or relocation happening.”
These things can take time. Meanwhile, everybody appears to be walking the line.
The matter hasn’t gotten much attention in Arkansas, where Cash spent the first 18 years of his life.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he hadn’t heard the Cash archive might go to Tulsa, but he perked up when he did hear about it.
“I would oppose that,” Hutchinson said. “My goodness, that would be very disappointing. There’s such a great history there that we already have. It’s his birthplace. It’s his boyhood home. If we can do some more work to get that, we want to compete for it.”
Archivists in Arkansas also were surprised.
Shannon Lausch, multimedia archivist at the Center for Arkansas History and Culture at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said it was news to her.
“We would definitely have an interest in something like that,” she said. “It would definitely complement what we have here and provide a lot of information about Arkansas history.”
David Stricklin, director of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock, said “it would be nice” to have Cash’s archive in Arkansas.
Stricklin said the issue regarding Cash’s archive may come down to cash. The George Kaiser Family Foundation paid about $20 million for the Dylan archive, which consists of 6,000 items including writings, recordings and memorabilia. It’s scheduled to open in two years.
“If negotiating with the Kaiser Foundation or the University of Tulsa to sell those materials to them, then you’re just in a bidding process, and I don’t know anybody who has that kind of money,” he said. “You just hate to see that money is the ticket to making these things publicly accessible. If it’s going to cost $10 million, they won’t be here.”
“It’s a sensitive subject because it’s what the family wants,” Lausch said. “I’m just glad it’s going to an archive and will be accessible that way.”
Much of Arkansas’ collectible material is in other states, including archaeological artifacts at Yale University and some of civil-rights activist Daisy Bates’ papers in Wisconsin, said Stricklin, whose father, Al Stricklin, played piano for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.
“We’ve often been kind of back on our heels on those kinds of things because they had this gigantic blob of money to work with and we just didn’t,” said Stricklin, referring to universities in other parts of the country.
Ruth Hawkins director of Arkansas State University’s Heritage Sites, including Johnny Cash’s boyhood home at Dyess, said it makes sense for his archive to be in Nashville, Tenn.
“There is already a Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville that has an extensive collection of artifacts and archival materials, and they do a great job,” Hawkins said.
That museum has “the largest and most comprehensive collection of Johnny Cash artifacts and memorabilia in the world,” according to its website, johnnycashmuseum.com.
“The Cash Museum is made possible via a license with the Trust and rotates exhibits frequently,” Matas wrote in an email.
“Nashville makes the most sense for this,” Hawkins said. “Our museum and restored boyhood home focus on his early life, and the influences of growing up in Dyess, Arkansas, on his music, while Nashville is the place most associated with his international celebrity.”
Nina Jones, operations manager at Sun Studio in Memphis, said she also was unaware of the effort to put Cash’s archive in Tulsa. Cash recorded at Sun Studio.
“We would love to welcome the archive here in Memphis,” Jones said in an email. “Although your message is the first I’m hearing of it.”
Cash’s musical roots grew from the “rich black bottom dirt” of the Arkansas Delta.
When Cash sang about the 1937 flood in “Five Feet High and Rising,” he was remembering a childhood in northeast Arkansas.
Stricklin said Cash had “such a heart” for the people of Arkansas.
“This is someone who just grew up out of the ground,” Stricklin said. “I know that sounds kind of demeaning, but I think the earth of this state was important to him.”
Born in Kingsland, Cash grew up in Dyess Colony in Mississippi County, where he graduated from high school.
According to The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, Cash’s love of music apparently began at Dyess.
“His mother introduced him to the guitar, and the local Church of God introduced him to music,” according to the encyclopedia entry.
“He acquired a fascination for the guitar and a love for singing. Cash first sang on the radio at station KLCN in Blytheville while attending Dyess High School.”
But Cash didn’t acquire his first guitar until he was in the Air Force and stationed in Germany, according to the article. That first guitar cost him $5.
Cash moved to Memphis and later Nashville, never returning to live in Arkansas. He died in 2003.
In the song “Abner Brown,” Cash wrote:
“Lord take me back to the cotton land
To Arkansas take me home again
Let me be the boy that I once have been
Let me walk that road to the cotton gin”