REMEMBERING JOHNNY CASH
Most of us think we know the “Man in Black,” who died 20 years ago on September 12, 2003. But Cash told Parade in 1995 that his public image didn’t really capture him: “People think I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, served hard time in Folsom Prison, that my life’s been one drug stupor after another. But I’m a healthy man. I feel good. I’ve won a few rounds with God’s help.” Here are a few other Johnny Cash tales from the Parade Vault. —Anne Krueger
DECEMBER 7, 1971
Parade’s first cover story on Johnny Cash set the record straight: He was never a convict and he is not “a common man”—although that is who he sings for. The convict myth may have arisen from the one night he spent in jail in El Paso in 1965 after crossing the Mexican border with a supply of Dexedrine tablets in his pockets.
Cash, who was already a millionaire by 19'1 and had written '0 songs, did have humble beginnings; he was born to sharecroppers in Arkansas in 1932. When he turned 18, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served in Germany where he bought his first guitar for $5. Out of the service, he married Vivian Liberto and they moved to Memphis where he tried to get into country music as a DJ, with no luck. Things looked up when he teamed with Luther Perkins, an electric guitarist, and Marshall Grant, a bass fiddler. Their trio, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, came to the attention of Sam Phillips at Sun Records, who’d helped Elvis. With Phillips’ help, in 1955 Cash sold more than 100,000 copies of his first record, “Cry, Cry, Cry.” He wrote “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line” and soon was a regular on the Grand Ole Opry, the numberone country music radio show that broadcast from Nashville.
In the 1960s, his pill habit contributed to the breakup of his marriage to Vivian, who divorced him and took their four daughters with her. Cash got clean and in 1968 married June Carter of the famed country music family. He had his own ABC show, The Johnny Cash Show, for three seasons and welcomed son, John Carter Cash, in 1970. By the time this cover story came out, Cash was one of the top five Columbia recording artists, ranking with Barbra Streisand, Simon & Garfunkel, Andy Williams and Bob Dylan. But to most of his fans, he was still one of their own, singing to humble men trapped in a world of sweet-sad defeats.
OCTOBER 9, 1977
By 19'', Cash and Carter had become one of the most formidable musical power couples of all time. They graced Parade on the eve of the televised Country Music Association Awards show, a sign that country music wasn’t just for Southern folks anymore. Over his lifetime, Cash won 13 Grammys, the first for a duet with Carter.
JUNE 11, 1995
Nearly 25 years after Parade’s first interview with Cash, the magazine spoke with him in Branson, Mo., where he and Carter were performing, accompanied by their son, John Carter Cash, 26. Cash, 63, was in a mood to look back, and was crediting his parents, his wife and God for his success.
“A lot of my father is in my songs,” he told Parade. “American tales he told me about riding the freight trains looking for work inspired songs like ‘Ridin’ on the Cotton Belt.’ He gave me a lot.” His mother, he said, gave him his voice, her presence, her height—and singing lessons. “When I was 4, I was singing along with my mother. I had a high little voice. One day I was out cutting wood with my father. I was a high tenor. But when I came home, I went in the back door singing the bass part,” he said. His mother saw his change of voice as a sign from God. She got him singing lessons at 50 cents an hour and took in washing to pay for them.
And Carter, whom he’d met at his very first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry? She was his everything, he said. “It’s like we fill each other’s needs. She’s my companion, my friend; we talk about things we don’t talk to anybody else about. We understand each other. Sometimes it’s scary—she’s my rock, my anchor. She’s always there.” June Carter Cash died May 15, 2003. Johnny Cash died four months later.