Johnny cash when was he born

Cash returned later with a secular song he had written, reportedly "Hey Porter. The record was well received, debuting at No. The song's popularity secured him a place on the popular broadcast the Louisiana Hayride, and in Cash released his classic "Folsom Prison Blues" for Sun.

But it was Cash's next single, "I Walk the Line," that was his breakthrough. The song became a No. The hits kept coming, and in Cash appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in all black. His attire earned him the nickname that would follow him through the years: The Man in Black.

With his star rising and most of his musical profits landing in Sam Phillips's pocket, Cash left Sun in to join the roster at Columbia Records. Cash toured heavily throughout the early s, playing as many as shows a year.

He began taking amphetamines to keep up with the pace of his life. For a spell, he was roommates in Nashville with Waylon Jennings, who also had a problem with pills. During this period, Cash had many run-ins with the law. While on tour in , he was busted by a narcotics squad that discovered a vast store of prescriptions pills in his guitar case.

He was also accused of starting a forest fire in California. In Starkville, Mississippi, he was arrested for picking flowers on private property. As his drug addiction worsened, Cash broke up with his first wife Vivian. By , he had moved to New York City, effectively abandoning his family. In , Cash conquered his addiction with the help of religion and June Carter , who he married that year.

Cash had first met June when he toured with the Carter Family in the early s. Although Cash would have relapses in the future, the worst was behind him. The live recording of the performance, "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison," became one of his best-selling albums. It cemented Cash's image as a counterculture figure.

His live version of "Folsom Prison Blues," with the screams of the incarcerated cheering him on, became a No. Cash followed up the album with "Johnny Cash at San Quentin" in His first guest on the variety program was Bob Dylan, with whom he'd recently worked with on Dylan's album "Nashville Skyline.

The show ran until , broadcasting 58 episodes in all. In addition to releasing hits like the politically charged "Man in Black," the love song "Flesh and Blood," and Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" in the s, Cash also championed many social causes.

By the late s, Cash had dipped precipitously in popularity. American Recordings , while not a blockbuster success, revived his career critically and brought him in touch with a younger, rock-oriented audience. His VH1 Storytellers outing was released in , and in the spring of , Cash compiled Love, God, Murder , a three-disc retrospective focusing on the major songwriting themes dominant throughout his career. Health problems plagued Cash throughout the '90s and into the s, but he continued to record with Rubin ; their fourth collaboration, American IV: The Man Comes Around , was released in late The following year, the Mark Romanek -directed video for his cover of Nine Inch Nails ' "Hurt" garnered considerable acclaim and media attention, culminating in an unexpected nomination for video of the year at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Not long after the video sparked numerous stories, his beloved wife June Carter Cash died on May 15, , of complications following heart surgery. Four months later, Johnny died of complications from diabetes in Nashville, Tennessee. He was In Lost Highway released the next-to-last installment of Cash 's legendary "American" recordings, American V: A Hundred Highways , from the late singer's last sessions with collaborator Rick Rubin.

The final installment from those sessions appeared as American VI: Ain't No Grave , in early , and is reported to be the last of the American Recordings releases. Sony Legacy started a vigorous "bootleg" series of rare, unreleased, or hard to find Cash tracks in with the two-disc Bootleg, Vol. In , Out Among the Stars -- a collection of unreleased material recorded in the early '80s, produced by Billy Sherrill and finished under the direction of John Carter Cash in -- appeared in the spring.

Cash 's Mercury albums received a complete reissue in the summer of in the form of a hefty box set, which had an accompanying sampler called Easy Rider: The Best of the Mercury Years. AllMusic relies heavily on JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to use the site fully.

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Born February 26, in Kingsland, AR. Stationed in Germany, he endured what he would later describe as a lonely, miserable period. Fortunately, he learned to play the guitar and began turning the poetry he'd been writing into song lyrics. After seeing a powerful film about Folsom Prison, he sat down to write what would become one of his signature songs—"Folsom Prison Blues.

With his powerful position in a generally conservative musical world, he also championed Native American rights and other social ills. Cash left the military in and married Vivian Liberto, whom he met before joining the air force; they had corresponded throughout his tour of duty. The two lived in Memphis, Tennessee, and he earned a meager living selling appliances. Nonetheless, he summoned the passion to sell himself as a singer, playing with a gospel group and canvassing radio stations for chances to perform on the air.

Eventually Cash was granted an audience with trail-blazing producer Sam Phillips, at whose Sun Studios the likes of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and others made recordings that would help change the course of popular music.

Phillips was a hard sell, but Cash won the opportunity to record his first single; "Cry, Cry, Cry" became a number 14 hit in , and Cash's group played some local gigs with Presley. Pond describes Cash's early records as "stark, unsettling and totally original. The instrumentation was spare, almost rudimentary" featuring bass and lead guitar supplied by his Tennessee Two and Cash's rhythm guitar, which had "a piece of paper stuck underneath the top frets to give it a scratchy sound.

In Cash left his sales job and recorded the hits "Folsom Prison Blues"—containing the legendary and much-quoted lyric "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"—and "I Walk the Line. Singles he recorded on Sun at Phillips's insistence just before his contract lapsed continued to chart for years afterward, much to Cash's chagrin. In the midst of his success, however, Cash grew apart from Vivian and their children.

He grew dependent on drink and drugs and became increasingly dissolute. Such misery no doubt contributed force to such work as 's "Ring of Fire," which was co-written by June Carter, who also performed on the track. Cash and Carter—of the famed Carter family—became increasingly close, both professionally and personally. His marriage collapsed in and he nearly died of an overdose. Cash has long attributed his subsequent rehabilitation to two factors: Carter and God.

He and Carter wed in and later had a son, John. In any event, Cash expanded his repertoire as the s unfolded, incorporating folk music and protest themes. He recorded songs by folk-rock avatar Bob Dylan and up-and-comers like Kris Kristofferson, but by the end of the decade, driven perhaps by his generally out-of-control life, his hits came largely from novelty songs like Shel Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue.

That year saw him win two Grammy Awards for Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, a live album for a worshipful audience of prisoners that led, perhaps inevitably, to Johnny Cash at San Quentin. From to he hosted a smash variety program for television, The Johnny Cash Show. The s saw more career triumphs, notably a Grammy-winning duet with Carter on Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter," a command performance for President Richard Nixon, acting roles in film and on television, a best-selling autobiography, and several more hit albums, including Man in Black, the title of which would become his permanent show business moniker.

While this label has been associated with his "outlaw" image, he and his bandmates originally wore black because they had nothing else that matched; besides, as Cash informed Entertainment Weekly, "black is better for church.