birthday of Cash

The Writer's Almanac

It's the birthday of the singer and songwriter Johnny Cash, (books by this author) born in Kingsland, Arkansas (1932). He grew up in the middle of the Great Depression, his parents struggling to pay the bills on a cotton farm they'd bought with help from a New Deal program. When he was twelve years old Cash watched his brother die in a table-saw accident. He never forgot how his mother had to return to working the farm the day after the funeral.
It was his mother who played guitar and sang songs to Cash and his siblings. But Cash didn't learn how to play music himself until he enlisted in the Air Force and went off to Germany. He began playing music and performing there with his fellow servicemen.

One night, they were showing a movie on the base about the conditions at a prison back in America called Folsom Prison. The movie made such an impression on Cash that he decided to write a song about it called "Folsom Prison Blues." When Cash got discharged, he took a job as a door-to-door appliance salesman in Memphis. But around the same time, he hooked up with a couple other musicians and got an audition at Sun Records. The third song they recorded was "Folsom Prison Blues" and it made Cash famous.

He married June Carter in 1968 and they were married until June's death in May of 2003. Johnny Cash died a few months later.