Johnny Cash..Biography and best films
The Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus
Johnny Cash, John Denver
Released: 1973
Directed by: Robert Elfstrom
Johnny Cash and Roscoe Holcombe: Rainbow Quest
Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger
Released: 2004
The Baron and the Kid
Johnny Cash, Darren McGavin
Released: 1984
Directed by: Gary Nelson
Five Minutes to Live
Johnny Cash, Ron Howard
Released: 1961
Directed by: Bill Karn
Country Legends Live: Vol. 2
Johnny Cash, Billy Ray Cyrus
Released: 1993
The Nashville Sound
Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn
Released: 1979
Directed by: Robert Elfstrom
Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan: Cowboy Jack Clement’s Home Movies
Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton
Released: 2005
Directed by: Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon
A Tribute to Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash, Sheryl Crow
Released: 1999
Stagecoach
Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson
Released: 1986
Directed by: Ted Post
The Pride of Jesse Hallam
Johnny Cash, Eli Wallach
Released: 1981
Directed by: Gary Nelson
Louisiana Hayride
Johnny Cash, George Jones
Roy Orbison: In Dreams
Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson
Released: 200..
Johnny Cash: A Concert Behind Prison Walls
Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt
Released: 197
Road to Nashville
Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings
Released: 1967
Directed by: Will Ze..
Johnny Cash Biography
Johnny Cash grew up in a poor farming community and joined the Air Force in 1950. He co-founded a band following his discharge, and within a few years Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two had scored hits with songs like “Walk the Line.” Cash’s career was nearly derailed in the 1960s by a serious substance-abuse problem, but his marriage to June Carter and acclaimed album Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) put him back on track. In later years, Cash joined the country supergroup the Highwaymen and released a series of recordings with producer Rick Rubin.
Cash was born on February 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas. The son of poor Southern Baptist sharecroppers, Cash, one of seven children born to Ray and Carrie Rivers Cash, moved with his family at the age of 3 to Dyess, Arkansas, so that his father could take advantage of the New Deal farming programs instituted by President Franklin Roosevelt. There, the Cash clan lived in a five-room house and farmed 20 acres of cotton and other seasonal crops.
Cash spent much of the next 15 years out in the fields, working alongside his parents and siblings to help pay off their debts. It wasn’t an easy life, and music was one of the ways the Cash family found escape from some of the hardships. Songs surrounded the young Cash, be it his mother’s folk and hymn ballads, or the working music people sang out in the fields.
From an early age Cash, who began writing songs at age 12, showed a love for the music that enveloped his life. Sensing her boy’s gift for song, Carrie scraped together enough money so that he could take singing lessons. However, after just three lessons his teacher, enthralled with Cash’s already unique singing style, told him to stop taking lessons and to never deviate from his natural voice.
Religion, too, had a strong impact on Cash’s childhood. His mother was a devout member of the Pentecostal Church of God, and his older brother Jack seemed committed to joining the priesthood until his tragic death in 1944 in an electric-saw accident. The experiences of his early farming life and religion became recurring themes in Cash’s career.
In 1950, Cash graduated high school and left Dyess to seek employment, venturing to Pontiac, Michigan, for a brief stint at an auto body plant. That summer he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force as “John R. Cash”—military regulations required a full first name—and he was sent for training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he met future wife Vivian Liberto. For the bulk of his four years in the Air Force, Cash was stationed in Landsberg, West Germany, where he worked as a radio intercept officer, eavesdropping on Soviet radio traffic.
It was also in Germany that Cash began to turn more of his attention toward music. With a few of his Air Force buddies, he formed the Landsberg Barbarians, giving Cash a chance to play live shows, teach himself more of the guitar and take a shot at songwriting. “We were terrible,” he said later, “but that Lowenbrau beer will make you feel like you’re great. We’d take our instruments to these honky-tonks and play until they threw us out or a fight started.”
After his discharge in July 1954, Cash married Vivian and settled with her in Memphis, Tennessee, where he worked, as best he could, as an appliance salesman. Pursuing music on the side, Cash teamed up with a couple of mechanics, Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins, who worked with Cash’s older brother Roy. The young musicians soon formed a tight bond, with the crew and their wives often heading over to one of their houses to play music, much of it gospel.
Cash, who banged away on an old $5 guitar he’d purchased in Germany, became the frontman for the group, and they honed their unique synthesis of blues and country-and-western music through live performances. “He was a decent singer, not a great one,” wrote Marshall Grant, in his 2006 autobiography, I Was There When it Happened: My Life with Johnny Cash. “But there was power and presence in his voice.”
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