Elvis Presley, Hank Williams and Johnny are the only three musicians to have been inducted both to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame.
10/24/03: Stepdaughter Rosey Nix Adams, a country music singer, died. Cause of death was accidental carbon monoxide poisoning from six heaters on her bus. She was 45.
2001: He was awarded the American National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment of the Arts.
According to tell-all books "Anchored In Love", by Cash's son John Carter Cash, and "I Was There When It Happened", by longtime friend and band member Marshall Grant, Cash was addicted to drugs for most of his adult life. Cash confessed much of this in "Johnny Cash: The Autobiography", published in 1997 by Harper Collins. Cash did not completely stop using drugs after his well-storied withdrawal in 1967. He was drug-free from 1970 through 1977, when he started taking amphetamines again. A 1983 attack by an ostrich (the animal was part of Cash's menagerie near Nashville) required hospitalization, where it was discovered that Cash was sneaking more painkillers than he'd been prescribed. Cash entered the Betty Ford Clinic in 1983 and stayed clean for a short time. His next relapse put him into Nashville's Cumberland Heights Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center in 1989. After another battle with drugs in the early 1990s, he discovered that his wife, June Carter, and his son, John Carter Cash, were both addicted to narcotics. The younger Cash cleaned up shortly before the deaths of his parents in 2003. According to John Carter Cash, his mother never confronted her addiction. It is not known for certain whether or not Johnny Cash ever completely extricated himself from drug abuse.
According to the biography Johnny Cash: The Life of an American Icon by Stephen Miller, while Cash was in the Air Force and serving as a code intercept operator at Landsberg AFB in Germany, he was the first American radio operator to receive the news of the death of Joseph Stalin.
After his good friend Carl Perkins fell from grace due to a crippling car accident and alcoholism, Johnny took him on a touring guitarist and supported Perkins by performing songs written by him.
After the 1950s, when he wrote almost all of the songs he performed, he performed many covers. On the average album, he was the writer of about a third of the songs.
Along with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, he was a member of celebrated "The Million Dollar Quartet". They got that name because they were money-makers for Sam Phillips' Sun Records Label.
Although he could bear it, he disliked being defined as a "country" artist, feeling that his music wasn't really genre-defined and noting that he often stood well outside of the Nashville mainstream (particularly towards the end of his career). Technically, his music contains elements of rock 'n' roll, folk music, bluegrass, blues and gospel as well as country-style music.
Among "The Highwaymen", Johnny was old friends (or "blood brothers" as he put it) with Waylon Jennings. Kris Kristofferson idolized Cash and the two become close friends while in "The Highwaymen". Cash was least close with Willie Nelson, but the two were always friendly, despite the competitive eye they kept on one another.
Apart from his performances at Folsom Prison and San Quentin, Cash also performed at Österåkeranstalten (The Österåker Prison) north of Stockholm, Sweden in 1972. The recording was released in 1973. Between the songs Cash can be heard speaking Swedish which was greatly appreciated by the inmates.
Backed by the "Tennessee Two": Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins. Later named: The Tennessee Three, with W.S. Holland (drums) added. After Perkins' death, he was replaced by Bob Wootton.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 73-76. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.
Brother of Reba Hancock and Joanne Cash Yates.
Brother of country singer Tommy Cash.
Brother-in-law of Ray Liberto.
Cash and "American Recordings" posted a "thank you" to the Nashville country music industry in Billboard Magazine after winning the Grammy for best country record for "Unchained" in the form of the infamous photo of Johnny angrily giving the middle finger to the camera taken back in 1969 during his San Quentin prison performance. Cash did this because he was enraged by Nashville having pretty much left behind him and other aging "country" artists who had defined the genre to make room for the more pop-oriented new country artists, like Garth Brooks.
Cash's career was at an all-time low in the 1980s and he realised his record label of nearly 30 years, Columbia, was growing indifferent to him and wasn't properly marketing him, so to kill the relationship with the label before they did, Cash recorded "Chicken in Black". An intentionally awful song about Johnny's brain being transplanted to a chicken, it ironically turned out to be a larger commercial success than any of his other recent material. However, it wasn't long after "Chicken in Black" that Columbia and Cash parted ways.
Contrary to popular belief, he never served more than one night in prison (he was held in jail overnight once after being caught smuggling 1,163 amphetamine tablets across from Mexico). He actually wrote "Folsom Prison Blues" after seeing the documentary Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951).
During his early shows the "Tennessee Two", he would frequently make mocking introductions of his bandmates. He would introduce laconic guitarist Luther Perkins, who was secretly terrified of performing in public, and add either that he was in "rigor mortis" or that his pulse had been checked beforehand to make sure he was still alive. Then he would introduce bassist Marshall Grant, who would usually hop around and dance with great energy as he chewed gum at shows, as "playing the chewing gum."