ROOTS of Country Music

The Professional Work of Johnny Cash 

(Feb. 26, 1932 – Sep. 12, 2003)  

Career Highlights  

No. 3 Country Music Artist (1944 - 1993) 

Barn Dance Affiliate: Louisiana Hayride 

Grand Ole Opry -1956

Band Name: Johnny Cash & The Tennessee Two 

Stage Name: The Man in Black  

Film, Night Club, Radio & TV  

• Austin City Limits, 4
• Ernest Tubb’s  Midnight Jamboree, 3
• The Johnny Cash Show (1969 - 1971), 4
• The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, 4
• The Porter Wagoner Show, 4
• The Wilburn Brothers Show, 4  
• Gilley's Club, 2
• Hee Haw, 4
• Nashville Now, 4
• Pop Goes the Country, 4 

1-Film, 2-Night Club, 3-Radio, 4-TV 

Billboard Chart Data 

• No. 1 Singles: 12
• Top-10 Singles: 52
• Crossover Singles: 52
• Charted Singles: 135
• Chart Years Active: (1955-1990) 

Awards 

Country Music Association 

• Male Vocalist of the Year (1969)
• Male Vocalist of the Year (1969)
• Vocal Group of the Year (1969)*
• Country Music Hall of Fame (1980) 

*With June Carter  

Billboard Top-10 Singles 

1. So Dogone Lonesome -1956
2. Folsom Prison Blues
3. I Walk The Line*
4. There You Go*
5. Train of Love
6. Next In Line -1957
7. Home Of The Blues
8. Ballad Of A Teenage Queen** -1958
9. Big River
10. Guess Things Happen That Way*
11. Come In Stranger
12. The Ways Of A Woman In Love
13. You're the Nearest Thing to Heaven
14. All Over Again
15. What Do I care
16. Don't Take Your Guns To Town* -1959
17. Luther Played the Boogie
18. Frankie's Man Johnny
19. I Got Stripes
20. Seasons of My Heart -1960
21. In the Jailhouse Now -1962
22. Ring Of Fire* -1963
23. The Matador
24. Understand Your Man* -1964
25. It Ain't Me, Babe 1
26. The Ballad Of Ira Hayes
27. Bad News
28. Orange Blossom Special -1965
29. The Sons of katie Elder
30. Happy to Be With You
31. The One On The Right Is On The Left -1966
32. Rosanna's Gone Wild -1967
33. Jackson 1
34. Long-Legged Guitar Pickin' Man 1
35. Folsom Prison Blues* -1968
36. Daddy Sang Bass*
37. A Boy Named Sue* -1969
38. Blistered
39. What Is Truth -1970
40. Sunday Morning Coming Down*
41. If I Were A Carpenter 1
42. Flesh And Blood*
43. Man In Black -1971
44. A Thing Called Love -1972
45. Katie
46. Oney
47. Any Old Wind That Blows
48. One Piece At A Time -1976
49. There Ain't No Good Chain Gang 2 -1978
50. (Ghost) Riders In The Sky -1979
51. The Baron -1981
52. Highwayman* 3 -1985 

*No. 1 Single 

**Biggest Chart Single 

1With June Carter 

2With Waylon Jennings 

3With Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Man In Black: The Johnny Cash Story  

For over 40 years Johnny Cash wrote and sang about the lives of hard-scrabble farmers, homeless drifters, broken-down cowhands, broken-hearted lovers and men behind bars. Cash gave a voice to the lonesome and the lost, the dispossessed and the disillusioned. He came by this sympathy naturally, growing up on his family's cotton farm in rural Arkansas in the depths of the Depression. 

America first discovered Johnny Cash in the mid-1950s and since then people around the world have heard in his voice an unmistakable honesty about the hard facts of life, love and faith.  

Johnny Cash placed at least two hits singles a year on the country music charts for 33 years running, and over 53 million copies of his record albums have been sold since 1959. Songs like Folsom Prison Blues and I Walk the Line, have become part of the national inheritance. 

In his eighth decade, he won over a new generation of admirers with his interpretations of songs ranging from traditional ballads to the dark and moody songs of contemporary rock bands.  

Johnny Cash and his songs have become an institution in our national life. Thanks to his recordings, the Man in Black with the cavernous baritone voice will remain as much a part of the American scene as the Mississippi River or the Rocky Mountains. 

Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, the fourth of seven children to Ray Cash and Carrie Cloveree Rivers. Cash was named J.R. Cash in a compromise made by his parents when they wanted to name him different names. When he enlisted in the United States Air Force, the military would not accept initials as his name, so he started to use the name John R. Cash. In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he took Johnny Cash as his stage name.

The Cash Familymoved to Dyess, Arkansas when Johnny was three. By the time he was twelve years old, he had begun writing his own songs. Johnny was inspired by the country songs he had heard on the radio. While he was in high school, he sang on the Arkansas radio station KLCN. Johnny graduated from high school in 1950, moving to Detroit, Michigan to work in an auto factory for a brief while. 

With the outbreak of the Korean War, he enlisted in the Air Force. While he was in the Air Force, Cash bought his first guitar and taught himself to play. Johnny began writing songs in earnest, including Folsom Prison Blues. Cash left the Air Force in 1954, married a Texas woman named Vivian Leberto and moved to Memphis, Tennessee where he took a radio announcing course at a broadcasting school on the GI Bill. 

During the evenings, he played country music in a trio that consisted of guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. The trio occasionally played for free on a local radio station, KWEM and tried to secure gigs and an audition at Sun Records. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Sun Years 

Johnny Cash & the Tennessee Two   

The Tennessee Two was the backing band for Johnny Cash The band started in the mid-1950s consisting of Johnny Cash (guitar/lead vocals), Cash's friends Luther Perkins on electric guitar and Marshall Grant on upright bass. Originally called the Tennessee Three, Sam Phillips of Sun Records suggested that the band be called Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. There was also a third member of the group, Red' Kernodle, who played steel guitar during the first audition.  

In late 1954, when Cash got an audition with producer Sam Phillips (Memphis, Tennessee), he brought Perkins, Grant and Kernodle along to back him instrumentally. The experience made Kernodle nervous and he ended up leaving before the session was over, with Perkins and Grant providing the instrumentation. Initially, Cash presented himself as a gospel singer, but Phillips turned him down.

Phillips asked him to come back with something more commercial. Cash returned with Hey Porter (1955), which immediately caught Phillips' attention.  

Signed to Sun Records as Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, their first chart single, Cry, Cry, Cry, became a moderate country hit. After the singles, So Doggone Lonesome and Folsom Prison Blues, the band had their first major country hit with Cash's own composisition, I Walk the Line in 1956. They appeared on the Louisiana Hayride in December 1955, becoming regulars, before graduating to the Grand Ole Opry in July 1956. They subsequently achieved major country hits with Ballad of a Teenage Queen and Guess Things Happen That Way (1958).  

Their initial recording sessions produced the album, With His Hot and Blue Guitar, Sun LP-1220 (1957) with Johnny Cash (vocal/guitar), Luther Perkins (lead guitar), Jack Clement (guitar) and Marshall Grant (bass). The band honed their trade playing every school house and cat house in Dixieland, travelling in Johnny's 1954 Plymouth with the nig doghouse bass strapped to the roof. Their sound rarely changed over the years, it just got tighter. 

From November 1955 through October 1958, Johnny racked up nineteen top-20 singles on the Sun label. Released on Sun Records in 1958, Ballad of a Teenage Queen, would become the biggest chart song of his career. 

Johnny Cash & the Tennessee Two 

Discography, Partial Listing: 

• Cry Cry Cry (Sun ) 1957
• Folsom Prison Blues (Sun ) 1957
• Get Rhythm (Sun ) 1959
• Hey Porter (Sun ) 1961
• Home of The Blues (Sun ) 1961
• I Walk The Line (Sun ) 1957
• Luther's Played The Boogie (Sun ) 1959
• Remember Me (I'm The One Who Loves You) (Sun ) 1957
• Rock Island Line (Sun ) 1957
• So Doggone Lonesome (Sun ) 1957 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Johnny Cash & Columbia Records 

For most of 1958, Cash attempted to record a gospel album, but Sun Records refused to allow him to record one. Sun Records also was unwilling to increase record royalties. Both of these were deciding factors in the vocalist's decision to sign with Columbia Records in 1958. By the end of the year, he had released his first single for the label, All Over Again, which became another top-5 chart success. Sun Records continued to release singles and albums of Cash's unissued material into the early- '60s.

Don't Take Your Guns to Town, Cash's second single for Columbia, was one of his biggest hits for the label, reaching the top of the country charts and crossing over into the pop charts in the beginning of 1959. Throughout that year, Columbia and Sun singles vied for the top of the charts. Frankie's Man Johnny, I've Got Stripes and Five Feet High and Rising and Luther Played the Boogie, kept Johnny in the top-10 fold.  

June Carter who was the wife of one of Cash's drinking buddies, Carl Smith; provided Cash with a the chart-topper, Ring of Fire, which she co-wrote with Merle Kilgore. Ring of Fire spent seven weeks at No. 1 and was Johnny's biggest chart single on the Columbia label.

Johnny became close friends with June Carter, who had divorced Carl Smith.  Cash proposed marriage to Carter during a concert and the pair were married in the spring of 1968.  As a singing duo, they charted four top-10 singles between 1964 and 1070.

In the mid-'70s, Cash's presence on the country charts began to decline, but he continued to have a series of minor hits and the occasional chart-topper like 1976's One Piece at a Time and  top-10 hits like the Waylon Jennings duet, There Ain't No Good Chain Gang and (Ghost) Riders in the Sky.

The Highwaymen, a band featuring Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson; released their first album in 1985, which was also moderately successful and yielded the No. 1 single, Highwayman that year.

The following year, Cash and Columbia Records ended their relationship and he signed with Mercury Nashville. However, he had a very successful chart run with Columbia Records. From October 1958 through May 1985, Cash racked up thirty-five top-10 singles on the Columbia label.

Johnny's association with Mercury Records didn't prove to be a success, as the company and the singer fought over stylistic direction. Furthermore, country radio had begun to favor more contemporary artists and Cash soon found himself shut out of the charts. Nevertheless, he continued to be a popular concert performer.

In 1980, Johnny Cash became the youngest inductee to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Researched, compiled and written by Richard Bell, Roots of Country Music, Jun. 12, 2011.