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"The Man in Black"
John R. Cash was born 12 February 1932 in Kingsland, Arkansas, the son of Ray Cash and Carrie Rivers of mostly Scottish/English ancestry. Named J. R. at birth, when he went into the military, he was required to have a full name so he changed it to John R. "Johnny" became his stage name in 1955.
In October 1965, Johnny Cash was arrested in El Paso, Texas for attempting to smuggle amphetamines across the Mexican border in his guitar case. [1]
On. May 12, 1944, John’s brother Jack had a job working in the high school agriculture shop, cutting oak tree trunks into fence posts on a table saw that had no guard on it. As shown in the movie, Johnny was on his way home from the fishing spot when his father, Ray Cash, picked him up in the preacher's Model A Ford. His father took him home and showed him Jack's bloody clothes, at which time his father pointed out "where the table saw had cut [Jack] from his ribs all the way down into his stomach and groin, through his belt and everything." Jack, who was only fourteen-years-old, held on for a week before passing away. [2]
Johnny met his first wife, Vivian Liberto, at a roller-skating rink in San Antonio while Johnny was stationed there in the Air Force. Three weeks into their brief 1950 courtship, Johnny completed his training and was sent to Germany. When Johnny was stationed overseas, the pair exchanged more than 10,000 pages of love letters over a period of approximately four years.[3] John married first Vivian Liberto in 1954. They divorced in 1966. In 1975, Johnny Cash told Penthouse magazine, "My first marriage was in trouble when I lived in California, and I have to take blame for that -- because no woman can live with a man who's strung out on amphetamines." In 1965, after his truck caught fire due to a defective exhaust, he inadvertently started a 508-acre forest fire that burnt down half of Los Padres National Forest in California. When a judge asked Cash why he started the fire, he responded, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead so you can't question it." Cash was sued by the federal government, and he eventually settled the case by paying $82,000. [4]
Johnny Cash met June Carter when she was hired to be a comedian on The Johnny Cash Show.[5] In a 1981 Mike Douglas interview, June Carter Cash explained, "He asked me to marry him in front of 7,000 people, but I would have liked it if he had gotten down on his knees and proposed to me, you know, but that wasn't the way it was. It was a great big production..." Johnny continued the story, "We had just sung a song called 'Jackson', and I stopped the show and said, 'Will you marry me?' on the microphone. She said, 'Go, sing another, sing another, sing another!' I said, 'I'm not gonna sing until you answer me. Will you marry me?' And she says, 'Sing a song. Sing a song.' She turned her back, you know, trying to get somebody in the band to play some music or something. [It] kept going until she finally said, 'Yes.'" He married June Carter in 1968.
Johnny died from diabetes on the 12th of Sept. 2003 in Nashville, Tennessee.
On Tuesday, April 10, 2007, the former home of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash was destroyed in a fire that left almost nothing except for the brick chimneys and the steel frame. The house burned rapidly because construction workers had recently applied a flammable wood preservative to the exterior and interior of the house. Barry Gibb, vocalist for the Bee Gees, was restoring the Hendersonville, Tennessee home, located on Old Hickory Lake. A corporation owned by Gibb had purchased the home in January 2006 for $2.3 million. Gibb and his wife Linda planned to write songs there. Neighbor Richard Sterban of the Oak Ridge Boys perhaps summed up the unfortunate devastation best, "Maybe it's the good Lord's way to make sure that it was only Johnny's house." [6]
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Thank you to Jason Overton, Justin Cash, Bob Carson, Kitty Smith, Arik Russell and Stephanie Stults for contributions to this profile.
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Johnny is 24 degrees from Ingrid Bergman, 30 degrees from Bernardo Bertolucci, 23 degrees from Diahann Carroll, 17 degrees from Claudette Colbert, 20 degrees from Ronnie Colman, 23 degrees from Kirk Douglas, 22 degrees from Rutger Hauer, 17 degrees from Cloris Leachman, 24 degrees from Marcello Mastroianni and 21 degrees from Mark Weinheimer on our single family tree. Login to find your connection.
Categories: Diabetes | Musicians | Country Music Hall of Fame | Rock and Roll Hall of Fame | Gospel Music Hall of Fame | Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame | Memphis Music Hall of Fame | Kingsland, Arkansas | Nashville, Tennessee | Singers | Songwriters | Actors | Guitarists | Authors | Lackland Air Force Base, Texas | Brooks Air Force Base, Texas | Landsberg am Lech, Bayern | Hendersonville Memory Gardens, Hendersonville, Tennessee | Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards | National Medal of Arts | Kennedy Center Honors | Recording Artists | Famous People of the 20th Century | Grammy Award Winners of the 20th Century | United States of America, Notables | Notables
Johnny Cash and Ron Johnston Forbus Esquire are both descendants of William Overton."
I hope he's enjoying playing with the other greats in one big band in heaven. R.I.P.
With regards Timothy W. Cser Sr.