Johnny Cash

Biography

Cash was a legendary American singer-songwriter, the son of musician Carrie Rivers Cash. Mom scraped together enough money so that the boy could take singing lessons. After just three lessons, and while the boy was still in his early teens, the teacher, enthralled with Cash’s already unique singing style, told him to stop taking lessons, and never to deviate from his natural voice. Perhaps his most famous singles are, I Walk the Line, Folsom Prison Blues, Ring of Fire, Get Rhythm and Man in Black. Lyrically, he's been called the philosopher-prince of American country music. Late in life he recorded a cover of the Nine Inch Nails song, “Hurt,” which includes the lyrics, “Everyone I know goes away in the end…. I will let you down. I will make you hurt. If I could start again ... I would keep my self.” In total, Cash wrote over 1,000 songs and released dozens of albums. He died in Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, of complications from diabetes, less than four months after the death of his wife, June Carter.