“We are so grateful that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is honoring Johnny Cash for the 2016 Annual Music Masters series,” said John Carter Cash. “Our father remains one of the most enduring names in entertainment history, and this recognition helps further his legacy and inspire both existing fans as well as a whole new generation of Johnny Cash fans.”
“Throughout his career Johnny Cash transcended genre boundaries and embraced rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk, and gospel,” said Jason Hanley, Vice President of Education and Visitor Engagement for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “The 21st Annual Music Masters concert will explore his many musical journeys and include performers who represent the broad range of his influence. What’s so amazing about Cash is that almost every musician you ask will tell you that they love his music – from the rockabilly and country of his Sun Records recordings in the 1950s, and his outlaw image and his famous concerts at Folsom Prison and San Quentin, to his enduring love for June Carter Cash and their music work together (including the great “Ring of Fire”), or his later American Recordings music that frequently saw him putting his own unique musical fingerprints on some of rocks newest sounds (like Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” or Nine Inch Nails, “Hurt”). Fans will also be able to pay tribute to Cash and the longstanding popularity and impact of his work that lives on in our lives throughout the weeklong celebration. Music Masters is about bringing everything we do at the Rock Hall together to look at the life, music, and legacy of an artist.”
The weeklong series of fan events begin on Monday, October 17 and will feature an exhibit opening, interviews, panels and educational programs, including a keynote lecture at Case Western Reserve University. on Friday, October 21, Cash will be honored during the 21st Annual Music Masters series at Playhouse Square. Capping off the week, on Saturday, October 22, fans will be able to participate in a Johnny Cash celebration at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with special guests and events exploring Cash’s impact on popular music. Details and a complete schedule of events will be announced in September.
About Johnny Cash:
To millions of fans, Johnny Cash is “the Man in Black,” a country-music legend who sings in an authoritative baritone about the travails of working men and the downtrodden in this country. Lesser known is the fact that Johnny Cash was present at one of the key moments in early rock and roll history by virtue of being one of the earliest signees to Sam Phillips’ Sun Records back in 1955. Cash was part of an elite club of rock and roll pioneers at Sun that included Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. The four were collectively referred to as “the Million Dollar Quartet” after an impromptu gathering and jam session at the Sun recording studio on December 4, 1956. What Cash and his group, the Tennessee Two, brought to the “Sun Sound” was a spartan mix of guitar, standup bass and vocals that served as an early example of rockabilly. Cash recorded a string of rockabilly hits for Sun that included “Cry, Cry, Cry,” “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line.” The latter was first of more than a dozen Number one country hits for Cash and also marked his first appearance on the national pop singles charts.
Straddling the country, folk and rockabilly idioms, Johnny Cash has crafted more than 400 plainspoken story-songs that describe and address the lives of coal miners, sharecroppers, Native Americans, prisoners, cowboys, renegades and family men. Cash came by his common touch honestly, having been born in Kingsland, Arkansas, during the Great Depression on February 26, 1932. At age three, he moved with his family to Dyess, Arkansas, where he worked the cotton fields. Cash’s roaming days included laboring at an auto plant in Michigan, serving in the Air Force in Germany and working as an appliance salesman in Memphis. Cash became a full-time musician after his two-sided hit—“So Doggone Lonesome"/"Folsom Prison Blues”—shot to Number Four on the Billboard country chart in 1956. From Sun, he jumped to Columbia Records in 1958, where he recorded such favorites as “Ring of Fire,” “Understand Your Man,” “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” and “Tennessee Flat-Top Box.” But Cash never forgot his roots, nor did he leave hard times behind. A prototype for the black-clad rebel rocker, Cash cultivated a serious drug problem in the Sixties, which ended when he met his second wife, June Carter, whom he married in 1968.
Some of Cash’s best work includes live albums recorded, quite literally, for captive audiences at Folsom and San Quentin prisons. Johnny Cash at San Quentin included the 1969 hit “A Boy Named Sue,” which went to Number Two. In 1969, Cash cut a duet with Bob Dylan for the latter’s Nashville Skyline, and Dylan returned the favor by appearing on The Johnny Cash Show, a successful TV variety hour that premiered in 1969. All the while, the rugged simplicity and uncut honesty of Cash’s approach was steadily seeping into rock and roll by way of the burgeoning country-rock scene.