Trying to tell the story of Johnny Cash’s life is like trying to shoehorn a tall-tale into a prefabricated narrative- you may get some of it into a tidy story, but the rest of it spills over and off the page (see the affably bland film, Walk the Line, as an exercise in sanitized myth creation).
Like Woody Guthrie before him and Bob Dylan after, Johnny Cash did not fall into an easily classifiable position where we, the adoring fans, love to neatly package our heroes. He blazed his own trail, and he did it predominantly as a musician.
It is extremely difficult to approximate the complexity of the man’s existence. The fact that there was such a dichotomy in Cash’s public image is where the difficulty arises: he was a pill-poppin’ saint, an outlaw with a heart of gold, a working-class artist who was as comfortable hanging out with senators and congressmen as hardened convicts.
As Oscar Wilde said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about,” and Johnny Cash suffered the slings and arrows of fame gracefully throughout a career that spanned nearly half a century. Two great books that have helped me gain more of an appreciation of Johnny Cash are House of Cash: The Legacies of my Father, Johnny Cash by John Carter Cash and the graphic novel, Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness by Reinhard Kleist.
The following list of locations is by no means comprehensive, but will be an on-going inventory to provide insight into the physical locations that helped shape the Man in Black.
Arkansas, USA
Tennessee, USA
- Sun Studios
- Ryman Auditorium
- Nickajack Cave
- House of Cash (Hendersonville, TN)
- Mama Cash’s house
- Johnny Cash’s grave
- Johnny Cash Museum (former)
- Johnny Cash Museum (upcoming)