Early Life

"The Man in Black" was born J. R. Cash in Kingsland, Arkansas, and raised in Dyess, Arkansas. By age five, he was working in the cotton fields, singing along with his family as they worked. The family farm was flooded on at least one occasion, which later inspired him to write the song "Five Feet High And Rising." His older brother Jack died in a tragic on-the-job accident, working a high school shop table saw, in 1944. His family's economic and personal struggles during the Depression shaped him as a person and inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing personal struggles.

Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. He began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy, and in high school sang on a local radio station. Decades later, he would release an album of traditional gospel songs, called "My Mother's Hymn Book". Traditional Irish music that he heard weekly on the Jack Benny radio program, as performed by Dennis Day, influenced him greatly.

He was reportedly given the name J.R. because his parents could not agree on a name, only on initials. (Giving children such names was a relatively common practice at the time.) He enlisted as a radio operator in the United States Air Force. The military would not accept just initials as his name, so he adopted John R. Cash as his legal name. When he signed for Sun Records in 1955, he took "Johnny" Cash as a stage name. His friends and in-laws generally called him John, and his blood relatives often still called him by his birth name, J.R.

Early career

After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Cash was sent to a U.S. Air Force Security Service unit at Landsberg Air Base, Germany. There, he founded his first band, the Landsberg Barbarians.

After his term of service ended, Cash married Vivian Liberto, whom he met while training at Brooks. In 1954, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he sold appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. At night, he played with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant (together known at first as the Tennessee Two). Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to garner a recording contract. After auditioning for Sam Phillips, singing mainly gospel tunes, Phillips told him to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell." Cash eventually won over Phillips with new songs delivered in his early frenetic style. His first recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and "Cry Cry Cry," were released in 1955 and met with reasonable success on the country hit parade.

Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues," made the country Top 5, and "I Walk the Line" was No. 1 on the country charts, making it into the pop charts Top 20. Following "I Walk the Line" was Johnny Cash's "Home of the Blues," recorded in July 1957. In 1957, Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. Although he was Sun's most consistently best-selling and prolific artist at that time, Cash felt constrained by his contract with the small label. Elvis Presley had already left Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on Jerry Lee Lewis. The following year, Cash left the label to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records, where his single "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" would become one of his biggest hits.

Cash's first child, a daughter, Rosanne, was born in 1955. Although he would have three more daughters (Kathleen in 1956, Cindy in 1959 and Tara in 1961) with his wife, as he was constantly touring their relationship began to sour, eventually ending in divorce. It was during one of these tours that he had met June Carter, whom he would later marry in 1968.

Drug addiction

As his career was taking off in the early 1960s, Cash began drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates. For a