Although he never served a prison sentence, throughout his career, Johnny Cash carefully cultivated a romantic outlaw image. Despite being arrested seven times for misdemeanors, he never spent more than a single night in jail. However, that number does not reflect the amount of times “The Man in Black” was stopped and released. After all, what lawman in the country would not be swayed by rolling up on scene to be greeted with “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”?
His most infamous run-in with the law occurred while on tour in 1965, when he was arrested October 4 by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas. At first, the officers suspected that he was smuggling heroin from Mexico, but instead police found 688 Dexedrine capsules and 475 Equanil tablets hidden inside the singer’s guitar case. Because the pills were prescription drugs rather than illegal narcotics, he received a suspended sentence.
Cash’s final arrest was in 1967 in Lafayette, Georgia after he was involved in a car accident while carrying a bag of prescription pills. Cash attempted to bribe a deputy, who turned the money down, and then spent the night in the local jail. Sheriff Ralph Jones, a fan of Cash’s music, warned Johnny about his dangerous behavior and wasted potential. Cash claimed that arrest saved his life.
That year, Johnny Cash was in the depth of his drug and alcohol addiction problems. His first wife Vivian gave up on him and filed for divorce when Johnny was at his lowest point. But his talent never deserted him. That same year, Cash shared an apartment in Nashville with Waylon Jennings and recorded a duet with June Carter called “Jackson” that reached Number 2 on the country charts. The song won a Grammy Award for Best Country & Western song by a performance duet, trio or group. From then on, June Carter was there for Johnny. And there she would remain for the rest of his life.
Cash eschewed the use of drugs in 1968 after a near death experience in Southern Tennessee’s Nickajack Cave. Cash journeyed to the cave while under the heavy influence of drugs. Once there, he attempted to commit suicide by descending deep into the uncharted areas of the subterranean caverns to “lose himself and just die.” He passed out cold on the damp rock floor and credited God’s presence with helping him struggle out of the cave. To Johnny, it was his own rebirth.
Afterwards, June, Maybelle, and Ezra Carter moved into Cash’s mansion for a month to help him conquer his addiction. It took 32 days for him to break his 10-year addiction to amphetamines and barbiturates. Cash proposed on stage to June at a concert at the London Gardens in London, Ontario, Canada on February 22, 1968. 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.’ And I said, ‘Okay, next song.’ So, we set it up. We got married March 1, 1968” in Franklin, Kentucky.
Oh, one more thing, just before Johnny proposed to June, the Man in Black orchestrated what many consider to be the most important event in the history of American country music. The seminal event occurred in the most unlikely place imaginable: Folsom Prison’s stark, heavily guarded dining room number 2. There, on Jan. 13, 1968, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three, with crucial help from June Carter, Carl Perkins and the Statler Brothers, gave two concerts for the inmates. Both were recorded and released a few months later by Columbia Records. “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison” is considered to be the most influential live album ever made.
The album did almost as much for country music as it did for Cash, bringing country out of the fields and hollers into mainstream media. I suspect that for you, like me, it was the first country album you ever bought. Like Elvis in 1956, the Sex Pistols in 1977, and Bob Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Cash’s prison albums changed music forever and were the key to his professional rebirth. Although it was the agent of Cash’s personal salvation, it also ironically cemented his image as an outlaw.
Cash sang with power, passion and humor, and when June Carter joined in on “Jackson,” the dining hall went wild. The songs were ably assisted by the hooting and howling of the inmates, of whom Cash sought no restraint by way of song selection. The album restarted Cash’s otherwise drug-addled, stalled career and Columbia followed it up with another live concert performance, this one at San Quentin state prison, both of which turned Cash into an American legend. Ironically, it was the success of these two prison albums that would convince ABC to give Cash his own weekly network TV show.
The Johnny Cash Show ran from June 7, 1969 to March 31, 1971 on ABC. The 58-episode series was taped at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee (also known as The Grand Ole Opry) from which Cash had been banished just a few years before. It featured many top names including Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Glen Campbell, Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Neil Young, Kris Kristofferson, Roger Miller, Gordon Lightfoot, Kenny Rogers, Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, Tammy Wynette, and Merle Haggard.
As a 22-year-old inmate, Merle Haggard saw three of Cash’s shows in San Quentin. He later credited Cash for inspiring him to work on his singing. The show also featured jazz great Louis Armstrong, who died eight months after appearing on the show. The performance of another star of the era, Eric Clapton, who appeared on the show with his band Derek and the Dominos, was a highlight of a box set of Clapton’s released in 2011. Non-musical Hollywood stars like Bob Hope, George Gobel, Kirk Douglas, Burl Ives, Peggy Lee and Lorne Greene also appeared on the show. (I have the box set of CD’s and believe me, it is worth buying and watching over and over.)
The show led to other television appearances for both Johnny and June Carter Cash. He hosted an annual Christmas special on CBS throughout the 1970s. Other appearances included Columbo, Little House on the Prairie, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and as John Brown in the 1985 American Civil War television mini-series North and South. The duo also appeared in several, mostly forgettable, movies. But June did receive acclaim for her portrayal of Mrs. “Momma” Dewey in Robert Duvall’s 1998 movie The Apostle. That should come as no surprise when it is discovered that she studied with Lee Strasberg (legendary acting coach to luminaries like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando) at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Legendary director Elia Kazan had seen her perform at the Grand Ole Opry in 1955 and encouraged her to study acting.
By the early 1970s, Cash had crystallized his public image as “The Man in Black” and with June’s help, this “reformed outlaw” became a deeply spiritual man. He was friendly with every U.S. President starting with Richard Nixon. He held fast to his nonconformist roots though and maintained the rugged individualism that he was best known for. When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1970, Nixon’s office requested that he play “Okie from Muskogee” (a satirical Merle Haggard song about people who despised youthful drug users and war protesters) and “Welfare Cadillac” (a Guy Drake song which denies the integrity of welfare recipients). Cash declined and instead selected other songs, including “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” (about a brave Native American World War II veteran who was mistreated upon his return to Arizona), and his own compositions, “What Is Truth” and “Man in Black.”
On the 4th of July in 1976, Cash served as Grand Marshal for the federal government’s bicentennial parade. He was very close to Jimmy Carter, who was a cousin of his wife June, and the two became close, lifelong friends. When visiting the Clinton White House, Cash compared shoe sizes with the President. Cash was a size 13, Clinton a size 12. At his house in Jamaica, Cash had a “Billy Graham room” with a guest bed specifically for Reverend Graham. In spite of Cash’s lofty connections, the Masons rejected Cash’s application for membership “on moral grounds.”
But the Johnny Cash trivia doesn’t stop there, that’s just about all I could cobble together into a cogent story. Here are some more Johnny Cash trivial tidbits for you to ponder: Muhammad Ali wrote a poem for Cash called “Truth” which Cash kept locked in a vault; Cash collected 19th century guns and antique books; while checked into the Betty Ford Clinic in the 1980s, Cash met and befriended Ozzy Osbourne; Cash published the novel Man in White based on the life of the apostle Paul in 1986; Cash’s music video for “Delia’s Gone” shows Cash tying up and burying Kate Moss; he wrote, produced and narrated a movie about Jesus’ life called Gospel Road which featured June Carter Cash as Mary Magdalene; Cash used to exchange birthday greetings with Elizabeth Taylor, whose birthday was the day after his; an ostrich attack left Cash with five broken ribs and internal bleeding in 1981 (Google Johnny’s account, it’s very funny); and my personal favorite: Johnny used to carry a jar of instant coffee along with him and ladle spoonfuls of it into the coffee he ordered in restaurants. As you can see, Johnny Cash was anything but a boring man.
Without a doubt, June Carter-Cash changed Johnny Cash’s life by forcing the Man in Black to examine his goals, values and priorities. Their romance and 35-year marriage has been widely acclaimed as one of the best true love stories to have ever come out of the entertainment business. Their story was immortalized in the 2005 film Walk the Line starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Although that marriage was not absolutely perfect, their mutual love and respect always helped them through the tough times. That is what true love is all about; to be there and help when the going gets tough.
Just months before he died and a short time after his soulmate June Carter Cash died, Johnny spoke of their partnership in an MTV interview, “June … she was my solid rock,” Cash said lovingly, with a glaze settling over his eyes. “She was always there; she was my counselor, comforter, everything else. What a wonderful woman she was. We were together 40 years. We worked on the road together since 1963, and we got married in 1968.” Then, smiling through the pain, he offered up one final pearl of wisdom. “And the secret for a happy marriage? Separate bathrooms.”
Al Hunter is the author of “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Indiana National Road” and “Haunted Irvington” book series. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
