not really, but I bought his Only A Stone album a few years ago with some other albums from goodwill and when I got home I was like wtf ?
Posted on 03/02/2026 6:09:26 PM PST by nickcarraway
To honor the memory of the Man In Black, born on February 26, 1932, a collection of 20 things you never knew about Johnny Cash, one of the true titans of country music.
Johnny’s mother bought him a guitar for his tenth birthday
The day after the funeral of Johnny’s older brother Jack, the Cash family were back in the fields, picking cotton for ten hours
At 21, on a trip to Paris while in the Air Force, Johnny visited the Eiffel Tower and viewed the Mona Lisa
In September 1954, Elvis Presley performed at the opening of Katz Drug Store in Memphis. Johnny Cash was in the audience. Within a few months, he became Elvis’ labelmate at Sun Records
“Ring Of Fire” was first recorded by Anita Carter, sister of Johnny’s future wife June – and June wrote it with Merle Kilgore, who was the best man at their wedding
Johnny’s film acting debut, in 1961’s Five Minutes To Live, included a third movie appearance by seven-year-old Ronnie Howard. Later he played Opie Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show and Richie Cunningham in Happy Days before becoming a hugely successful film director
Shel Silverstein, who wrote Johnny’s smash hit “A Boy Named Sue,” later wrote a sequel, lightheartedly looking at the story from the parental point of view and titled “The Father Of A Boy Named Sue”
Johnny and June’s signature hit “Jackson” was officially written by Billy Edd Wheeler and German-American actress Gaby Wheeler. But it was actually co-penned by Billy Edd and the prolific Jerry Leiber, one half of the Leiber & Stoller team, who was married to Gaby at the time and used his wife’s name as a pseudonym
Cash’s second and final theatrical movie release as an actor, 1971’s A Gunfight, received $2 million of financing from the Jicarilla Apache tribe of New Mexico, to keep production in the US. The tribe are renowned for their basket-weaving and beadwork.
The clip of Cash saying, “You stay the hell away from me, you hear?” featured at 1’46” into the award-winning video for his version of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” comes from the aforementioned movie A Gunfight
A voracious reader, Cash consumed the works of James Joyce and Dylan Thomas, and told writer Philip Norman in 1971 that he was preparing to read Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples Vols 1-4
What did Johnny have in common with Donny Osmond, David Bowie, Wilson Pickett, the Righteous Brothers, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, B. Bumble and the Stingers, and Mott The Hoople? They, and dozens of other stars, were all namechecked in studio band Reunion’s 1974 US Top 10 hit “Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)”
On March 20, 1976, Johnny and June returned to his birthplace of Kingsland, Arkansas, then he performed a free concert in nearby Rison for a crowd estimated at 12,000. The population of Kingsland at the 2010 US census was 447
Cash was friendly with all the US presidents from Richard Nixon onwards, but especially with Jimmy Carter, who was distantly related to his wife June Carter Cash
In 1981, Johnny was nearly killed when an ostrich attacked him in the animal park he’d established behind the House of Cash offices. He broke a total of five ribs and cut his stomach open, was hospitalized, and became addicted to the painkillers he was prescribed
In the 80s, Cash found love letters written to June, during a short love affair, by Elvis Presley. He destroyed them
In an interview with Larry King, Cash revealed that his favorite country music artist was Dwight Yoakam
The first gold disc award received by Johnny Cash for a regular studio album arrived in April 2003, just five months before his death, for American IV: The Man Comes Around
“Ain’t No Grave (Gonna Hold This Body Down),” cut by Cash at the suggestion of producer Rick Rubin for their final album collaboration American VI: Ain’t No Grave, was written and first recorded by “Brother” Claude Ely. He was the first Pentecostal Holiness preacher to be signed to a major contract to record sacred music and songs
In 2015, the Ensworth School in Nashville became the first high school to mount a production of Ring Of Fire: The Johnny Cash Musical Show. Johnny’s granddaughter was a member of the cast
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not really, but I bought his Only A Stone album a few years ago with some other albums from goodwill and when I got home I was like wtf ?
🎶”…I built it one piece at a time
And it didn’t cost me a dime
You’ll know it’s me when I come through your town
I’m gonna drive around in style
I’m gonna drive everybody wild
Cuz I’ll have the only one there is around…!”🎶
My Christian movie grip friend who met Cash says that Cash heavily witnessed Christ to him and he sees Cash as a vocal Christian.
Watched it. Cash needed to learn acting. Ronnie stole the show.
Johnny was JR Cash (John Robert) growing up, because his mama wanted John, but his dad wanted Robert, so they compromised. When he enlisted, they didn’t accept initials only, so he became John R. Cash.
And we know and love this man as Johnny Cash. We loved him and he loved us.
The title weighed 10 pounds.
I do believe that Johnny influenced many with his quietly vocal Christianity. I realize that is an oxymoron, but it’s true. He didn’t shove his faith in peoples’ faces. He lived it. He walked the walk, and because of that, he could talk the talk. People listened. JMHO.
Yeah, the original line was “I slapped a man in Reno, just to watch him cry.” But it wasn’t grave enough.
When I was growing up in the 1970’s I listened to all of his music and watched any movie or TV show that featured him. He was definingly a badass!
He has a great gospel CD.
My favorite Johnny Cash song is Ghost riders.
Amen.
At the church my wife and attend east of Redmond OR, the guy leading worship often starts with a Johnny Cash song.
I saw #21 listed above, so here’s #22. In his later years Johnny was a HANDFUL for the home health nurses who cared for him. It became EXTRA difficult once June passed. You couldn’t leave anything around him lest he would use it to try to kill himself. He would lie about his meds in hopes of getting DOUBLE the dose so that he would die, etc.
Kinda sad, but true.
I listen to the song “Hurt” again. That is one haunting song.
It was a most chilling tale effectively presented through mastely mixed and believable to me, a twelve-yearold impressionable venturous boy beginning the endocrinal road to maturity, capable of deep emotion not yet blunted by life's disappointments, yet aware of having done some things on my conscience that were worthy of hard corporal discipline.
But there I was, sitting alone in our recently acquired Ford sedan,that actually had a radio, listening to in the evening dark of a stormy night, waiting for my Dad to come back from his lengthy conference with a parishioner on a private matter.
Then this number came on, performed by a stirring bass=baritone singer in a way that scared me, shocked me to my toes. What i heard was this convicting tale (click here, and close your eyes while listening):
And sat back, scared to death, my spine tingling.
It was some 25 or thirty years later that I heard it again by Johnny Cash:
"Ghost Riders In The Sky" (click here)
It's now 75 years later than when I first heard it and, as you see, I have never forgotten it, especially as a depraved sinner rescued from that bad life through my desperate appeal to the Heavenly Father and Judge, and begging for His Son to be my Lord and Master.
Still riding, but in peace with the grace of my Father in Heaven.
I’ve always enjoyed this song but this is the first time I’ve heard Johnny Cash sing it. It’s very good
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