June Carter Cash, member of pioneering country music family, dies at 73
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - June Carter Cash, a scion of a pioneering family in country music and the wife and Grammy-winning duet partner of singer Johnny Cash, died Thursday of complications from heart surgery. She was 73.
Cash died at Baptist Hospital with her husband and family members at her bedside, manager Lou Robin said.
Cash had been critically ill. She had surgery May 7 to replace a heart valve.
A singer, songwriter, musician, actress and author, Cash and her husband performed on record and on stage, doing songs like "Jackson" and "If I Were a Carpenter," which both won Grammy awards in 1967 and 1970, respectively. They recorded duets including "It Ain't Me Babe" in 1964 and "If I Had a Hammer" in 1972.
In 1961, she turned down an offer to work on a variety show that had Woody Allen as one of the writers, agreeing instead to tour with Johnny Cash for $500 a week. They married in 1968 after he proposed to her on stage on London, Ontario.
In his 1997 autobiography, Johnny Cash described how his wife stuck with him through his years of amphetamine abuse.
"June said she knew me -- knew the kernel of me, deep inside, beneath the drugs and deceit and despair and anger and selfishness, and knew my loneliness," he wrote. "She said she could help me. ... If she found my pills, she flushed them down the toilet. And find them she did; she searched for them, relentlessly."
She was co-writer, with Merle Kilgore, of Cash's 1963 hit "Ring of Fire," which was about falling in love with Cash. She said the song symbolized her feeling of being engulfed by Cash. "John was notorious," she said in 1999. "He roared when he wanted to."
In a 1987 Associated Press interview, she described her husband as "probably the most unusual, fine, unselfish person I've known. He's different. I think the word is 'power.' There's a lot of power to him. I've seen him on shows with people with a No. 1 record or a lot of No. 1 records, but when John walks on that stage, the rest of 'em might as well leave."
She did occasional acting roles, including the part of Robert Duvall's mother in the 1997 film "The Apostle." With her husband, she periodically performed at Billy Graham crusades.