Johnny Cash: When the Man Comes Around - Essay Example

Although he is not with us today, his legend still lives on through his musical influence. Cash was born on February 26, 1932 in the city of Kingsland, Arkansas. He was the son of Ray Cash and Carrie Rivers Cash and was one of their seven children. His father was a poor baptist sharecropper. In the year 1935, marginal farmers living in the hill country were convinced by the President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal administration to reestablish themselves in the northeastern Arkansas where the soil was more fertile and suitable for farming.

To make ends meet, he moved the family to Dyees, Arkansas, when Cash was around the age of three. The Cash family moved into a five-room house where they farmed twenty acres of cotton and other crops on their land. For the next fifteen years, Cash spent most of his time working with his family on the farm. They all worked together to cultivate the cotton crops over a 20 acre land. Cash helped his parents in the farming. The Cash family used to get together in the front porch by the evening after completing the whole day’s chores.

Carrie played the guitar and the rest of the family members sang traditional hymns. Cash loved this family spirit and was very much fascinated by his mother’s guitar playing as well as singing abilities. . By the age of ten-years-old, Cash would distribute water to road gangs and by twelve years of age, he would move big sacks of cotton. It was no easy life, but the Cash family had to do it to get by. He used to write the songs and make stories by the time he was twelve years old. It was at the very age of twelve, when cash picked up his very first guitar.

His mother put together some money so that Cash could take singing lessons. After three lessons, the instructor told him to stop taking singing lessons. The instructor’s reason was so Cash would not alter his unique sounding voice. Cash was passionate for singing. He participated in quite a lot of talent contests. He would sing anywhere in front of anybody who would show slightest interest in listening his songs. In the year 1950, Cash graduated from the high school. At that time, he had no intention of continuing his studies to college level.

The ongoing Korean War provided him with a reason to join the US Air Force. He bought his guitar for the first time in his life at the time when he was in Germany serving the US Air Force. He found a few volunteering friends to start a music band of their own. They named the band the Barbarians. The Barbarians played the guitar and sang songs in the night clubs in the air base. After the termination of his service in the US Air Force, Cash shifted to Memphis. There he sold different kinds of appliances and tried to start his own music business.

It was in 1954 that Cash joined Sam Phillips’s Sun Records label. Phillips had also found numerous rock ‘n rollers before signing Cash that included Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. Phillips offered Cash to sign to his label because he was impressed by the Hey Porter song that Cash had