JOHNNY CASH: ROBERT HILBURN

This is one of the many Johnny Cash biographies but also the most recent. It begins with Johnny's growing up in Dyess, Arkansas,  literally picking cotton to survive.  He turns to music early in his life, much to his father's dismay who always thought Johnnie would be a failure,  His career is waylaid for three years when he joins the service and is posted to Europe.  It's an important part in his growth as a musician, helping him to see the world.  He returns to marry his high school girlfriend and begins his career in music, hoping to get someone to listen to his music, to record his songs.  His first few years are hardscrabble.  He quickly has children, eventually four daughters before divorcing and marrying singer June Carter.  We quickly realize Johnniy's genius is his ability to write songs and sing them with feeling, with a sense of truth.  His career begins with his Folson Prison album
and his career continues to build through the 1950's and 1960's.  In the 1970's, he moves into movies, then has his own TV show, becoming probably the most famous country singer ever.  Despite his TV and movies, he seems to always be on tour, in the US and even Europe where he also becomes wildly popular.

 His life, despite its success, is one fall after another, either to booze, drugs or women, not an unusual story for a musician who is always on the road, needs the adulation of an audience, and cannot control his temptations.  Through it all, he remains a devout Christian, a good friend of Billy Graham, albeit a guilt-ridden on. He and June travel to the Holy Land many times and make a film about the life of Jesus Christ. He finally has a son with June Carter, John Cash, which seems to restart his life.  His life is not only one of musical greatness but also personal grief, loneliness, faith, and redemption.  And as I mentioned, he pays a heavy price for his success with his drugs and alcohol. Although he loses his audience in much of the 1980's,  it was encouraging to see Cash's resurgence as an artist in the 1990's as if he was rediscovered.  His 'American Recordings' allbum of songs by Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and London Wainwright would win a Grammy and a new, young rock audience.

The book bogs down in the last third, as we get tired of his drugs, trashing of hotel rooms, and broken relationships with agents,  band members, and family.  Still, it's worth reading if you are a Cash fan.