I received an email from Wayne Cash, a distant cousin of Johnny Cash, just as I was finishing a book on Johnny. I've written about Wayne before. He has done more than anyone I know to keep the Kingsland part of the Cash legacy alive.
Johnny Cash was born in the pine woods of south Arkansas. Most Arkansans associate him with Dyess in Mississippi County, the Depression-era federal resettlement colony where his parents moved in search of work.
The book is "Country Boy: The Roots of Johnny Cash," which was released last year by the University of Arkansas Press. There have been millions of words written about the musician through the years, but author Colin Edward Woodward covers new ground on Cash's connections to his native state.
Woodward worked for more than three years for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Center for Arkansas History & Culture as an archivist.
"I discovered Cash treasures that I knew had to be shared with the world," he says. "Had I not worked there, this project never would have happened. The center sponsored trips to Kings-land, Dyess and Cummins prison farm while I was living in Little Rock. And in 2017, UALR awarded me a G. Thomas Eisele Fellowship, which allowed me to do research ... and attend the inaugural Johnny Cash Heritage Festival in Dyess."
Woodward says Wayne Cash "provided a direct link to Johnny Cash and shared a terrific set of family and genealogical papers with me."
Woodward begins the book this way: "No one has ever sounded quite like Johnny Cash. But there's no place quite like Arkansas either. Johnny Cash was a country music star, an early rocker, a hillbilly concept-album maker, a folkie and an inspiration to rock minimalists and punks. He was also a gospel singer, Americana icon and natural storyteller. Musicians don't like being labeled."
"You'll just have to call me as you see me," Cash often said.
What was it about Kingsland and Dyess that shaped this American original?
"Johnny Cash toured the country and the world, made movies and television shows, and cut hundreds of his own songs, not to mention hundreds by other artists. But in his mind, he never really left Arkansas. Cash moved to Tennessee later in life, and he died there. But the first 18 years of his life, all spent in Arkansas, inspired and shaped his music for the rest of his life. Johnny Cash was a true country boy."
Rural Cleveland County produced yet another 20th century American icon--football coaching legend Paul "Bear" Bryant. I've always found it interesting that two leading figures of American culture--one in sports and one in entertainment; the man in the houndstooth hat and the man in black--were born in the same rural Arkansas county.
Bryant was born in 1913; Cash in 1932. Both came from poor families, as were most Arkansas families in those early decades of the 20th century.
"His was a poor and struggling family," Woodward writes of Cash. "He took his first breaths at the height of the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in the country's history. It was a hard time for America and an even harder time for Arkansas, one of its most underdeveloped and impoverished states. Yet out of struggle and poverty came great art. Arkansas is a place seemingly devoid of artifice and pretense. It is tempting to say that Cash had what many musicians prize: authenticity.
"Later, however, Cash's career would get shrouded in legends and myth--some of his own making. ... Whatever Cash's personal faults--and despite his own mythmaking, which goes against the idea of authenticity--his music is what matters most and has doubtless maintained his integrity. Cash's music was at its best when it felt most authentic. And regardless of how good it was at any one time, what kept Cash rooted, what kept him authentic, was his commitment to family, faith, history and place."
Those who read Woodward's book not only will learn new things about Cash, they'll learn about Arkansas.
For instance, Woodward describes the Delta this way: "It had some of the wealthiest plantations and American towns before the Civil War. The defeat of the Confederacy ended Arkansas' generation of prosperity. Later, the Delta, with its large Black population and cotton culture, served as the cradle for blues music.
"When Americans think of the Delta, they might think of Mississippi or Louisiana. But Arkansas has also featured strongly in Delta music history. Helena, for example, south of Memphis and not far from legendary Clarksdale, was home to Sonny Boy Williamson, Levon Helm and Conway Twitty."
Helm actually hailed from nearby Turkey Scratch, but you get the point.
"Almost every published work on Johnny Cash has been written by non-historians and mostly non-academics," Woodward writes. "Some writing on Cash has been scholarly. Much of it has not. Unfortunately for historians, Cash has become the stuff of legend. His life and career has been the subject of many popular works, from print to film to television. Everything from comic books to movies have sought to capture the man, and these works have not always been true to the historical record.
"To call Cash a legend is accurate, but it also does a disservice to the man. Rosanne Cash, for one, has grown tired of the mythic version of her father. She has rejected the 'icon-ization and the mythmaking about my dad, because that very thing was so destructive to him.'"
Woodward's 295-page book shines a different light on Cash and the desperately poor state where he came of age.
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.