Johnny Cash was just 71 years old when he passed away on September 12, 2003. Cash, affectionately know as the Man in Black, due to his penchant for wearing all-black attire, is without question one of the defining artists in country music in the last century.
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Cash’s hits are far too many to mention, but we found three of his most career-defining hits.
“Ring of Fire”
It’s impossible to list songs by Johnny Cash and not include “Ring of Fire.” Ironically, the song was written by June Carter, along with Merle Kilgore, and released by Cash in 1963, five years before Carter and Cash were married. The song was first recorded by Carter’s sister, Anita, although it’s Cash who made it a hit.
According to a documentary released ahead of the 2005 film, Walk the Line, about Cash and Carter’s love story, Carter wrote the song while being tormented by her feelings for Cash, even though she was married to someone else at the time.
“I tell you it can kill people like me when something like that happens,” she says (via Country Living). “One night, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was crying when I woke up. I thought, ‘I can’t do this. This is driving me crazy because all I could feel was pain.”
“I’d been writing songs with a guy named Merle Kilgore, a great songwriter,” Carter continues. “And he encouraged me to write. The next morning, Kilgore came in, and I said, ‘We’ve got to hone a little bit on this, but I really think I’ve written a great song.’ That song was ‘Ring of Fire.’”
“Folsom Prison Blues”
Cash first includes “Folsom Prison Blues” on his debut Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar! album, released in 1957. It was later part of his live album, At Folsom Prison, recorded in 1968 at Folsom Prison in California.
Cash penned “Folsom Prison Blues” in 1953, while serving in West Germany in the Air Force. It was isnpired by the 1951 movie, Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison.
The song has surprisingly dark lyrics, with lines like, “When I was just a baby, my mama told me, ‘Son, always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns’ / But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die / When I hear that whistle blowin’, I hang my head and cry.”
“It was a violent movie,” Cash says of the song (via Country Thang Daily). “And I just wanted to write a song that would tell what I thought it would be like in prison.”
“I Walk The Line”
“I Walk The Line” is Johnny Cash’s third single, and first No. 1 hit. Cash wrote the song by himself, for his debut With His Hot and Blue Guitar record. Cash was inspired to write the song by thinking of his then-wife, Vivian Liberto, whom he wed in 1954.
“I was newly married at the time, and I suppose I was laying out my pledge of devotion,” Cash says in Dorothy Hourstman’s 1976 book, Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy.
Liberto and Cash divorced in 1966. Ironically, she later used that title for her 2007 memoir, detailing their romance and marriage, including having four children together. Two years after divorcing Liberto, he married Carter, remaining together until she passed away in 2003, four months before Cash.
Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images
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