[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 128 (Wednesday, September 17, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11637-S11638]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

                                 ______
                                 

                        IN HONOR OF JOHNNY CASH

 Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the 
resolution to honor a great singer, a great songwriter, a great 
American, a man who truly lived the American Dream. J.R. Cash, 
otherwise known as ``the man in black,'' Johnny Cash, captivated all 
those who listened during a career that spanned four decades. The man 
in black was a man who embodied and lived the spirit of working class 
America and transformed that spirit into song. I speak today to honor 
the life and work of this Arkansas native and music legend, and I would 
like to thank the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander, for his 
resolution and kind words.

[[Page S11638]]

  A native of Kingsland and Dyess, AR, Mr. Cash was respected and 
idolized by many in my State. It is always a tragedy to lose a native 
son, but I know the people of Arkansas will especially mourn the loss 
of Mr. Cash, who passed away last Friday at the age of 71.
  Johnny Cash's life reads much like that of many Arkansas born during 
the dark and dreary days of the Depression. He was born to a family of 
sharecropper in Kingsland, February 26, 1932, a small town in South 
Arkansas not far from where my own father was born.
  When he was 3, his family moved to Dyess, AR--a farming colony 
established by Franklin Delano Rossevelt's New Deal to help lift 
displaced farming families out of the Depression and the crushing 
poverty that still permeates a large part of the Delta soil. The Cash's 
were especially poor. A neighbor, Earl Condra of Harrisburg, who knew 
the plight of many families of the region once said, ``We were poor, 
but the Cash's were about as poor as you could get.''
  No one in the family escaped working on the farm. By the time he was 
6, Cash was carrying water to workers in the field. By 10 he working 
almost a full day in the cotton fields, from, as he said, ``can `til 
can't''. When he was 12, his 14-year-old brother, whom young Johnny 
idolized, was killed in a saw accident while sawing oak logs into fence 
posts for the family farm. That same year, Cash's father told him he 
had reached ``the age of accountability . . . you're accountable as a 
man, to yourself and to others.''

  For Cash, it seemed the only escape from his hard life was through 
music. After a long, hard day picking cotton in the fields, his family 
would often sit on their front porch and sing.
  ``I remember when I was a lad, times were hard and things were bad. 
But there's a silver lining behind every cloud. Just four the number of 
people, that's all we were, trying to make a living out of black land 
dirt. But we'd get together in a family circle singin' loud. Daddy sang 
bass, Momma sang tenor, me and little brother would join right in 
there. Singin' seems to help a troubled soul. One of these days, and it 
won't be long, I'll rejoin them in a song. I'm going to join the family 
circle at the throne,'' he recalled in one of his songs.
  Indeed, by the age of 12, Cash was performing songs on the radio in 
Blytheville, AR.
  Although he was one of few to graduate high school in post-Depression 
Arkansas, Cash knew his future lay in music.
  ``I think the first time I knew what I wanted to do with my life was 
when I was about 4 years old. I was listening to an old Victrola, 
playing a railroad song . . . I thought it was the most wonderful, 
amazing thing that I'd ever seen. That you could take this piece of wax 
and music would come out of that box. From that day on, I wanted to 
sing on the radio,'' he reminisced in a 1993 interview.

  The quote under his picture in the 1950 Dyess Senior High School 
yearbook read, ``Be a live wire and you won't get stepped on.''
  Within months of his graduation he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and 
was assigned to Landsberg, Germany, where he was a radio intercept 
operator tasked with intercepting Soviet Morse Code. And it was also in 
Germany that he learned to play the guitar.
  After his discharge from the Air Force in 1954, Cash moved to 
Memphis, TN, to take a job as an appliance salesman and to attend 
broadcasting school through the G.I. bill.
  It was in Memphis where Johnny Cash would get his chance to sing to 
great audiences. After being turned away on numerous occasions, Johnny 
woke early one morning and went to the Memphis office of the famous Sun 
Records to meet Sam Phillips and he arrived for work. After a brief 
session, Mr. Phillips told Johnny to return the next day with a band. 
From that day forward, Johnny Cash reigned as the undisputed king of 
the downtrodden poor, a working man's savior in song.
  Johnny Cash sang with a scowl of determination. The darkness of the 
songs he sang was only brightened by the hope of the audiences he 
addressed. That this man, this legend, this poor kid from Arkansas, 
could succeed on the grandest scale by putting his experiences and his 
emotions into song, gave the poorest sharecropper and the most 
oppressed worker that hope. There are no parameters in song. No 
boundaries, no borders, no confinements. For in a song, a man may truly 
express the deep well of thought not to be expressed in polite society. 
Song crisscrosses through time with an ease and a fluidity that gives 
true freedom to those who are not free, whether they are beholden to 
debt, their family, society or their own shortcomings. Johnny Cash 
understood the nature of song like few before or after. He understood 
its power over people. He understood the hope it could give, the 
happiness it could bestow, the sorrow it could impart. He knew these 
things about music. He used this understanding to give voice to those 
that had none.

  As he said in explaining his propensity to wear black clothes, ``I 
tried to speak for the voices that were ignored or even suppressed by 
the entertainment media, not to mention the political and education 
establishments.'' As he put it, black clothes symbolized the 
dispossessed people of the world.
  Johnny Cash achieved a level of success equal to that of the Beatles 
and Elvis. The legacy he left will be a lasting one in country and rock 
music. From jazz to blues to country music, to the rock and roll that 
was nurtured in its early years in the juke joints of the Delta South 
and the urban ghettos of the north, Johnny Cash contributed his own 
particular interpretation to this musical legacy: one that will forever 
be enshrined in the memories of his friends, colleagues, and thousands 
of fans.
  Johnny Cash sold more records than anyone in the world in 1967. He 
was so popular that he had his own ABC television series. He won eleven 
Grammys and was the youngest person ever inducted into the Country 
Music Hall of Fame. He has also been inducted into the Rock and Roll 
Hall of Fame, has been honored with a Kennedy Center Award, and has a 
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. President Bush honored him with the 
National Medal of the Arts this past April.
  Despite all of the professional accomplishments and accolades, I 
think Mr. Cash would rather us celebrate his life in terms of the 
people he touched with his music and his philanthropic work. In 
addition to his music, Mr. Cash endowed a burn research center, 
campaigned for prison reform, counseled former inmates transitioning to 
society, and donated and worked for the Mental Health association, Home 
for Autistic children, Refugees for Battered Women, the American Cancer 
Society, YWCA, and the Humane Society, among others.
  Johnny Cash rose from nothing to everything on the strength of an 
iron will, gritty self-determination, and an unflappable faith in God, 
his family, and his music. Nothing he earned in his life came at the 
expense of others. Yet all he gave to all. Johnny Cash learned from his 
mistakes and ascended to a level higher than those who preceded him. He 
taught us to learn from our mistakes. He taught us to never give up, 
that the dreams of a small boy on a small farm in a small town can be 
big, and that they can come true. He taught us how to be free through 
the words and melody of a song. The lessons from his music are 
applicable today and will be for generations to come. Nothing captures 
the imagination of the heart like a great song. Mr. Cash captured the 
hearts of many. And his song will be missed.

                          ____________________