[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23643-23646]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    HONORING THE LIFE OF JOHNNY CASH

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to 
the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 282) honoring the life of 
Johnny Cash, as amended.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                            H. Con. Res. 282

       Whereas Johnny Cash was one of the most influential and 
     recognized voices of American music throughout the world, 
     whose influence spanned generations and musical genres;
       Whereas Johnny Cash was born on February 26, 1932, in 
     Kingsland, Arkansas, and moved with his family at the age of 
     3 to Dyess, Arkansas, where the family farmed 20 acres of 
     cotton and other seasonal crops;
       Whereas those early years in the life of Johnny Cash 
     inspired songs such as ``Look at Them Beans'' and ``Five Feet 
     High and Rising'';
       Whereas Johnny Cash eventually released more than 70 albums 
     of original material in his lifetime, beginning with his 
     first recording in 1955 with the Tennessee Two;
       Whereas Johnny Cash was a devoted husband to June Carter 
     Cash, a father of 5 children, and a grandfather;
       Whereas Johnny Cash received extensive recognition for his 
     contributions to the musical heritage of the Nation, 
     including membership in the Grand Ole Opry; induction into 
     the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Country Music 
     Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; and his 
     receipt of numerous awards, including Kennedy Center Honors, 
     11 Grammy Awards, and the 2001 National Medal of Arts;
       Whereas Johnny Cash embodied the creativity, innovation, 
     and social conscience that define American music;
       Whereas Johnny Cash was a vocal champion of the 
     downtrodden, the working man, and Native Americans; and
       Whereas the Nation has lost one of its most prolific and 
     influential musicians with the death of Johnny Cash on 
     September 12, 2003, in Nashville, Tennessee: Now, therefore, 
     be it
       Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
     concurring), That the Congress--
       (1) honors the life and accomplishments of Johnny Cash;
       (2) recognizes and honors Johnny Cash for his invaluable 
     contributions to the Nation, Tennessee, and our musical 
     heritage; and
       (3) extends condolences to the Cash family on the death of 
     a remarkable man.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from 
Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van 
Hollen) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).


                             General Leave

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks on House Concurrent Resolution 282.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Tennessee?
  There was no objection.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Concurrent Resolution 
282, offered by the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper). House 
Concurrent Resolution 282 honors the life and musical legacy of Johnny 
Cash, a man who was a poet, a scholar, and a world famous music icon, 
as well as a loving husband and father.
  I would like to take this opportunity to commend the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) for introducing this important legislation. I 
would also like to thank Senator Lamar Alexander for introducing the 
Senate version, which was passed by that body on September 18, 2003.
  It was no wonder that September 12 was a dark and dreary day in 
Nashville. It was the day we lost the Man in Black. Johnny Cash died 
early that morning at Baptist Hospital in Nashville from diabetes 
complications. He was an outlaw, he was a songwriter, he was a born-
again Christian; and for 5 decades Johnny Cash entertained millions, 
millions of people around the world with songs of love and death and 
good times and bad. All of his career, Johnny Cash wrote songs for the 
common man. From his upbringing in rural northeastern Arkansas to the 
height of his stardom in the 1960s, Johnny Cash always connected with 
the common man.
  Johnny's career began in Memphis alongside Elvis Presley. There, with 
legendary recording great Sam Phillips of Sun Records, he recorded 
``Cry! Cry! Cry!'' and that put him on the map. By 1956 he was 
recognized as one of country music's rising stars when he joined the 
Louisiana Hayride and the Grand Ole Opry. Although he struggled through 
drug abuse, Johnny Cash found a soul mate in June Carter Cash. It was 
with her loving support that he was able to make it through those tough 
times. In 1968 he married this daughter of acoustic guitar great Mother 
Maybelle Carter, a member of ``the first family of country music.''
  Johnny Cash's deep sense of reality pours out in that gravelly voice 
that we all loved with songs like ``Folsom Prison Blues'' and the 
legendary ``Ring of Fire'' co-written with June Carter Cash. He 
garnered 11 Grammys and at age 71 was in no way slowing down 
creatively. Just a few weeks ago, he was posthumously named the top 
honoree at the Americana Music Awards in Nashville.
  His legacy is his music, and it will surely go on with hits like ``I 
Walk the Line''; ``Big River''; and the hit he co-wrote with fellow 
outlaw Kris Kristofferson, ``Sunday Morning Coming Down.'' Kris 
Kristofferson was right when he said Johnny Cash represented what was 
great about America. His profound faith, resiliency, and unwillingness 
to be labeled by the music industry will certainly shape the legacy of 
one of the greatest American artists. This American icon will be 
missed, but he will be remembered through his music.
  I commend the gentleman from Tennessee for his leadership in offering 
this concurrent resolution to honor the life of Johnny Cash, and 
encourage my colleagues to adopt the measure.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I rise in support of this concurrent resolution to honor the life and 
contributions of Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash, as we all know, had a long 
and distinguished music career, becoming one of the most imposing and 
influential figures in post-World War II country music. He is one of 
the only artists to be enshrined in the Rock and Roll and Country Music 
Hall of Fame.
  Cash did not sound like Nashville, nor did he sound like honky-tonk 
or rock and roll. He created his own unique sound, his own type and 
blend of music, revolutionizing the world of country music. In creating 
that sound, he released over 70 albums. In addition, he was one of the 
most successful country artists of the 1950s and 1960s, scoring well 
over 100 hit singles. These are amazing feats that few musicians have 
accomplished and even fewer are likely to repeat.
  Cash's career coincided with the birth of rock and roll. Johnny Cash 
was not just another musician, however. Rather, his later albums would 
show his deep sense of history. He illustrated his understanding with a 
series of historical albums. These albums were focused on the 
downtrodden, the common man, and also the plight of Native Americans in 
our country.
  Johnny Cash has made an indelible mark on American society. While we 
have lost one of our great musical artists of the last 50 years, his 
songs will continue to impact generations to come.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Cooper), who has the great privilege of representing 
Nashville and who introduced this concurrent resolution; and I ask 
unanimous consent that he be allowed to control the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Maryland?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) for yielding me 
this time. We have a number of speakers on this side, and I would like 
to yield to them. I am particularly appreciative of the gentlewoman 
from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Gordon).

[[Page 23644]]

  Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman 
from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon).
  Mr. GORDON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Cooper) for bringing this very worthwhile concurrent resolution before 
us.

  I was standing by my window
  On a cold and cloudy day
  When I saw the hearse come rollin'
  For to take Johnny away.

  Will the circle be unbroken?
  By and by, Lord, by and by,
  There's a better home a-waitin'
  In the sky, Lord, in the sky.

  I told the undertaker,
  ``Undertaker, please drive slow,
  For this body you are haulin'
  Lord, I hate to see him go.''

  Johnny Cash was a constituent of mine who lived in Hendersonville, 
Tennessee. I have listened to his music most of my life. He was a true 
legend who inspired countless musicians from all walks of life for 
nearly 5 decades. His music transcended traditional boundaries. He was 
as much an influence in rock and roll, pop, and alternative music, as 
he was in country music.
  Johnny Cash is one of only a handful of artists to be inducted into 
the Country Music, Rock and Roll, and Nashville Songwriters Hall of 
Fame. The Man in Black's life began as the humble son of a sharecropper 
who toiled in the cotton fields of Arkansas, but he never forgot his 
simple beginnings even as he became one of the world's bestselling solo 
musicians.
  Johnny Cash was just as comfortable performing in a maximum security 
prison as he was in receiving the 2001 National Medal of Arts award. He 
recorded more than 1,500 songs in his life and won 11 Grammys. Johnny 
Cash left this world on September 12, but his legacy lives on through 
his music and through those whom he has mentored in his 71 years of 
life. So, yes, the circle will be unbroken.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to 
the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble), a gentleman who has 
joined us on the Committee on the Judiciary in fighting for our 
songwriters and also a gentleman who several years ago I had the 
opportunity to have as my guest at the Grand Ole Opry and to celebrate 
some of this wonderful country music that we are speaking of today.
  Mr. COBLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee for 
yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, some years ago when I sat as a member of the House 
Committee on the Judiciary's Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual 
Property Subcommittee, we had an occasion to resolve a copyright 
matter, which of course brought many entertainers and performers to 
Capitol Hill that day. Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, and I believe 
his agent was with him, came into my office prior to the meeting just 
to say hello. I left him in my office and went down to the meeting, and 
when he appeared as a witness, he proudly announced that he had just 
left my office where he had sat in my chair.

                              {time}  1615

  Well, I thought it was I who would be proud that he sat in my chair 
in my office, and I told him that. He was a very good witness; I 
remember it very vividly. And we resolved the copyright matter 
favorably for all concerned. It is one of those issues where neither 
side was ecstatic about it, but both sides could live with it.
  Subsequently, I saw a replay of a Larry King interview, and perhaps 
many of my colleagues saw it when he interviewed Cash. Johnny Cash told 
King that night on the interview that he recalled one time when he had 
been arrested, I believe in Georgia, and spent the night in jail. And 
the jailer came the next day, and Johnny Cash said that the jailer 
threw the money and his clothes on the counter and said, I do not want 
to see you here any more. He said, my wife is a Johnny Cash fan; and 
she cried all night when I told her that you were in my jail. Now, you 
get out of here.
  Tough love I think is what it amounted to. I think that jailer was 
saying to him, now, listen, pal, you caused me a tough night last 
night; my wife is upset at me for having you here. Get yourself squared 
away. I think he did. He obviously did get himself squared away.
  Many years ago, perhaps many of my colleagues were with me here in 
Washington when the four outlaws, as the gentlewoman from Tennessee 
mentioned, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and Waylon 
Jennings, each of whom I am sure were regarded as outlaws by the 
profession, but they made one tremendous quartet here that night; and 
it was a sold-out crowd here in Washington. I vividly remember it.
  As has already been said, the gentleman from Tennessee, the gentleman 
from Maryland and the gentlewoman from Tennessee have already said it, 
he was indeed an icon and will indeed be missed. The man in black, 
always standing up; always, almost without exception, standing up for 
the underdog, standing up for the other guy. He will indeed be missed.
  Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, many of our colleagues wish they could be 
here today, particularly our friend, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. 
Ross). I yield such time as he may consume to our friend, the gentleman 
from Illinois (Mr. Davis), who is here today.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the gentleman 
from Tennessee for his introduction of this legislation. Though the 
gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross) could not be here, I, too, grew up 
in Arkansas; and I grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry. I grew up 
as a tremendous fan of country music, but I grew up more of a fan of 
the gentleman that we revere and discuss today. Because of his ``Folsom 
Prison Blues,'' as a matter of fact, the fact that here was a gentleman 
who did, in fact, represent the downtrodden but who took his music into 
the prisons; and as a result of the ``Folsom Prison Blues,'' it caused 
people to begin to look at prisons and life in prison in a different 
way. As a matter of fact, right now, there are more than 2 million 
people who are incarcerated in this country, almost 1 million of them 
coming home each year.
  Johnny Cash means more than just the music. He means part of a 
tradition in our country. I think I may not have 70 of those albums, 
but I must have at least 15 or 20, and whenever I want to really 
connect, I just sit back and listen. So Johnny has made a tremendous 
impact on the history and development of culture in our country.
  Again, I commend the gentleman from Tennessee for the introduction of 
this legislation, I urge its swift passage, celebrating the life and 
legacy of Johnny Cash.
  Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I appreciate the gentleman's kind remarks about the legacy of a truly 
great man.
  It is not everyone who not only makes the front page of the hometown 
newspaper, the only front page I have ever seen entirely in black, but 
who also makes the front page of Time Magazine, People Magazine and, 
yes, no less than Rolling Stone itself.
  There were some comments in here from some truly remarkable artists 
who have this to say about the passing of Johnny Cash.
  Bob Dylan said, ``Johnny was and is the North Star. You could guide 
your ship by him, and he is the greatest of the greats, then and now.''
  Merle Haggard said, ``He was like Abraham or Moses, one of the great 
men who will ever grace the Earth. There will never be another man in 
black.''
  Kris Kristofferson pointed out he thought, ``The power of his 
performance came from the tension between this man who was deeply 
spiritual and also a real wild man.''
  The fact of Johnny Cash's passing has been noted by people around the 
world with great sadness, but I thought one of the best obituaries in 
his honor was written by a noted music author, Peter Guralnick; and it 
appeared in The New York Times. He said as follows: ``Only those who 
were there at the beginning can remember how different he really was. 
The records, when

[[Page 23645]]

they first started coming out on the Sun label in 1955, in the wake of 
Elvis Presley's success, sounded `so unusual,' said the Sun session 
guitarist Roland Janes, `that I never would have dreamed he could have 
even gotten a record played on the radio. But he set country music on 
its ear.'
  ``It was the voice that compelled attention from the start. It was a 
voice that the founder of Sun Records, Sam Phillips, compared to the 
blues singer Howlin' Wolf's in its uniqueness, the unimpeachable 
integrity and originality of its sound. But it was the conviction 
behind the voice that really allowed Johnny Cash to create a body of 
work as ambitious in its scope as it was homespun in its sound.
  ``He carried that conviction with him from the time he first entered 
the tiny Sun studio in Memphis in the fall of 1954. He was just out of 
the Army, selling home appliances door-to-door and playing with a trio 
of musicians barely conversant with the instruments that they were 
playing: a guitarist who played one note at a time because he did not 
know any other way to do it, a base player who had just switched over 
from the guitar and had not yet learned how to tune his instrument, and 
a steel guitar player who would drop out of the picture altogether 
before they even made a record. They worked and worked until, after 
nearly 6 months, they finally came up with something that reflected the 
honesty, originality, and, above all, the spontaneity and emotional 
truth that both Sam Phillips and Johnny Cash particularly prized. This 
low-tech approach was the perfect vehicle certainly for the plain-
spoken quality of Johnny Cash's message, but the method of delivery 
does not come close to explaining the majesty or the ambition of his 
art.
  ``To understand that, one has to factor in the power of imagination. 
John Cash, he was named `Johnny' by Sam Phillips, grew up in the 
Federal `colony' of Dyess, Arkansas, a social experiment with a 
socialist setup really, as Johnny Cash himself described it, that was 
done by President Franklin Roosevelt for farmers who had lost out 
during the Depression. One of the most vivid memories of Dyess was the 
day Eleanor Roosevelt came to town to decorate the library, a momentous 
occasion not simply for the glimpse it afforded of Mrs. Roosevelt but 
for the opportunity it subsequently afforded Johnny Cash to indulge in 
what would become a lifelong passion for reading. He read James 
Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott in particular at that time and 
everything he could find on the American Indian, not so much to escape 
as to enjoy the sense of discovery. He carried this exploratory spirit 
with him into the world, a world in which he achieved a degree of 
celebrity and fame far beyond anything he might ever have imagined and 
long past the point that most people would gladly have settled for the 
simple definition of success.
  ``He used his success, in fact, to provide a voice for the 
downtrodden, the lost souls and lost causes that might otherwise have 
found no place in the American dream. He used his knowledge and passion 
for every sort of music, for the blues of Robert Johnson, the gospel 
music of his fellow Arkansan, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Texas folk 
songs collected by J. Frank Dobie, to set out in new and inventive 
directions of his own. When he got a network television show in the 
late 1960s, he not only presented such unlikely countercultural figures 
as Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger to a predominantly country audience, he 
also regularly incorporated a vivid lesson in musical and social 
history in a filmed sequence called `Ride This Train.'
  ``Johnny Cash's imagination took him along widely divergent paths. 
There was, as he often remarked, no safe harbor for the creative soul. 
He was tormented by demons that he could not always control, but he 
never sought excuses. He simply sought the truth.
  ``This was what continued to give Johnny Cash's music relevance over 
the years. Through imagination he possessed a gift for empathetic 
transference; unlike many artists, he was able to take on other voices 
and make them his own. His music celebrated the power of the 
individual, but his emphasis on directness and simplicity made a 
complex, and sometimes contradictory, message accessible to all. His, 
as Sam Phillips once said, was the truest voice because it was so 
irremediably his own, but it was a universal voice, too, for the very 
way in which it incorporated a constant sense of striving and struggle, 
an irreducible awareness, and embrace, of the human stain.''
  Mr. Speaker, Johnny Cash was like no other. As I mentioned earlier, 
his loss was mourned around this globe. From young people who like 
``Nine Inch Nails'' and the song ``Hurt'' and who thrilled to the 
video, perhaps one of the best ever made, to the oldest of country 
music fans who remember tuning in to the Grand Ole Opry in their youth. 
So we appreciate this moment, and I appreciate the chance to join with 
my Tennessee colleagues and my colleagues from Arkansas and people 
around this great country who are in this Congress and who have come up 
to me in the last couple of weeks to honor the memory of the great 
Johnny Cash.
  Mr. Speaker, I have no more speakers at this time, and I yield back 
the balance of my time.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Again, I commend the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) for his 
efforts, and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon) for his efforts 
in recognizing his constituent.
  The gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) spoke a little bit about 
Johnny Cash's ambitions for his music, and I think that we can see 
that, because we have people all across the spectrum, those who are 
young and old, who appreciate his music, and who learned from what he 
does.
  I think it is important to note, too, that it was very important to 
Johnny Cash that he mentor others; and that was not lost on his 
children and his grandchildren and the talents that they possess and 
the talents that they are bringing forward in the music industry today.
  We appreciate so much this body joining together to honor not only 
Johnny Cash's life and the impact that he had on the music industry but 
the legacy.
  Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the late Johnny 
Cash, one of our most well known singer/songwriters who was born in a 
little-known town in my district named Kingsland.
  Kingsland, Arkansas is a little town of 449 residents that lies just 
west of the Mississippi Delta, the fertile ground out of which grows 
our nation's finest food and fiber. Out of this land also grows much 
hardship--it is sparsely populated by farmers whose fortune is subject 
to the whims of nature. It gave birth to the blues, and to Johnny Cash.
  Cash was born in the wake of the Great Depression, the fourth of five 
children in a cotton farming family. He picked cotton with his hands, 
sang hymns at the Central Baptist Church, and sought higher ground at 
Pine Bluff when the great flood of 1937 sent the Mississippi's waters 
spilling into his family's cotton fields in Dyess, covering them with 
the black Mississippi mud that the next year produced the best cotton 
crop they'd ever seen--hardship and glory wrapped up in a busted levee 
that soaked his livelihood and sealed his fate as the champion of the 
downtrodden.
  Johnny Cash's music transcended genres and generations to touch us 
all with stories of struggle--sometimes ending in triumph, but usually 
ending in trouble. His adventurous ballads and lamenting dirges could 
bring us down to the darkest depths of life at the same time his 
spirituals lifted us up to heaven.
  He was bold. He was bad. He was brave. He made his peace with man and 
with God through his songs. He sang of outlaws and heroes, cowboys and 
killers, soldiers and lovers, and even a boy named Sue. He was country, 
folk, and rock and roll. Johnny Cash didn't sing to simply earn a 
living, he sang because he had much to tell.
  From his life we learn to face adversity with wit and integrity, to 
fight back when pushed down, to hold duty and honor sacred, and to love 
and forgive. We lost one of our national treasures this month, but the 
legacy and the legend of the Man in Black will live on in the gift he 
gave us all.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and 
I yield back the balance of my time.

[[Page 23646]]

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Schrock). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) that the 
House suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution, H. Con. 
Res. 282, as amended.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the concurrent resolution, as 
amended, was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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