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Happy 80th Birthday, Johnny Cash!

photo's by Ray Tharaldson all rights reserved 2012
From picking cotton to help his impoverished, Depression-wracked family; to his exhausting tour schedule; to struggling with a serious drug addiction; to his songs about guns, murder, revenge, punishment and repentance—Johnny Cash was a troubled man who sought redemption through his music.
To commemorate what would be the county-music master’s 80th birthday on Feb. 26, several celebrations, projects and events are scheduled throughout the year. Cash’s boyhood home in Dyess, Ark. is being restored. Columbia/Legacy will release a series of archived recordings, starting with a collection of his gospel and spiritual songs from 1970s and ’80s called Bootleg IV: The Soul of Truth, which will be available in April. A Johnny Cash Museum is scheduled to open this summer in Nashville.
Johnny Cash was born to farmers in Kingsland, Ark. on Feb. 26, 1932. As the fourth of five children, he recalled in a 1969 TIME article that although his family was dirt poor, “I was never hungry a day in my life….at breakfast it was just fatback and biscuits—but that was plenty.” After high school, Cash worked at an auto plant in Pontiac, Mich. (where, as far as we know, he did not actually construct a car from stolen parts, as he later pretended to in his 1976 song “One Piece at a Time”). He joined the Air Force for a few years, and then in 1954 he married Vivian Liberto and the couple moved to Memphis.
Cash had always been musical—as a child he sang at the Dyess Central Baptist Church and he reportedly learned to play the guitar while in the Air Force —so when he moved to Memphis, he hooked up with two musicians, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant, and auditioned for Sam Phillips at Sun Records. He recorded “Hey, Porter” and “Cry Cry Cry” for Phillips, the latter of which became his first hit, peaking at No. 14 on the Billboard’s Top 20 in 1955. He followed it up with “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line,” which shot up to No. 1 and stayed there for 43 weeks. It would sell over two million copies. (Cash’s stint at Sun Records was relatively shortlived; he switched to Columbia in 1958 because the Phillips wouldn’t let him record gospel music).
Cash then embarked the grueling journey that all newly-successful musicians must endure: days and weeks and months of endless touring. By 1957, he was giving more than 200 shows a year (by some accounts, he may have played closer to 300). His marriage was faltering. He drank too much. He became addicted to amphetamines. He accidentally started a forest fire in California. He was arrested for smuggling pills into the U.S. from Mexico. In 1966, his wife filed for divorce. And yet still he released hit song after hit song: “Ring of Fire,” “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” “I Got Stripes.” Johnny Cash was troubled man, but not so troubled that he couldn’t turn his haunted words into song.
Cash toured with the Carter Family in the 1960s—and of course he would ultimately marry June Carter in 1968, after she helped him overcome his addiction and find his faith. The couple’s live recordings at Folsom Prison and San Quentin, in 1968 and 1969 respectively, are still two of the best concert albums ever released. They were married for 35 years, until her death in May 2003 from complications from heart surgery. Cash made it only four more months before joining her in September of the same year.
But this glossed over retelling of dates and events isn’t what’s important about Johnny Cash. The reason we remember him so fondly—and why we’re celebrating his birthday nine years after he passed—is the gift he had for music and the way he made us feel. Cash’s world-weary bass-baritone voice expressed a forlorn pain that, until we heard his songs, we didn’t even know we had. He gave a voice to the working man, the luckless, the outlaw, the convict—and to those of us who weren’t any of those things but who sometimes identified with them anyway.
“Well, we’re doing mighty fine, I do suppose / In our streak of lightnin’ cars and fancy clothes,” Cash once sang, “But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back / Up front there ought ‘a be a man in black.”
Thank you for being that man, Johnny Cash. Happy birthday.
Claire Suddath is a staff writer at TIME Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter at @clairesuddath or on Facebook.

Bogguss: Real deal, but now on smaller stage

Bogguss: Real deal, but now on smaller stage

Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies

UPDATE:
LOS ANGELES —

Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, has died. She was 48.
Publicist Kristen Foster said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unclear.
At her peak in the 1980s and `90s, Houston the golden girl of the music industry and one of the world's best-selling artists.
Among her hits were "How Will I Know," "Saving All My Love for You" and "I Will Always Love You." She won multiple Grammys including album and record of the year.
Her success carried her beyond music to movies like "The Bodyguard."
But by the end of her career, drug use took its toll as her record sales plummeted and her voice became raspy and hoarse.


By Sharon Knolle

Whitney Houston's rep issued a shocked denial today to counter reports that the singer/actress has died
In a statement, her publicist, Nancy Seltzer, said, "I've just spoken to Whitney. She is perfectly fine and does not understand why, with everything going on in the world right now, they have to find new rumors to dig up. She is home in New Jersey with her family." Seltzer said people were calling the singer at home and sobbing, after apparently having heard reports of her death over the radio. According to the rumors, Houston had died of a drug overdose.
Fans and the media have speculated about Houston's health after her performance at Friday's Michael Jackson tribute concert at Madison Square Garden, where she appeared shockingly thin, even skeletal. The singer then bowed out of the second night of the concert without explanation, prompting heightened speculation about her health. Houston has long been rumored to have drug problems, and in Tuesday's edition of the New York Daily News — which was evidently published before horrific terrorist attacks brought the city to a standstill — Seltzer denied fresh reports that her celebrity client was on drugs.
"Whitney has been under stress due to family matters, and when she is under stress, she doesn't eat," Seltzer told the New York tab at the time.
Houston and her husband, singer Bobby Brown, have had a history of drug- and alcohol-related issues, including possession of marijuana charges for Houston in January 2000, which were later dismissed, and a 75-day stint in jail for Brown in 2000, after he violated his probation (stemming from 1996 drunken driving charges).
ABCNEWS.com's Buck Wolf contributed to this story.

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