Johnny Cash was as down-home as they come. Born in a shack in Arkansas to a family of farmers and living most of his life in the vicinity of Nashville, he sang about venerable country subjects like trains, work, cowboys, jail, temptations, guitars and God. But what made him an American icon were the ways he was like no country singer before or since.
Long before M.B.A.'s began advising pop acts about branding, Mr. Cash set out to make himself a symbol. His wardrobe as the Man in Black -- for perpetual mourning and perpetual sympathy with humanity's suffering -- was just the most visible sign of a deep and consistent gravity. He started his career as a rockabilly singer in Memphis, where country reaffirmed its connection to the blues, and in the hundreds of songs he recorded, he was never far away from an awareness of tragedy and death.
Older American rural music spoke directly of hard times and mortality. Songs about romance and honky-tonking were always around, but they were the Saturday-night respite from rugged lives. Mr. Cash's music didn't flaunt its rural roots; he never allied himself with bluegrass revivals, new traditionalism or any other overt throwbacks. His trademark arrangements, with his steady-picked guitar and the marchlike beat of his longtime backup group, the Tennessee Two, were more like sobered-up rockabilly than anything else. But the songs he chose throughout his career stayed close to the hardscrabble perspective of the music he grew up hearing. — Jon Pareles
