Johnny Cash family

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Johnny Cash was a very influential musician with a career that spanned nearly five decades. He has a long list of accomplishments and collaborations. A notable extended family includes many of these influences and collaborations.

1 Heritage and early years
2 First marriage
3 June Carter
4 Grandchildren

[edit] Heritage and early years

Cash was of completely Scottish heritage, but he only learned this upon researching his ancestry. He found records of direct ancestors in Fife, Scotland who shared the name "Cash" dating back to the 16th century, according to his 1997 autobiography. He had assumed in his younger days that he was mainly Irish and partially Native American (he had been told he was one-quarter Cherokee). Although lacking any Native American ancestry, Cash's empathy and compassion for Native Americans was unabated, and was expressed in several of his songs, like "Apache Tears", "Ballad of Ira Hayes"; and his album Bitter Tears, songs told from the viewpoint of Native Americans.

Cash was born J.R. Cash (no middle name) in Kingsland, Arkansas, and then raised in Dyess, Arkansas. By age five he was working in the cotton fields, singing along with his family as they worked. Cash was one of seven children: Reba Hancock, Jack, Joanne Cash-Yates, Tommy, Roy, and Louise Cash Garrett. His younger brother Tommy Cash also became a successful country artist, and tours to this day. Cash was very close to his brother Jack, who was two years older. In 1944, Jack was pulled into a whirling table saw in the mill where he worked, and almost cut in two. He suffered for over a week before he died. There was some talk that Jack's death might not have been accidental; a local bully was seen running from the shop with blood on his shirt, shortly before Jack was found. However, Cash did not discuss that theory in his autobiography, nor the report in some circles that Cash made investigation of the incident a personal obsession. Cash often spoke of the horrible guilt he felt over this incident. According to Cash: The Autobiography, his father was away that morning, but he and his mother, and Jack himself, all had premonitions or a sense of forboding about that day, and his mother urged Jack to skip work and go fishing with his brother. Jack insisted on working, as the family needed the money. On his deathbed, Jack said he had visions of Heaven and angels. Decades later, Cash spoke of looking forward to meeting his brother in Heaven. He wrote that he had seen his brother many times in his dreams, and that Jack always looked two years older than whatever age Cash himself was at that moment. It is widely thought that the dark side of his world view was shaped by this traumatic event.

[edit] First marriage

While training for the Air Force in 1950, Cash met Vivian Liberto near San Antonio, Texas. A month after his discharge, Cash married Vivian on August 7, 1954. Together, they would have four daughters, Rosanne, Kathleen, Cindy and Tara before divorcing in 1966. Rosanne Cash would eventually have a very successful recording on her own. She and her step-sister Carlene Carter sing songs on Cash's 1976 album Junkie and the Juicehead Minus Me. Rosanne has released many albums since the late 70s, many of them are produced by her former husband Rodney Crowell. In 2003, Rodney and Johnny Cash would re-record "I Walk the Line" together.

[edit] June Carter

Johnny Cash and his second wife, June

In the early 60s, Cash would tour with the legendary Carter Family. Though originally founded by Mother Maybelle Carter, her brother-in-law A.P. Carter and his wife Sara Carter in the 1920s, by this time Maybelle's daughters Anita, June and Helen also regularly toured with the group. During the tours, June recalls admiring Johnny from afar. In 1967, their duet "Jackson" won a Grammy Award. Cash proposed onstage to Carter at a concert at the London Gardens in London, Ontario on February 22, 1968; the couple married a week later in Franklin, Kentucky.

June Carter had previously been married twice. From 1952 to 1956 she was married to honky-tonk singer Carl Smith, with whom she had Carlene Carter in 1955. In 1958, she gave birth to Rosie Nix Adams, daughter of race car driver Edwin "Rip" Nix, to whom she was married from 1957 to 1966. Shortly after his historic concert at Madison Square Garden in the waning days of the 1960s, his son (and only child with June) John Carter Cash was born. All three of June's children would go on to have successful solo careers in country music. Carlene was married to English musician Nick Lowe in the 1980s.