His wife, frustrated with being left alone to raise their children, filed for divorce in He went on a drug binge and started a forest fire. Cash had a reputation as a bad boy who answered to no one, and his actions — however destructive — helped solidify it. Beginning in , that resurgence was started in earnest. When it was all said and done, Cash left behind a sprawling legacy of music over decades. As Biography. However, the second mugshot was reportedly taken as a joke for the guards, and Johnny even put a plaster on his head to look as though he had been in a fight.
The mugshot, in contrast, was a real image, taken on May 11 when he was arrested in Starkville, Mississippi, for trespassing late at night onto private property to pick flowers.
Johnny was arrested seven times, and each time spent a night in jail, but never served a full prison sentence. It was believed he had been smuggling heroin from Mexico, but instead prescription drugs were found hidden in his guitar case. It was also reported in the s, while his addictions were at their height, he smashed up hotel rooms and had numerous brushes with law.
This came to a head when he was taken off stage at the Grand Ole Opry for dragging a mic stand across the footlights of the stage in a fit of temper.
However, while he struggled with addictions throughout his life, he attempted to turn his life around after marrying June Carter in and turned back to the church. He did two and a half years of study in the late s to receive a theology degree and became a Christian minister. Not because he'd shot a man, but because others might have. That moment - Cash standing guitar in hand in front of the prison cafeteria - would later be seen as a turning point in both his career and his life.
Perhaps because Cash was such a mythical character himself - The Man In Black, the pilgrim, the preacher. Cash toured in prisons but was never sentenced, it took him half his life before he walked the line. He was his own man, never mincing his words or minding his actions. Struggling with drugs and women, he cultivated an outlaw image which ultimately helped him revive his career and turn his life around.
The flipping point, music historians would agree, was 13 January , when Columbia Records finally let him record live inside a California jail. When I think about my dad's life and I think about that moment, that's when there's a kind of force, when he embodied who he really was.
At Folsom Prison became one of the best-selling live albums of all time, reaching the top of the country charts and a defining moment for Cash. Contrary to urban legend, Johnny Cash never spent any time in prison. As an inmate, that is.
In , while serving in the Air Force in Germany, Cash watched Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison, a film that depicted brutal conditions endured by inmates at the California institution. The scenes of tortuous violence affected Cash deeply and in he began performing in prisons, including a show at San Quentin which found inmate Merle Haggard in the front row.
In the late 60s, Cash had fallen out of favor with the Nashville music industry, his career struggling as he fought drug addiction.
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