JOHNNY CASH HAD A LOVE for gospel, country music and the blues, the foundation of rockabilly. A sharecropper’s son, he grew up during the Depression in the Dyess Colony of Arkansas, a cooperative town created by the Roosevelt Administration to help family farms as part of the New Deal. Johnny was part of the massive migration from fields to factories that began before World War I, and he left Dyess for opportunities in the big cities. After stints in an auto factory and the military, Johnny formed Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two in Memphis with bassist Marshall Grant and guitar player Luther Perkins. Together, they recorded some of the best loved songs in the American songbook: Folsom Prison Blues, I Walk the Line and Ring of Fire.

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