Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash rose from Sun Records in the mid-1950s to become one of the defining voices of American music, but his career was nearly destroyed twice and rebuilt twice. The first collapse came from a decade of amphetamine and barbiturate addiction in the 1960s that wrecked his health, his first marriage, and his reliability as a performer.

His first comeback was anchored in a hard-won, partial sobriety, helped by June Carter, and crystallized in two live prison albums: At Folsom Prison in 1968 and At San Quentin in 1969. They returned him to the top of the charts and led to a network television variety show on ABC. For a few years he was again a giant.

A second decline followed in the late 1970s and 1980s. Relapses recurred, his record sales faded, and in 1986 his longtime label, Columbia Records, dropped him after nearly three decades. He spent years recording for smaller labels with diminishing commercial impact, written off by much of the industry as a nostalgia act.

The second comeback was the most improbable. In 1994, producer Rick Rubin paired the aging Cash with stark, stripped-down recordings under the American Recordings series, reaching a young rock audience. The arc peaked with his 2002 cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt, a late-career masterpiece, before his death in September 2003.