THE COMPLETE JOHNNY CASH: Lyrics from a Lifetime of SongwritingJOHNNY CASH (1932 – 2003) was an American singer and songwriter who become one of the most important, influential, and respected artists in the history of music. From his monumental live prison albums to his commentaries on the American spirit to a mesmerizing canon of gospel recordings and his late-life artistic triumphs of will and wisdom, his impact on our culture is profound and continuing.

He blended country, rock, blues, and gospel in his music, ushering in the Countrypolitan and Outlaw country movements. Cash was also a successful actor, writer, and activist. A statue of Cash was unveiled in the U.S. Capitol in 2024, gifted by the state of Arkansas. He is the first musician to be represented in the National Statuary Hall.

Johnny Cash composed more than 600 songs and sold more than ninety million records. He’s been awarded twenty-nine gold, platinum, and multiplatinum records for his albums and singles and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Book Cover Courtesy of Voracious

I’m a lifelong fan and record collector of Johnny Cash. We share the same February 26th birthday.

In the late fifties I watched a TV program Town Hall Party when Johnny appeared on a few episodes.  During 1965, I saw Johnny sing his Billboard hit record, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” on The Les Crane Show. In 1968, Cash guested on The Summer Brothers Smothers Show at CBS Television City. My mother Hilda and I would occasionally go to TV tapings at the studio located on the corner of Beverly Blvd. and Fairfax Ave.

I later caught Johnny and June Carter Cash at the Anaheim Convention Center, Doug Weston’s Troubadour, and the House of Blues in Hollywood. I saw their show a dozen times over thirty years.

On August 16, 1975, Cash was in Southern California to promote his autobiography, Man in Black (1975), and performed a special concert for the Christian Booksellers convention. We then conducted an interview at the Royal Inn Hotel in Anaheim. It was then published in the now-defunct UK music weekly Melody Maker.

“It covers the ups and downs of my life and music career and my problem with drugs,” Cash explained candidly. “In the 1950s, people in Nashville thought I was a bit unorthodox. I came from Memphis, where Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins were doing some strange things on Sun Records.

“It was time to do the book and set the record straight. About a year ago, I was approached by the publisher to write it. I spent nine months writing it and shaping it. I wrote it by hand and worked with an editor.

“It was a whole new project for me. More discipline was involved. It was my main activity for months when I got up in the morning. It was hard lookin’ back through my life and trying to remember conversations and details. Remembering some of the nightmares that I had, especially gettin’ off drugs. I went through a total soul-searching experience lookin’ back. I went through all the pain again to a certain degree.”

Cash’s autobiography also contains twenty song lyrics which provide a musical guideline.

“The lyrics help tell the story. In concert, I sing ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down,’ the Kris Kristofferson tune. That’s so much of me that sometimes I feel like I wrote it. There are some songs that I must write for self-expression. If a song comes along, I must acknowledge it. I’ve recently recorded a song, ‘Strawberry Shortcake.’ It’s about a guy who went into the Plaza Hotel in New York and stole a cake. It’s a novelty song. But there are some songs that I had to write, like ‘I Walk the Line.’ In 1963, I used trumpets on ‘Ring of Fire’ [penned by June Carter and Merle Kilgore], which was quite a departure for a country song at that time.

“I like to go into the studio with my own musicians and record my own songs,” Cash reminded me. “I’m open to other songwriters. I like to do things differently in my career.”   

 In our 1975 Melody Maker dialogue, Cash discussed his friendship with Bob Dylan.

“I became aware of Bob Dylan when the Freewheelin’ album came out in 1963. I thought he was one of the best country singers I had ever heard. I always felt a lot in common with him. I knew a lot about him before we had ever met. I knew he had heard and listened to country music. I heard a lot of inflections from country artists I was familiar with. I was in Las Vegas in ’63 and ’64 and wrote him a letter telling him how much I liked his work. I got a letter back, and we developed a correspondence.

Johnny Cash TV Series DVD cover Courtesy of CMV/Columbia Legacy, a division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment

“We finally met at Newport in 1964. It was like we were two old friends. There was none of this standing back, trying to figure each other out. He’s unique and original.

“I keep lookin’ around as we pass the middle of the 1970s, and I don’t see anybody come close to Bob Dylan. I respect him. Dylan is a few years younger than I am, but we share a bond that hasn’t diminished. I get inspiration from him.

“We’ve gone fishin’ on my boat dock for hours and haven’t said a word.”

Dylan (birth name Robert Allen Zimmerman) had been a Cash fan since the very late 1950s, when, as a teenager, he hitchhiked the 75 miles from his Hibbing, Minnesota, hometown to Duluth to see Cash and the Tennessee Two at the Duluth Armory.

In his 2022 book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, Dylan wrote about two songs Cash wrote and recorded: “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” the first single from his 1958 Columbia Records debut album The Fabulous Johnny Cash;and “Big River,” a single from the Sings the Songs That Made Him Famous LP released by Sun Records earlier that year.

Dylan and The Band performed “Big River” in 1967 during The Basement Tapes sessions, officially released in 2014 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete. Dylan and Cash then recorded “Big River” with producer Bob Johnston during the 1969 Dylan-Cash sessions, officially issued in 2019 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 15: Travelin’ Thru, 1967-1969.  

During Dylan’s 2024 tour, at the Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida, he paid homage to Johnny Cash with a version of “Big River.”

In October 2025, I received a news announcement from Little, Brown and Company touting their 720-page Cash book THE COMPLETE JOHNNY CASH Lyrics from a Lifetime of Songwriting published by Voracious.

The volume is organized chronologically and with critical commentary from Mark Stielper, with a foreword by John Carter Cash. Hardcover: $60.00 

2025 book reviews hailed the literary achievement: “In this trove of song lyrics, Cash lore, images, and poetry, Mark Stielper returns the Man in Black to center stage and crafts a posthumous legacy befitting a legend. For both newcomers and diehard fans, this anthology is an opportunity to experience, in the words of Cash’s son, ‘the very essence of his soul.’ A comprehensive, must-have collector’s item.” –Kirkus Reviews

“A must for admirers of the Man in Black.” –Booklist

“This monumental tome compiling the lyrics of iconic blues, country, rock, and gospel musician Johnny Cash emphasizes his talents as a wordsmith…Essential for country music mavens and pop culture enthusiasts.” –Library Journal.

"Folsom Prison Blues" Courtesy of John R. Cash Revocable Trust. 

Johnny Cash, “The Man in Black,” one of America’s most beloved and iconic songwriters, captured the heart and soul of the nation as he spoke through his music to the human condition, sharing the victories and losses that marked his own life. Now, for the first time ever, the comprehensive and definitive book collects Cash’s song lyrics alongside never-before-seen reproductions of dozens of handwritten pages from his personal notebooks. This is the most complete catalog of his prolific, 55-year career as a songwriter with 526 songs, prose and poems he wrote.

Culled from countless notebooks, leather-bound diaries, elegant pronouncements, and his most private pages from the Cash archive, THE COMPLETE JOHNNY CASH includes never-before-seen handwritten lyrics and poems.

 Spanning over a half century of Johnny Cash’s songs, poetry, prose, and musings, from the 1940s to 2003, the essential collectible features material from his childhood in rural Arkansas, across the highs and lows of his public career and personal life, through to his last days. The book is sumptuously designed. Interest, appreciation and love for Johnny Cash and his timeless music are higher than ever.

The book catalogs Cash’s breathtaking range as a poet and storyteller. It traces his evolution from his earliest compositions to his last love song, through periods of personal struggle, political activism, and tests of faith. It paints an unprecedented portrait of Johnny Cash as a quintessential American artist—and America’s premier storyteller.

JOHN CARTER CASH is the only son of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. He is a singer, songwriter, and has produced five Grammy Award-winning albums. He owns and operates the Cash Cabin Studio in Tennessee. He is also the author of House of Cash: The Legacies of My Father, Johnny Cash.

MARK STIELPER has chronicled the life of the Man in Black for nearly forty years. Cash called him “my vault,” and said, “he knows more about me than me.” Stielper has collaborated on more than two dozen Cash biographies and documentary films, and given lectures across the United States, including at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Johnny Cash Museum. His most recent work was the companion to this book, Johnny Cash: The Life in Lyrics.

The Johnny Cash Show aired on ABC from 1969 to 1971. Cash invited a wide-ranging lineup of musical performers to join him, among them Louis Armstrong, Bill Monroe, Dusty Springfield, Judy Collins, the Monkees, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stevie Wonder, Tony Joe White, Homer & Jethro, the Everly Brothers, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Derek and the Dominos, Roger Miller, Faron Young, Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn, Marty Robbins, Mickey Newbury, Neil Diamond, Conway Twitty, Tammy Wynette, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, and Doug Kershaw.

“One reason country music has expanded the way it has is that we haven’t let ourselves become locked into any category,” Cash told me in 1975. “We do what we feel.”

In his June 12, 1969, review for The Great Speckled Bird, the counterculture underground newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia, Gene Guerrero saluted The Johnny Cash Show premiere. 

“TV CASHES IN: OCCASIONALLY, television gives the viewer a glimpse of its potential as a creative medium. Usually, as with The Smothers Brothers Show, it is a fleeting glimpse before the owners of the public airways get uptight or commercialism subverts the creativity. With the inauguration of The Johnny Cash Show, country music has finally made it to network television. One can only hope and pray that it will take a couple of seasons before these corrupting influences set in.

“Dylan sang a couple of songs off his new album, including ‘Girl From the North Country,’ which he sings with Cash. In a non-contrived way, Dylan and Cash singing together remind you of two kids practicing for their first recital. In this time of super-slick entertainers, that’s very refreshing.”

Cash was directly involved in suggesting guests to book and songs for broadcast. He gave a forum to former HUAC blacklist victim Pete Seeger who sang the anti-war song “Big Muddy,” and Canadian singer/songwriter and social activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, who performed Peter La Farge’s “Custer” on the program. Cash also refused to edit the word “stoned” from Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”

However, Cash eventually realized the obligations of his TV series hampered his creativity.

“It cut down on my touring, it became too confining,” he confided in our 1975 Melody Maker chat.

“We stayed in Nashville for two-thirds of the time. I really didn’t enjoy it all that much. If it was kept loose and spontaneous, it could have been great. But we had to do the same song eight or ten times before they would accept it. The show lost its feel and honesty. Consequently, I lost a lot of interest in it.”

In September 2006, CMV/Columbia Legacy, a division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, released the two-disc DVD set, The Best of the Johnny Cash Show, hosted by Kris Kristofferson.

Intervention Records will continue its Sun Records Hi-Fi Series—featuring classic titles from the Memphis label, mastered to vinyl from original tapes — with a new pressing of Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar!, the first long-playing record from this enduring country icon. The album, featuring “I Walk The Line,” “Cry, Cry, Cry,” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” has been given the ultimate treatment for this 180-gram, 45 RPM mono release. Out on February 20, 2026. 

(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble. 

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) is scheduled for early 2026 publication).     The post THE COMPLETE JOHNNY CASH: Lyrics from a Lifetime of Songwriting first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.