Cash on Cash: Interviews and Encounters with Johnny Cash (Musicians in Their Own Words)

Cash on Cash offers unprecedented insight into one of the most significant American cultural figures of the twentieth century.

As an interviewee, Cash was an exemplary communicator to an astonishingly broad spectrum of people: always open and articulate, part friend, part spiritual authority, part flawed hero. Throughout a decades-long career, as Cash took risks, embracing new technologies, formats, and attitudes, he cleaved to a simple, core message of unvarnished truth.

A comprehensive collection of Johnny Cash interviews and feature stories, some widely published and others never previously transcribed, culled from the 1950s through the early days of the new millennium, Cash on Cash charts a singular evolution. From hardscrabble Arkansas poor boy to rockabilly roustabout; international fame to drug addiction and disgrace; born again Christian to gimlet-eyed chronicler of spiritual darkness; TV and movie star to Nashville reject; redemption to loss and back again, several times.

Cash’s story, told in his own words, shines unfiltered light on a journey of archetypal proportions that resonates still.

Robert Burke Warren is a published novelist, musician, educator, and journalist based in the Catskill Mountains of New York. His music writing has been published in Vulture, Paste, Salon, the Woodstock Times, Longreads, the Rumpus, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s publications, and the 2006 Da Capo Press anthology The Show I’ll Never Forget.