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BILLBOARD Johnny gets the spotlight in Alan Light's The Life and Legacy of The Man in Black NO DEPRESSION If you have time to read only one book on Johnny Cash this year, Light's Johnny Cash: The Life and Legacy of the Man in Black should be the one you pick up. The stories are familiar, and many are told in other biographies, but these photos of Cash, his family, and his artifacts bring him and his music to life in a way that no other biography so far has been able to do. ALL ABOUT JAZZ This book is an admirable work of loving and careful research and Light handles facts efficiently. He is a remarkable scholar whose understanding of American music history runs deep. Johnny Cash continues to have a strong influence on music today, despite his passing 15 years ago. His story continues because his music still lives among the people. BOOKLIST Almost biblical with his deep baritone and stoic demeanor and all dressed in black, Cash was an authoritative figure, honest, serious, moralistic, and outspoken. Signed by Sam Phillips and Sun Records, the label on which Elvis Presley was getting attention by mixing black and white musical styles, Cash soon found listeners with his signature boom-chicka-boom sound, recording such hits as Hey Porter, Cry! Cry! Cry!, Folsom Prison Blues, and I Walk the Line. As a singer and guitarist, he introduced a darker, rawer, bleaker sound to rock 'n' roll as well as a humanist element, speaking for the disenfranchised, in song and in life as he championed convicts, Native Americans, and the underprivileged. Music journalist Light deftly ties together all the different strands of Cash's life, his recording career, groundbreaking television show, battles with substance abuse, marriage to June Carter Cash, and late-life revival with the American Recordings sessions. Aided by interviews with Cash and others and an abundance of photographs and artifacts, this biography will be a good companion to Robert Hilburn's Johnny Cash (2013). KIRKUS REVIEWS A profusely illustrated volume documents a celebrated performer's struggles and hard-won triumphs. Veteran music journalist Light (What Happened Miss Simone?: A Biography, 2016, etc.) offers an admiring yet cleareyed biography of Johnny Cash (1932-2003), a composer, singer, and guitar player who crossed many genres. The author draws on Cash's autobiographies, music history and criticism, interviews, and writings by Cash's family to produce an intimate and engaging portrait. By far the greatest strength of the book, though, are the illustrations: memorabilia from family archives and abundant photographs that capture Cash's undeniable charisma. A treat for the Man in Black's many fans. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Working with the Cash family, Light (The Holy or the Broken) has gathered hundreds of never-before-seen photographs, lyric sheets, posters, and other artifacts from the Johnny Cash archives to produce this stunning and lavishly illustrated biography of the Man in Black. Light's rich collection of photos and narrative bring Cash to life. There can never be another Johnny Cash. With close-up images and the big-picture story, this book offers new insight into the life of an American hero. Sheryl Crow This resonant book offers far more than an overview of Johnny Cash's life and legacy: it gets to the very essence of who he was and what his life and music mean. Light's text reads beautifully and stands as an ideal complement to photos that inspire reveries about the works and days of this extraordinary artist. Anthony DeCurtis, author of Lou Reed: A Life 'Johnny Cash was like Abraham Lincoln to me, ' John Prine once said. We all agreed, though if Prine had said the same of Elvis or Sinatra, we wouldn't have, because it wouldn't have made a damn bit of sense. But with Cash it did. He was a man, an idea, a morality, a way of looking at the world. Though wrapped in contradictions, Cash always stood tall, like he'd come out of the soil, one of nature's inevitabilities. This book gives us an intimacy with the man. And that's an accomplishment worth celebrating. Warren Zanes, author of Petty: The Biography

KIRKUS REVIEWS A profusely illustrated volume documents a celebrated performer's struggles and hard-won triumphs.Veteran music journalist Light (What Happened Miss Simone?: A Biography, 2016, etc.) offers an admiring yet cleareyed biography of Johnny Cash (1932-2003), a composer, singer, and guitar player who crossed many genres. Though associated mainly with country, in 1992, when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cash acknowledged a wide range of influences, including Alan Lomax's field recordings of hill country music, Hank Williams, and gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Cash's cultural contributions went beyond music; he was also an actor, writer (of two autobiographies and a novel), and social and political activist. You could guide your ship by him, his friend Bob Dylan said. Listen to him an d he always brings you to your senses. Cash made his first major concert appearance in 1955, opening for Elvis Presley in Memphis; Cash don't have to move a muscle, he just sings and stands there, Presley remarked. The whole world will know Johnny Cash. His early recordings-- Folsom Prison and I Walk the Line --were immediate hits, topping country and pop charts. But neither his career nor his personal life was smooth. Married with four children, he fell in love with singer June Carter and desperately wanted his Catholic wife to agree to a divorce. In the 1960s, he descended into alcoholism and drugs, gobbling amphetamines at a ferocious pace. During a seven-year period, he found himself in jail seven times for drug-related offenses. Throughout the book, Light interrupts the chronology of Cash's life with spotlights, concise essays on four themes: musical influences, social concerns, marriage to June (complex, tense, and often volatile), and religion (he was a good friend of Billy Graham). The author draws on Cash's autobiographies, music history and criticism, interviews, and writings by Cash's family to produce an intimate and engaging portrait. By far the greatest strength of the book, though, are the illustrations: memorabilia from family archives and abundant photographs that capture Cash's undeniable charisma. A treat for the Man in Black's many fans. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Working with the Cash family, Light (The Holy or the Broken) has gathered hundreds of never-before-seen photographs, lyric sheets, posters, and other artifacts from the Johnny Cash archives to produce this stunning and lavishly illustrated biography of the Man in Black. Light begins with Cash's early life: his birth in poverty in Arkansas; the death of his 15-year-old brother Jack in a table saw accident; and his first marriage, at age 22 to Vivian Liberto. From there, Light charts Cash's rise to fame, including his early years at Sun Studios in Memphis, his marriage to June Carter Cash, his studio and TV career, and his drug and alcohol abuse. Light reveals Cash's deep commitment to social justice, noting that the song Man in Black and the black clothes Cash wore were a protest against the dire treatment of, in Cash's words, the ones who are held back. Light also writes about the musician's deep Christian beliefs and his novel about Paul the Apostle, The Man in White, through which Cash revealed his own struggle with faith. The volume's images stand out: in a spread, Light reproduces Cash's handwritten notes on his family history, including a reference to the fact that he was born on Buffalo Bill's birthday; Cash's irrepressible laugh is captured in a 1962 photo of him with two fishing buddies. Light's rich collection of photos and narrative bring Cash to life. There can never be another Johnny Cash. With close-up images and the big-picture story, this book offers new insight into the life of an American hero. Sheryl Crow This resonant book offers far more than an overview of Johnny Cash's life and legacy: it gets to the very essence of who he was and what his life and music mean. Light's text reads beautifully and stands as an ideal complement to photos that inspire reveries about the works and days of this extraordinary artist. Anthony DeCurtis, author of Lou Reed: A Life 'Johnny Cash was like Abraham Lincoln to me, ' John Prine once said. We all agreed, though if Prine had said the same of Elvis or Sinatra, we wouldn't have, because it wouldn't have made a damn bit of sense. But with Cash it did. He was a man, an idea, a morality, a way of looking at the world. Though wrapped in contradictions, Cash always stood tall, like he'd come out of the soil, one of nature's inevitabilities. This book gives us an intimacy with the man. And that's an accomplishment worth celebrating. Warren Zanes, author of Petty: The Biography

There can never be another Johnny Cash. With close-up images and the big-picture story, this book offers new insight into the life of an American hero. Sheryl Crow This resonant book offers far more than an overview of Johnny Cash's life and legacy: it gets to the very essence of who he was and what his life and music mean. Light's text reads beautifully and stands as an ideal complement to photos that inspire reveries about the works and days of this extraordinary artist. Anthony DeCurtis, author of Lou Reed: A Life 'Johnny Cash was like Abraham Lincoln to me, ' John Prine once said. We all agreed, though if Prine had said the same of Elvis or Sinatra, we wouldn't have, because it wouldn't have made a damn bit of sense. But with Cash it did. He was a man, an idea, a morality, a way of looking at the world. Though wrapped in contradictions, Cash always stood tall, like he'd come out of the soil, one of nature's inevitabilities. This book gives us an intimacy with the man. And that's an accomplishment worth celebrating. Warren Zanes, author of Petty: The Biography

Author Information

ALAN LIGHT has been one of America's leading music journalists for the past twenty years. He was a writer at Rolling Stone, founding music editor and editor-in-chief of Vibe, and editor-in-chief of Spin magazine. He has been a contributor to the New Yorker, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, and Mother Jones. He is the author of The Skills to Pay the Bills, an oral history of the Beastie Boys, and The Holy or the Broken- Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ""Hallelujah""; and cowriter of the New York Times-bestselling memoir by Gregg Allman, My Cross to Bear.

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