Happy 80th Birthday to Mr. Johnny Cash

Rock Turtleneck sends 80th birthday wishes to Johnny Cash: singer, songwriter, symbol, Bible-thumper, bad ass, husband, father, savior, saint, sinner, maverick, martyr.

Cash passed away in 2003, not long after the love of his life June Carter Cash. The long decline of their final years was captured poignantly in Mark Romanek's video for Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt."

Cash and producer Rick Rubin turned "Hurt" from a song about the downward spiral of drug use into a meditation on the "stains of time" when "everyone I know goes away in the end." It might be the best music video ever made, at least of the conceptual variety.



As powerful as the "Hurt" song and video are, I prefer to remember The Man in Black in happier, more robust times. One of my favorite clips is his performance of "Orange Blossom Special" from San Quentin in 1969, where he plays two harmonicas at once. I've never seen anyone do that before or since.

No tribute to Cash would be complete without "Ring of Fire," the 1963 masterpiece written by June and Merle Kilgore. June wrote it when she was falling in love with Johnny: "Bound by wild desire/I fell into a Ring of Fire."  Johnny said that the idea to put mariachi horns on the track came to him in a dream. That's an out-of-the-box genius move right up there with playing two harmonicas at once.



Happy Birthday Johnny Cash - you may be gone but your music lives on.

Get a whole lotta Johnny Cash on iTunes here.