• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Making Sense of Johnny Cash in Dyess, Arkansas: Remarks Given at the Johnny Cash Heritage Festival, 2017 by Michael Streissguth First, many thanks are in order: To ing about Johnny Cash was sitting in the Na - Rosanne Cash who has been an unflagging sup - tional Archives near Washington D.C. and porter of my work on her father and her family reading official memos, personal letters, and an - and a good friend, very worthy of the artistic ecdotes related to life in Dyess: about labor dis - tradition in the Cash family, and, of course, a putes, about officials having to throw a grandchild of Dyess. Thanks to Ruth Hawkins, “holy-roller” out of the community because she Director of Arkansas Heritage Sites at Arkansas created too many disturbances, about how farm - State University and newly-installed member ers were chosen, about how some missed their of the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame who in - hometowns and left the colony, about how peo - vited me here and who has spearheaded with ple of color were not welcome to live here as her team the restoration of the Cash home in colonists. But authors can’t merely sit in Dyess, as well as the town center buildings. archives. They have to visit a subject’s home - When I first came to Dyess almost exactly thir - town to find the core of the person he or she teen years ago, to work on my biography of would become, the grain of sand, the early Johnny Cash, the Cash house looked like it stages in a metamorphosis that results in great - would collapse in the gentlest summer breeze, ness. and the center of town had seen better days, Part of my journey back in time to Dyess of too. It’s marvelous to see these buildings re - the 1930s and 1940s meant talking to people stored and teaching us not only about Johnny who lived here those many years ago. They give Cash but about life in this town that represents us some sense of the fundamental Johnny Cash, one of our nation’s ambitious and transforma - known as J.R. during his childhood, before he tive responses to the Great Depression. was known the world over as “The Man In I also must thank sons of Dyess A.J. Henson Black.” and his brother the late Everett Henson who The story of the Man in Black—that adult brought me to Dyess in 2004. We drove over superstar and chronicler of the American expe - here in my clunky Dodge Spirit and although rience—is cast in darkness but it is also streaked they had long since left Dyess, A.J. and Everett with light—I’d already learned that from the in - knew everybody who was still here. I felt at terviews I did with those who knew him as a home in their care. What a privilege to spend man. However—through the children of an afternoon crisscrossing Dyess with Everett Dyess—I saw the dawn of the darkness and of and A.J., two Dyess originals. the light as well as early shades of the natural born artist. Dyess helped make sense of Johnny ***** Cash. One of the most interesting aspects of writ - ___________________________________________________________________________________ Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 84 ***** I’m not saying he would have been the Johnny To help you make more sense of Cash, I Cash of the family—he wasn’t the world’s great - want to introduce in this talk four former resi - est singer—but I’m saying he may have formed dents of Dyess who knew J.R. Cash as a child: the cast that J.R. filled. And you can tell of all Roy Cash Jr.; Milton Stansbury, Joyce Woolsey the older siblings, he took the most interest in Criswell, and A.J. Henson, whom you’ve al - J.R.’s career. In the 1950s, in Memphis, he in - ready met. troduced Johnny to Marshall Grant and Luther A little background: the Cashes arrived Perkins, who would become Cash’s Tennessee from Cleveland County, Arkansas, at house Two; he opened his house to Luther, Marshall number 266 in Dyess on Road 3 in the cold and and Johnny to practice; and, of anybody, ap - rainy March of 1935 after winning the approval peared to beam the brightest when introduced of state representatives who were administering as Johnny Cash’s brother. Federal Emergency Relief Administration Because the older Cash siblings were de - (FERA) dollars. And I must emphasize that the ceased by the time I started writing, Roy Cash families had to show they were experienced Jr.’s picture of his dad helped me get a good idea farmers: driven, capable, mentally sound. So of what it was like for J.R. to grow up in the those who came—the chosen people—were tal - Cash household in the 1930s and 40s. ented and poised to succeed. Interestingly, Ray We know that J.R. had it rough under his Cash and his wife Carrie—J.R.’s parents—were father Ray, the disciplinarian, the insensitive not on the original list of Cleveland County one. And thanks to Roy Cash Jr. we have frank farmers slated for relocation to Dyess. Perhaps telling of how rough it could be because his fa - they finally showed up on the list because the ther had told him. Roy Jr.: “They had to clear original “chosen ones” got cold feet—which that land, they sure did. And they did it with happened a lot—or because of the intervention mules and hard labor and blood and sweat and of J.R.’s uncle Dave Cash, a very powerful man tears. The only thing I recall my dad specifically in Cleveland County. In any case, they arrived talking about was just the hard work around the to find a brand-new home sitting on 20 acres of farm. My father was very, very closed mouthed, cleared and drained land that, however, needed wouldn’t talk about much of anything, so I just more clearing if it were to be farmed. That job don’t remember much of anything other than fell to the families, and in the Cash family, that the hard work, and when he would get a whip - meant father Ray and his eldest son Roy, who ping from his father, my grandfather, it would was older brother to Louise, Jack, J.R., Reba, be a tough one. A leather strap off of the reins and, later, Tommy and Joanne. of a mule or something.” And I should say for the benefit of all that There’s an implication that Roy Sr. was Roy Cash Sr. is the forgotten Cash sibling. We emotionally bruised in some way by his father. hear mostly about Jack, the brother whom J.R. Was J.R., too? I got a hint from Roy Jr.: “I think adored and who perished in a woodshop acci - J.R. was withdrawn but not morose, but cer - dent in 1944. He’s the brother who Johnny tainly not outgoing and extroverted. Melan - talked about most and who popular culture has choly. And very serious. Unless and until he considered the most. Fair enough. But Roy, was around very, very close family members. He until Johnny soared to stardom, was the artist could loosen up and really become quite jovial. of the family: he published poetry; starred in Which a lot of people wouldn’t consider him to high school plays; and he joined a country band ever be, I don’t think. But, generally, I certainly called the Delta Rhythm Ramblers until he lost would describe him as melancholy and very se - part of his middle finger and a thumb in an ac - rious and introverted. It’s just kind of the way cident. And he never played the guitar again. he always was. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 85 “And I’m certain, that it was in John’s mind which documents when his favorite river to get out of there as soon as he could. That’s crested its banks in 1937, unleashing walls of what he did. He was worked very hard when he water across Dyess. In the measured cadence of was home. He was worked from sunup to sun - “Five Feet High and Rising,” our narrator keeps down and maybe even later there on the farm.” one eye on the rising waters and then recounts Roy Jr. paints a grave picture, but in his rec - the plans to flee for higher ground, by bus, by ollections there’s also a teenager who’s playful boat. In songs like that and “Pickin’ Time,” and and mischievous—the light. Two J.R.’s emerg - “Country Boy” he brings to life the rural expe - ing. “He was the one who taught [his brother] rience which is beholden to the whims and Tom and me to swim,” said Roy Jr., “and he did rhythms of nature, this in the late 1950s as that by throwing us in the river. I guess we were America was fasting urbanizing and leaving be - like nine or ten years old, and he was seventeen hind that way of life. Thanks to Cash, we have or eighteen. We were down at a bend in the Ty - a first-person account of those times, a histori - ronza River where the water is very calm and cal record in the folk music tradition, encased he caught us down there one day and he took in an easy-flowing, steady-rolling country-rock us, grabbed us one under each arm and threw us sound.

Load more

  6

Copy Link