Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity

Introduction: Cash as Contradiction

Acknowledgments During the course of writing this book, I had the pleasure of conferring with fellow travelers who believe, like me, in the power and importance of popular culture and popular music. First and foremost, many thanks, of course, to all the good people at Indiana University Press, especially Jane Behnken. When I made my pilgrimage to the Country Music Foundation archives at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the historian John Rumble was incredibly gracious, helping me track down a wealth of Johnny Cash materials. Fellow panelists and conference-goers were receptive and enlightening in their feedback as I presented this research at academic conferences over several years. I wish to thank, in particular, the popular music scholars who were kind enough to speak on the Johnny Cash panel I organized for the American Studies Association in 2004: Cecelia Tichi, David Sanjek, and Barry Shank. At the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, U.S. Branch events, Cynthia Fuchs was especially incisive in her feedback, as she has been as my editor at PopMatters (the online journal of cultural criticism), where she has allowed me to write numerous articles about Cash and country music. I have also presented from this research at the Popular Culture Association, the Popular Culture/American Culture Association in the South, the Southern American Studies Association and Living Blues Symposium, the Conference on Literature and Film, the American Men’s Studies Association, and the Film and History League of the American Historical Association conferences. x acknowledgments I was honored to have parts of my introduction, and chapter 1, appear as an article in the edited collection Literary Cash: Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash (Batchelor, 2006). I was inspired by the enthusiasm of editor Bob Batchelor for the collection, and by the wonderful academic essays, literary essays, and short stories contributed by a lively group of writers. They, like me, believe that Johnny Cash has something to tell us about American culture. I am very appreciative of the early training I received in American studies and cultural studies from my Ph.D. committee in English at the University of Pennsylvania: Betsy Erkkila (now at Northwestern University), Nancy Bentley, Christopher Looby (now at the University of California, Los Angeles), and Eric Cheyfitz (now at Cornell University), as well as from others at Penn, such as Peter Stallybrass, Herman Beavers, and Jim English. I am also grateful for my undergraduate training in English at Duke University, where I benefited from being an editorial assistant at American Literature under Cathy Davidson and studying with Toril Moi, Annabel Patterson, Tom Ferraro, and Deborah Pope. Although this book is entirely separate from the dissertation I wrote on American literature, my literary studies training gave me the foundation to prepare for my subsequent work. I wish to thank my colleagues in the English department at Florida State University (FSU), especially Andrew Epstein and Darryl Dickson-Carr (now at Southern Methodist University), who have been truly exemplary colleagues. A special thanks to Denise Von Glahn and Michael Broyles, music colleagues at FSU, who have been extremely supportive of this research from the beginning and who have been very generous in their feedback. Many thanks also to a number of FSU colleagues who have offered their continued support, including my English colleagues Kathi Yancey, Nancy Warren, Meegan Kennedy, Jerrilyn McGregory , David Kirby, Barbara Hamby, Mark Winegardner, Robert Olen Butler, Rip Lhamon, Fred Standley, Ann Mikkelsen (now at Vanderbilt University), Chris Shinn, Amit Rai, fellow rockabilly fans Ned Stuckey-French, Elizabeth StuckeyFrench , and Tim Parrish, fellow bluegrass fans David Vann and David Johnson, and colleagues from across the university, especially Jennifer Proffitt, Vall Richard , and Bev Bower. My students in my popular culture classes at FSU have been quite enthusiastic about this book, which gave me added motivation. I must thank my bluegrass guitar teacher, Mickey Abraham, and fellow lesson buddy Nancy Flores. Also much appreciation to friends who gamely went to concerts with me, featuring everyone from Rosanne Cash to Kris Kristofferson to Dolly Parton, or who happily talked with me about the music and my project , especially Tatianna Flores, James Mitchell, Renee Bergland, Katie Conrad, xi acknowledgments Vickie E. Lake, Maria Fernandez, Monica Hurdal, Kim Hinckley, Karen Barnett, Lori DiGuglielmo, and my cousin Allison Carothers and her daughters Brittney Carothers Harvey and JuliaAnne Carothers Harvey. A special thanks to my dear Chris Goff, Brian Ammons...