blog.preservationnation.org/2014/01/02/how-johnny-cash-boyhood-home-shaped-man-in-black/#.UsxWpmRDs_5
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Johnny Cash
biography.com |
"Well hello everybody, I'm Johnny Cash." Sorry, it's just yours truly with today's blog post on legendary singer-songwriter Johnny Cash. Specifically, how the boyhood home of the Man in Black shaped his life and music. Johnny Cash grew up in the northeastern Arkansas community of Dyess. He and his family moved to the rural community from Kingsland in southern Arkansas in 1935, when Johnny was three years-old. In his recent blog post for
PreservationNation Blog (January 2, 2014), titled "How Johnny Cash's Boyhood Home Shaped the Man in Black," David Robert Weible looks at how growing up in Dyess left its mark on the late singer. Even better, now fans of Johnny Cash will be able to visit his boyhood home and get a glimpse at the forces that shaped the man and his music.
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Dyess, Arkansas
arkansas.com |
Listening to songs like "I Walk The Line" or "Ring of Fire," it's easy to imagine that the words and music of those Cash classics reflected the life and times of the singer. Now, the community of Dyess is giving fans of this music icon a chance to see where he spent time, caused troubled, learned life's lessons, which inspired contemporary folk, rock, blues, and country music. The community of Dyess was a New Deal resettlement program aimed at financially ruined farmers in order to use their skills to develop new land. The program encompassed 16,000 acres acquired by the Federal government and sectioned off into small 20- to 40-acre homesteads that each family was responsible for clearing and making productive. For a family to chosen to receive a plot, they had to prove that they were previously successful farmers and healthy enough to work the nearly impossible mix of soil that when wet was like tar and dry like concrete at times. According to Ruth Hawkins, Arkansas Heritage Sites Director at Arkansas State University, "I think the values that Johnny Cash held throughout his life and the values he had on family and concern for his fellow man came from Dyess."
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Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Museum
Dyess, Arkansas
arkansas.com |
David Robert Weible echoes this statement, "In fact, many of Cash's songs have direct ties to his time in Dyess." One example is the song "Five Feet High and Rising," which recall the Flood of 1937 which forced the approximately 500 families of Dyess to flee to Little Rock until the waters receded. There were songs about the Cash family's experiences during the Depression: "I'm Busted" and "Pickin' Time." No explanation needed here. The newly resettled residents of Dyess, referred to as Colonists, were assigned housing based on the number of children they had, since the Cashes had five small children when they moved in, they were assigned a five-room house-the largest available. At about 1,000 square feet, it wasn't exactly the grandest house in the neighborhood but it was big enough. When the Cash children weren't helping out on the farm, they joined their mother in song around the family piano.
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Tommy Cash and Joanne Cash Yates
Brother and sister of Johnny Cash
npr.org |
When the Cashes sold the house in 1954, Johnny Cash was already in Memphis, Tennessee. Over the years, the house changed owners numerous times and became difficult to maintain. The "gumbo" soil's cracking and weathering quickly dislodged the foundation from the house. With assistance from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Ruth Hawkins and Arkansas State University acquired the house in 2011 and rapidly set about restoring the place. Together with the remaining members of the Cash family, they organized music festivals in neighboring Jonesboro that attracted country music legend Willie Nelson and Vince Gill to help raise funds for the project.
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The porch of the Cash House
couriernews.net |
The bulk of the restoration cost went into shoring up the ground beneath the foundation as crews dug a seven-foot deep pit on the house's footprint and repacked with more stable soil than the local "gumbo." The foundation was replaced with a concrete foundation and the house was mounted on concrete piers. On the interior, the original wood paneling was restored and the new floors were removed, revealing the original linoleum. In all, the project totaled $350,000, not a princely sum like some restoration projects but good enough for the boyhood home of a musical titan. The house will be open to the public in April as museum dedicated to the experiences of Johnny Cash's childhood years. "We want it to look lie they just steeped out the door to go to church," says Ms. Hawkins. At the same time, the house isn't intended to be a shrine to Johnny Cash, a la Graceland. Instead, the house will be part of a larger project that includes the restoration of an old community administration building and theater that will depict the community's Depression-era residents as whole. Just like the songs of the Man in Black.
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