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Christopher S. Wren: Winners Got Scars Too: The Life of Johnny Cash (1973)

Johnny Cash (w/ Patrick Carr): Cash: The Autobiography (1997)

There have probably been as many books written about Johnny Cash as Abraham Friggin' Lincoln, but I've personally read only two: the Man in Black's 1997 autobiography and Christopher Wren's 1973 contribution to the canon.

Not your typical entertainment hack, Wren was a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent covering important global events for Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Herald Tribune, so he obviously considered Cash a major figure worthy of his world-class journalistic attentions.

And why not?

When he penned the tellingly-named Winners Got Scars Too, Cash had hit the peak of his original fame, following a string of career-defining albums (including the Folsom Prison and San Quentin live LPs) and his celebrated, two-season, 58-episode variety show on ABC.

But this was no fluff piece and Wren (then working as editor of Look Magazine) spent significant time interviewing Cash, his family, and bandmates on the road, in order to document the chaos and grit of a country star's touring experience during the '50s, '60s, and '70s.

This direct exposure allowed Wren to bring a convincing, "outsider looking in" perspective to Cash's story while addressing the personal traumas (none greater than the untimely death of his brother Jack) that always haunted Cash's gravelly baritone, granite visage, and funereal garb.

This included respectful but unvarnished details of Johnny's volatile behavior, amphetamine addiction, and other demons; a survivor narrative that, unbeknownst to either the author or his subject, would be severely tested in the decades to come.

That's where Johnny's autobiography, published a quarter-century-later and six years prior to his death at age 71, comes in: to (almost) finish the story amid Cash's ongoing career renaissance in partnership with producer Rick Rubin.

Co-written with music critic Patrick Carr (a contributor to The Village Voice, Slate, and Country Music Magazine) the book found the once-brash, boisterous country outlaw in a far more sensitive, contemplative, and deeply spiritual frame of mind.

It therefore adopted a humble, conversational tone that suits Johnny's brutally honest reminisces and regrets, as well as his continuing struggle with addiction and desperate desire for redemption through faith and his abiding love for wife June Carter.

In fact, although he was obviously a proud man, confident in his life achievements, Cash's amazing career almost takes a back seat here to these personal matters, so that's another reason to read a second-hand account that focuses on his music.

So grab yourself a copy of Wren's biography if you want to learn how the world saw Johnny Cash when he was one of America's most popular stars, and grab his autobiography if you want to know how Johnny saw himself in his Autumn years.

If you ask me, both points-of-view complement each other very nicely to paint the most complete and polychromatic portrait of the Man in Black.

p.s. -- My wife was lucky enough to meet Mr. Cash in the mid '90s and often recounts that when she told him that she really loved his music, Johnny gave her a hug and gravely but warmly replied "Well, thank you, darlin'."

Featured Records:

Johnny Cash: American Recordings (1994)

Johnny Cash: At San Quentin (1969)

Buy from: Amazon / Amazon