Music Legend Johnny Cash Honored With Statue in the US Capitol

WASHINGTON — Even now, more than 20 years after his death, those who saw Johnny Cash in concert or watched him on his ABC television show in the early 1970s, still remember the jolt of excitement they felt when he offered his simple, humble greeting.

“Hello,” he’d say, “I’m Johnny Cash.”

With that a chord would be struck and his longtime backing band, the Tennessee Three, would launch into its distinctive, train-like chugging rhythm.

Whether singing in his unmistakable baritone about the perils of passion in “Ring of Fire” or killing a man in Reno, “just to watch him die” in “Folsom Prison Blues,” Cash truly was country before country was cool and a maverick long before Nashville knew what to do with him.

And earlier this week, he became the first professional musician to be honored with a statue in the U.S. Capitol.

The celebration of Cash, whose bronze statue now stands next to one depicting Utah’s Philo T. Farnsworth, the so-called “Father of Television,” in the Capitol visitor center, was one of Washington’s increasingly rare bipartisan events.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., led the festivities, which were also attended by more than 100 members of Cash’s extended family, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and several hundred invited guests.

“Some may ask: Why should a musician have a statue here in the halls of the great American republic?” Johnson said near the start of the unveiling ceremony. “The answer is pretty simple. It’s because America is about more than laws and politics.”

Each state in the union gets to select two statues to place within the Capitol to honor distinguished citizens.

The effort to grant Cash this distinction was set in motion by former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who wanted to replace existing statues of James Clarke, a segregationist, and Uriah Rose, a Confederate sympathizer, in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall Collection, and burnish his state’s image in the process.

Both the Clarke and Rose statues had been in the Capitol, serving as the faces of Arkansas, for more than 100 years.

At Hutchinson’s urging, the state Legislature approved the change in 2019; in May, the first replacement statue depicting civil rights leader Daisy Bates, was unveiled in Statuary Hall. 

Bates mentored the nine Black children who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

The statue of Cash, created by sculptor Kevin Kresse, now completes the set. It shows the singer with an acoustic guitar slung across his back and a Bible in his hand.

“What a crowd,” a beaming Johnson said, clearly appreciating the warm and light-hearted nature of the event after weeks of negotiating with members of his own party to pass a continuing resolution and keep the government funded through the election.

“Johnny Cash is the perfect person to be honored this way,” Johnson said. “He was a man who embodied the American spirit. He was an everyday man. He loved to fish. He suffered the pain of loss. He was the son of southern farmers and of the Great Depression.

“Americans related to Johnny Cash,” the House speaker continued. “Families across the country invited him into their homes through their radios and their record players, because by singing songs about the tragedies of life and the difficulties all Americans face, the man in black provided Americans with hope.”

Before continuing with his tribute, Johnson paused to make some additional news.

“I want to tell you something that I’m very excited about,” he said, a broad smile growing across his face. “I recently learned, as fate would have it, that I count myself among the Cash family,” he said.

“This is not a joke,” he said. “My staff ran a genealogy report and it turns out, I am a half fifth cousin, four times removed, of Johnny Cash. Yes, it’s a true story. My great, great grandmother Lizzie was a Cash, and that counts.

“So I’m really, really proud to be among the family today,” Johnson said.

Jeffries hailed Cash for creating “a catalog of profoundly powerful works that cannot be ascribed to a single genre of music. At different times he was country, blues, rock and roll, and gospel.” 

“Johnny Cash was uniquely American. He was a trailblazing, transformational and trendsetting figure,” Jeffries continued.

“Upon entering the music scene in 1955 he possessed a unique voice and his music had a magnetic quality that resonated with working people all throughout America and continues to reverberate 70 years later.

“Bob Dylan once remarked that when you listen to Johnny Cash, he always brings you to your senses,” Jeffries said. “Snoop Dog put it a different way. He called Johnny Cash a real American gangster. That’s a compliment from Snoop Dog.

“What a life, what a legend, what a legacy. Johnny Cash was a man of resilience and American exceptionalism. He was a true American patriot,” the Democratic leader said.

Sanders, who led a group of Arkansas lawmakers at the ceremony, said she grew up in a musical family where “after God and country, came Johnny Cash.” 

She spoke of the darker side of the Cash story, including a longtime struggle with drug addiction, but noted that he emerged from the battles and went on to perform for prisoners and that he always held onto a deep religious faith.

“When so much in today’s world is fake, Johnny Cash was very real,” Sanders said.

Cash’s faith was also reflected on by Johnson, who called the singer’s story, one of redemption.

“It’s a story of struggle and of pressing ahead. It’s a story of love for family and a deep abiding faith. He sang the hymns of old and wrote new songs about the goodness of God. He wanted people to have the same joy and faith and redemption in Christ that he had,” the speaker said.

Johnson also spoke — with some glee, it must be said — of Cash’s special connection to his home state of Louisiana, and his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana.

“The Cash family, I know, is well acquainted with Johnny Cash’s association with the Hayride,” Johnson said. “Well, one of the most famous shows in the history of the Hayride was on New Year’s Eve, 1955. The lineup was, listen to this, Elvis Presley, Johnny Horton, George Jones, David Houston, with special guests, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two.

“The ticket prices were 60 cents for adults, 30 cents for children, and little did the audience know what a great deal they were getting that day,” he said.

“Well, with the help of Hayride historians, we were able to find a photo of Johnny Cash performing that night. It’s really neat,” Johnson said, holding it aloft with a smile.

“And look at this, this is a photo of Johnny and Elvis backstage at the Hayride that night. That’s pretty awesome,” he said, holding the second photo up.

Cash’s daughter, Rosanne Cash, said she never in her “wildest dreams” imagined standing in the U.S. Capitol on behalf of the entire extended Cash family to witness her father being honored this way.

“While I have been very careful not to put words in his mouth since his passing, on this day I can safely say that he would feel that of all the many honors and accolades he received in his lifetime, this is the ultimate,” she said.

“Dad owed his perseverance to the hard upbringing of his youth, and it instilled in him a work ethic for the rest of his life,” she continued. “His nature was one of deep sensitivity and empathy to music, beauty and justice, and he was a patriot in the true sense of the word. 

“He loved the physical contours of America, and he knew every state intimately. But most of all, he loved the idea of America as a place of dreams and refuge, freedom and wonder,” Cash said.

“He was a flawed but humble, kind and compassionate man with a magnificent generosity of spirit, who loved those who suffered because he knew great suffering and loss,” she said, adding later, “this man was a living redemption story. He encountered darkness and met it with love.”

Cash noted that among the Cash family members present was her father’s sister, Joanne, the last surviving member of the original Cash family from Dyess, Arkansas.

She explained her aunt had lost her sight and asked if she could touch the statue. Immediately after it was unveiled, she did.

Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, a town 60 miles south of the state capital of Little Rock, which even today boasts fewer than 350 residents.

Over the course of his lifetime, Cash sold over 90 million records, and he is among  the few artists inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He died on Sept. 12, 2003, of complications from diabetes, at the age of 71.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue