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Johnny Cash didn’t have to invent his hardships as a country music artist. He grew up poor in rural Arkansas. He enlisted in the Air Force when he was a teenager. The true story of Cash’s real name was a mystery for years. His brother’s tragic and grisly death left a permanent mark on him, and Cash floated a wild theory about the event years after it happened.
Johnny Cash found inspiration in his brother Jack’s death
Life wasn’t very easy for the young Johnny Cash. Growing up in rural Arkansas during the Great Depression, he helped the family farm cotton. His dad and brother took side jobs to support the family.
Cash’s tough life took a devastating turn when his brother died. While working a job cutting wood, his older brother, Jack, was pulled into a table and was nearly cut in half. Jack survived the accident but died a week later.
Jack was only two years older than Johnny, and the event profoundly impacted the younger Cash for the rest of his life. He once said his brother’s dying words inspired him, but Cash later floated a wild theory about his brother’s untimely death.
Cash developed a wild theory that a neighbor murdered his brother
Jack Cash survived his gruesome table saw accident only to die days later. He spoke of the beauty of heaven before his tragic death, and Johnny Cash found inspiration in his brother’s dying words.
Years later — after all the famous songs, all-time great albums, Grammy and Country Music Awards statuettes, and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction — Cash voiced a wild theory about what happened to his brother. As Alan Light writes in Johnny Cash: The Life and Legacy of the Man in Black, Cash revealed in a 1995 interview that there might have been foul play involved:
“A neighbor went down to the shop with him that day and disappeared after the accident. I always thought of it as murder.”
He might have privately shared those feelings earlier in his life, but the mid-1990s interview might have been the first time Cash voiced his theory about his brother’s death. And it seems to be a wild one.
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Cash went fishing the day of his brother’s accident, so he might have been guessing about the neighbor going to the wood shop. If it was murder, it would have been a risky and darkly evil act.
By many accounts, including Light’s book, Jack Cash was a kind and gentle child. He dreamed of becoming a minister. Cash was entitled to his theory, but his brother’s tragic death truly seemed to be a terrible accident.
There was no theory about the Man in Black’s death
Health problems caught up with Cash late in his life.
After several misdiagnoses, he was eventually diagnosed with autonomic neuropathy, which causes the nervous system to function improperly. A 1998 bout of pneumonia damaged his lungs.
Still, Cash regrouped and made a late-career comeback. He recorded a series of albums using American in the title with the help of producer Rick Rubin. The 2002 record American IV: The Man Comes Around was the last Cash album to be released during his lifetime. He borrowed a trick from Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page during the recording process to make sure he completed it.
Cash kept working with Rubin until the time of his death, but his poor health and the heartbreak over the death of his wife, June Carter Cash, on May 15, 2003, was too much. He died less than four months later, on Sept. 12, 2003.
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