Cash is the first musician to receive the honor
“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” will now ring the halls of the US Capitol after a statue of the country legend was unveiled on Tuesday (Sept 24th). The statue, commissioned by the State of Arkansas, has been placed in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, along with the statue of Arkansas civil rights activist and journalist Daisy Bates which was unveiled in May.
“Words cannot come close to expressing our pride to see my dad accorded such a singular privilege, the first musician in history to be included in the Statuary Hall Collection,” Johnny’s daughter Rosanne said at the unveiling. “I’m very careful not to put words in his mouth since his passing, but 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.”
More than one hundred family members and close friends attended the ceremony, marking Cash as the first musician to be on permanent display at the US Capitol.
“Today I attended a marvelous program in Emancipation Hall where the statue of Johnny Cash was placed for time immemorial. Johnny Cash was put in there by the State of Arkansas who earlier placed Daisy Bates in the Capitol. I commend the State of Arkansas for doing that and the outstanding addresses by Arkansas legislators, the governor, and by Roseanne Cash, the daughter of Johnny Cash,” shares Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9).
He continues, “Johnny Cash was born in Arkansas but he came to Memphis to start his musical career. He went to Sun Records and Sam Phillips got him started. He was at Sun Records on the day when Elvis was there, Jerry Lee Lewis was there, and Carl Perkins was there. They put together songs that day that Sam Phillips recorded that was called ‘The Million-Dollar Quartet.’ Johnny Cash was a great singer, a great humanitarian worthy of this honor, and someone we should all remember. A life well-lived and memorialized in the Capitol.”
Cash died in 2003 at the age of 71. His estate released Songwriter earlier this year, featuring songs compiled from 1993 recordings demos at LSI Studios in Nashville. Thirty years later, son John Carter Cash rediscovered the songs and stripped them back to just Johnny’s powerful, pristine vocals and acoustic guitar. Along with co-producer David “Fergie” Ferguson, the two invited a handpicked group of musicians that played with Johnny, including guitarist Marty Stuart and the late bassist Dave Roe, along with drummer Pete Abbott and several others, to the Cash Cabin, a hallowed space in Hendersonville, Tennessee. where Johnny would write, record, and relax, to breathe new life into the tracks, taking the sound back to the roots and heart of the songs.
