On September 12, 2003, the world lost a musical legend when Johnny Cash passed away in Nashville. Below is the obituary we ran the day after the Man in Black died.
Battling ill health for years and without his longtime companion since wife June Carter Cash’s death in May, Mr. Cash’s frailties of body and heart made him seem no less indomitable.
What did Johnny Cash suffer from?
Fans and fellow musicians likened him to a force of nature: an iconic, elemental figure, more granite and fire than flesh and blood. He had cheated death enough that it seemed death would never catch onto the ruse.
Cash passed away at Baptist Hospital, succumbing to respiratory failure brought on by complications from diabetes. He was 71 years old, and his life altered the course of American popular music.
In Hendersonville, he was a neighbor. For Nashville, he was an ambassador, an agitator, a kingpin and a musical conscience.
To the world, he was a political activist, a genre-blending innovator and the embodiment of well-aged cool.
Most memorably, he was a singer of songs.
