Based on the early life and career of country music star Johnny Cash, “Walk the Line” is a film starring Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, his long-time love and second wife. Phoenix and Witherspoon perform all their own songs in the film which was nominated for five Oscars.

Cash and his first wife Vivian Liberto move to Memphis, Tennessee in 1954 where he sells appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. Cash works up enough courage to visit Sun Records studio, where eventually he wins over the producer with songs delivered in his early rockabilly style. In 1955, Cash makes his first recordings “Hey Porter” and “Cry! Cry! Cry!” which meet with success on the country hit parade.

Cash’s next record, “Folsom Prison Blues”, makes the country top five, and “I Walk the Line” becomes number one the country charts and enters the pop charts top 20.

In 1957, Cash is Sun Records’ most prolific artist but he feels constrained by his contract with the small label partly due to the owner’s dislike of Cash recording gospel music and that Cash is receiving a three percent royalty versus the standard rate of five percent. Cash leaves to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records, where his single “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” becomes one of his biggest hits and his second album for Columbia is a collection of gospel songs.

In a somewhat unusual pairing, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash form a mutual admiration society even before they meet in the early 1960s. When the young Dylan arrives on the scene in 1962, Cash is so impressed that he writes a fan letter to the young Dylan and they begin corresponding.

When they meet at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, Cash gives Dylan his guitar as a gesture of respect and admiration. Five years later, when Dylan is in Nashville recording his ninth studio album, Cash is recording in the adjacent studio. Dylan drops in and over the next two days the duo records more than a dozen duets. Only one of them, a version of Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country,” makes it onto the album, Nashville Skyline. The others are never officially released, but have long been circulating as bootlegs.

When I was working, and if the Friday-night traffic became too much to bear, I would tune-out of my beloved BBC news and listen to music. My “go to” Friday-night relaxer would be Johnny Cash especially “A Boy Named Sue.” which Cash recorded at the San Quentin State Prison in February 1969.

His Album “At San Quentin,”, was certified gold on August 12, 1969, platinum and double platinum on November 21, 1986, and triple platinum. The album was nominated for a number of Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and won Best Male Country Vocal Performance.