Jerry Lee Lewis, original wild man of rock ‘n’ roll, dies at 87
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash, the ultimate storyteller, has lost a close friend and one of his best writers at 87.
Cash has had chronic kidney disease for many years. The condition was first diagnosed in 2006, but it only worsened over the years as he spent more and more time away from his home in Tennessee.
The cause was unknown, and over the years, his kidney function was so slowly declining that doctors knew it would take years to treat. He was hospitalized twice in 2005 for dialysis and three times in 2008 for hemodialysis. His last dialysis in 2009 was to relieve the burden on his body.
But during a December 2009 hospitalization for acute kidney failure, he was diagnosed with an “atypical” form of kidney cancer and died the next day. He was 87 years old.
Cash, whose songwriting credits include “Ring of Fire,” “I Walk the Line” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” was a gifted songwriter, and he wrote several of his most famous records while he was in frail health. “Ring of Fire” was one of his best-known songs and it came about after he was suffering from a leg infection.
“He would sit with that song and then the next step on the road might be four days on a bus or a plane or something and he never took a day off from it,” said Johnny’s wife Ann. “When he started writing, that’s when he was writing on his own schedule.”
Cash wrote “Ring of Fire” during a time when he was suffering from kidney pain and it was his way of coping with his own suffering. “When you have something that hurts, you write about it,” Cash told his daughter June.
The book of his life, The Ring of Fire, is a collection of stories that chronicle his life and his work, and is published by William Morrow.
Cash, in an interview from 2010, said that writing “Ring of Fire” during his last illness was “an act of defiance” in the face of what felt like a slow and inevitable fate.
“It was the first time I allowed myself to be completely open to letting the pain
