Rosanne Cash

The oldest daughter of country music star Johnny Cash and Vivian Liberto, Rosanne Cash began her recording career with a sound that blended Nashville C&W and California country rock. By the '90s, after scoring numerous country hits and divorcing country producer/singer/songwriter Rodney Crowell, she had developed into an eloquent and introspective singer/songwriter, whose troubled personal life was reflected in evocative, pain-wracked compositions.

Though born in Memphis, Cash grew up in Ventura, California, where her parents had moved in 1958; the two divorced in 1966. The day after graduating from high school, she joined her father’s touring revue as a wardrobe assistant and later became a backup singer. After three years with the Johnny Cash show, she moved to London in 1976, returning home in 1977 to attend Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Then she moved to Hollywood and enrolled in the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute the next year. She took time off in January 1978 to record a demo produced by Rodney Crowell [see entry], attracting the attention of the German-based Ariola label. She went to Munich to record an album, and although it was never released in the U.S. it persuaded the Nashville branch of Columbia Records to sign her.

Cash and Crowell married in 1979. For a while she played with Crowell’s band, the Cherry Bombs, before Columbia released her debut U.S. album, Right or Wrong, which sold surprisingly well despite her inability to tour; she was pregnant. Her 1981 followup, Seven Year Ache, drew critical raves, solid sales, and yielded a #1 country hit with the title tune (two other tracks from the LP hit #1 as well).

Cash continued to score on the country charts: “Ain’t No Money” (#4 C&W, 1982), “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me” (#1 C&W, 1985), “Never Be You” (#1 C&W, 1985), “Hold On” (#5 C&W, 1986), “Second to No One” (#5 C&W, 1986). By the mid-’80s, though, childbearing had curtailed her touring (she and Crowell have three daughters), and a cocaine dependence landed her in rehab. She sprang back, however, with the eclectic King’s Record Shop (#6 C&W, 1987), which featured a remake of her father’s “Tennessee Flat Top Box” (#1 C&W, 1987) and marked a healing of her strained relationship with her dad. The album also yielded #1 C&W hits in John Hiatt’s “The Way We Make a Broken Heart,” “If You Change Your Mind,” and “Runaway Train.” A longtime Beatles fan, Cash took the group’s “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” to the top of the country charts in 1989.

Self-produced, Interiors (#23 C&W, 1990) was Cash’s first album without Crowell at the helm. Her brutally dark take on intimate relationships was reflected throughout and made clear the marital problems that had been hinted at on earlier albums, both in her own songs and those contributed by her husband. Cash began touring the singer/songwriter circuit in the ’90s, and as her songs became more personal and her music’s sound more stripped down, her country hits stopped coming. In 1992 her marriage ended in divorce. Its painful aftermath and her own self-actualization were the themes of her critically acclaimed album The Wheel (#37 C&W, 1993). Cash’s interest in Jungian psychology was apparent in her compositions as well. Always highly critical of the Nashville country star lifestyle, Cash relocated to New York City and began a relationship with guitarist/songwriter/producer John Leventhal (Shawn Colvin), with whom she began collaborating and touring; the couple married in 1995.

After moving to Capitol Records, Cash released the spare 10 Song Demo in 1996. Produced by Leventhal, it featured Cash singing her introspective songs, for the most part backed only by her acoustic guitar or piano. That same year, a book of Cash short stories, Bodies of Water, was published to favorable reviews. She has since published a children’s book, Penelope Jane: A Fairy’s Tale (in 2000), and edited a book of prose, Songs Without Rhymes, by such songwriters as David Byrne and Suzanne Vega. In early 2001 she returned with her first new album of songs in five years, entitled The Rules of Travel.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)