Honoring the life of Johnny Cash.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) for yielding me this time. We have a number of speakers on this side, and I would like to yield to them. I am particularly appreciative of the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon).

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon).

Mr. Speaker, many of our colleagues wish they could be here today, particularly our friend, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross). I yield such time as he may consume to our friend, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), who is here today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate the gentleman's kind remarks about the legacy of a truly great man.

It is not everyone who not only makes the front page of the hometown newspaper, the only front page I have ever seen entirely in black, but who also makes the front page of Time Magazine, People Magazine and, yes, no less than Rolling Stone itself.

There were some comments in here from some truly remarkable artists who have this to say about the passing of Johnny Cash.

Bob Dylan said, ``Johnny was and is the North Star. You could guide your ship by him, and he is the greatest of the greats, then and now.''

Merle Haggard said, ``He was like Abraham or Moses, one of the great men who will ever grace the Earth. There will never be another man in black.''

Kris Kristofferson pointed out he thought, ``The power of his performance came from the tension between

this man who was deeply spiritual and also a real wild man.''

The fact of Johnny Cash's passing has been noted by people around the world with great sadness, but I thought one of the best obituaries in his honor was written by a noted music author, Peter Guralnick; and it appeared in The New York Times. He said as follows: ``Only those who were there at the beginning can remember how different he really was. The records, when they first started coming out on the Sun label in 1955, in the wake of Elvis Presley's success, sounded `so unusual,' said the Sun session guitarist Roland Janes, `that I never would have dreamed he could have even gotten a record played on the radio. But he set country music on its ear.'

``It was the voice that compelled attention from the start. It was a voice that the founder of Sun Records, Sam Phillips, compared to the blues singer Howlin' Wolf's in its uniqueness, the unimpeachable integrity and originality of its sound. But it was the conviction behind the voice that really allowed Johnny Cash to create a body of work as ambitious in its scope as it was homespun in its sound.

``He carried that conviction with him from the time he first entered the tiny Sun studio in Memphis in the fall of 1954. He was just out of the Army, selling home appliances door-to-door and playing with a trio of musicians barely conversant with the instruments that they were playing: a guitarist who played one note at a time because he did not know any other way to do it, a base player who had just switched over from the guitar and had not yet learned how to tune his instrument, and a steel guitar player who would drop out of the picture altogether before they even made a record. They worked and worked until, after nearly 6 months, they finally came up with something that reflected the honesty, originality, and, above all, the spontaneity and emotional truth that both Sam Phillips and Johnny Cash particularly prized. This low-tech approach was the perfect vehicle certainly for the plain- spoken quality of Johnny Cash's message, but the method of delivery does not come close to explaining the majesty or the ambition of his art.

``To understand that, one has to factor in the power of imagination. John Cash, he was named `Johnny' by Sam Phillips, grew up in the Federal `colony' of Dyess, Arkansas, a social experiment with a socialist setup really, as Johnny Cash himself described it, that was done by President Franklin Roosevelt for farmers who had lost out during the Depression. One of the most vivid memories of Dyess was the day Eleanor Roosevelt came to town to decorate the library, a momentous occasion not simply for the glimpse it afforded of Mrs. Roosevelt but for the opportunity it subsequently afforded Johnny Cash to indulge in what would become a lifelong passion for reading. He read James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott in particular at that time and everything he could find on the American Indian, not so much to escape as to enjoy the sense of discovery. He carried this exploratory spirit with him into the world, a world in which he achieved a degree of celebrity and fame far beyond anything he might ever have imagined and long past the point that most people would gladly have settled for the simple definition of success.

``He used his success, in fact, to provide a voice for the downtrodden, the lost souls and lost causes that might otherwise have found no place in the American dream. He used his knowledge and passion for every sort of music, for the blues of Robert Johnson, the gospel music of his fellow Arkansan, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Texas folk songs collected by J. Frank Dobie, to set out in new and inventive directions of his own. When he got a network television show in the late 1960s, he not only presented such unlikely countercultural figures such as Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger to a predominantly country audience, he also regularly incorporated a vivid lesson in musical and social history in a filmed sequence called `Ride This Train.'

``Johnny Cash's imagination took him along widely divergent paths. There was, as he often remarked, no safe harbor for the creative soul. He was tormented by demons that he could not always control, but he never sought excuses. He simply sought the truth.

``This was what continued to give Johnny Cash's music relevance over the years. Through imagination he possessed a gift for empathetic transference; unlike many artists, he was able to take on other voices and make them his own. His music celebrated the power of the individual, but his emphasis on directness and simplicity made a complex, and sometimes contradictory, message accessible to all. His, as Sam Phillips once said, was the truest voice because it was so irremediably his own, but it was a universal voice, too, for the very way in which it incorporated a constant sense of striving and struggle, an irreducible awareness, and embrace, of the human stain.''

Mr. Speaker, Johnny Cash was like no other. As I mentioned earlier, his loss was mourned around this globe. From young people who like ``Nine Inch Nails'' and the song ``Hurt'' and who thrilled to the video, perhaps one of the best ever made, to the oldest of country music fans who remember tuning in to the Grand Ole Opry in their youth. So we appreciate this moment, and I appreciate the chance to join with my Tennessee colleagues and my colleagues from Arkansas and people around this great country who are in this Congress and who have come up to me in the last couple of weeks to honor the memory of the great Johnny Cash.

Mr. Speaker, I have no more speakers at this time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 282) honoring the life of Johnny Cash, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on House Concurrent Resolution 282.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Concurrent Resolution 282, offered by the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper). House Concurrent Resolution 282 honors the life and musical legacy of Johnny Cash, a man who was a poet, a scholar, and a world famous music icon, as well as a loving husband and father.

I would like to take this opportunity to commend the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) for introducing this important legislation. I would also like to thank Senator Lamar Alexander for introducing the Senate version, which was passed by that body on September 18, 2003.

It was no wonder that September 12 was a dark and dreary day in Nashville. It was the day we lost the Man in Black. Johnny Cash died early that morning at Baptist Hospital in Nashville from diabetes complications. He was an outlaw, he was a songwriter, he was a born- again Christian; and for 5 decades Johnny Cash entertained millions, millions of people around the world with songs of love and death and good times and bad. All of his career, Johnny Cash wrote songs for the common man. From his upbringing in rural northeastern Arkansas to the height of his stardom in the 1960s, Johnny Cash always connected with the common man.

Johnny's career began in Memphis alongside Elvis Presley. There, with legendary recording great Sam Phillips of Sun Records, he recorded ``Cry! Cry! Cry!'' and that put him on the map. By 1956 he was recognized as one of country music's rising stars when he joined the Louisiana Hayride and the Grand Ole Opry. Although he struggled through drug abuse, Johnny Cash found a soul mate in June Carter Cash. It was with her loving support that he was able to make it through those tough times. In 1968 he married this daughter of acoustic guitar great Mother Maybelle Carter, a member of ``the first family of country music.''

Johnny Cash's deep sense of reality pours out in that gravelly voice that we all loved with songs like ``Folsom Prison Blues'' and the legendary ``Ring of Fire'' co-written with June Carter Cash. He garnered 11 Grammys and at age 71 was in no way slowing down creatively. Just a few weeks ago, he was posthumously named the top honoree at the Americana Music Awards in Nashville.

His legacy is his music, and it will surely go on with hits like ``I Walk the Line''; ``Big River''; and the hit he co-wrote with fellow outlaw Kris Kristofferson, ``Sunday Morning Coming Down.'' Kris Kristofferson was right when he said Johnny Cash represented what was great about America. His profound faith, resiliency, and unwillingness to be labeled by the music industry will certainly shape the legacy of one of the greatest American artists. This American icon will be missed, but he will be remembered through his music.

I commend the gentleman from Tennessee for his leadership in offering this concurrent resolution to honor the life of Johnny Cash, and encourage my colleagues to adopt the measure.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble), a gentleman who has joined us on the Committee on the Judiciary in fighting for our songwriters and also a gentleman who several years ago I had the opportunity to have as my guest at the Grand Ole Opry and to celebrate some of this wonderful country music that we are speaking of today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, I commend the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) for his efforts, and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon) for his efforts in recognizing his constituent.

The gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) spoke a little bit about Johnny Cash's ambitions for his music, and I think that we can see that, because we have people all across the spectrum, those who are young and old, who appreciate his music, and who learned from what he does.

I think it is important to note, too, that it was very important to Johnny Cash that he mentor others; and that was not lost on his children and his grandchildren and the talents that they possess and the talents that they are bringing forward in the music industry today.

We appreciate so much this body joining together to honor not only Johnny Cash's life and the impact that he had on the music industry but the legacy.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, some years ago when I sat as a member of the House Committee on the Judiciary's Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property Subcommittee, we had an occasion to resolve a copyright matter, which of course brought many entertainers and performers to Capitol Hill that day. Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, and I believe his agent was with him, came into my office prior to the meeting just to say hello. I left him in my office and went down to the meeting, and when he appeared as a witness, he proudly announced that he had just left my office where he had sat in my chair.

Well, I thought it was I who would be proud that he sat in my chair in my office, and I told him that. He was a very good witness; I remember it very vividly. And we resolved the copyright matter favorably for all concerned. It is one of those issues where neither side was ecstatic about it, but both sides could live with it.

Subsequently, I saw a replay of a Larry King interview, and perhaps many of my colleagues saw it when he interviewed Cash. Johnny Cash told King that night on the interview that he recalled one time when he had been arrested, I believe in Georgia, and spent the night in jail. And the jailer came the next day, and Johnny Cash said that the jailer threw the money and his clothes on the counter and said, I do not want to see you here any more. He said, my wife is a Johnny Cash fan; and she cried all night when I told her that you were in my jail. Now, you get out of here.

Tough love I think is what it amounted to. I think that jailer was saying to him, now, listen, pal, you caused me a tough night last night; my wife is upset at me for having you here. Get yourself squared away. I think he did. He obviously did get himself squared away.

Many years ago, perhaps many of my colleagues were with me here in Washington when the four outlaws, as the gentlewoman from Tennessee mentioned, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, each of whom I am sure were regarded as outlaws by the profession, but they made one tremendous quartet here that night; and it was a sold-out crowd here in Washington. I vividly remember it.

As has already been said, the gentleman from Tennessee, the gentleman from Maryland and the gentlewoman from Tennessee have already said it, he was indeed an icon and will indeed be missed. The man in black, always standing up; always, almost without exception, standing up for the underdog, standing up for the other guy. He will indeed be missed.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the late Johnny Cash, one of our most well known singer/songwriters who was born in a little-known town in my district named Kingsland.

Kingsland, Arkansas is a little town of 449 residents that lies just west of the Mississippi Delta, the fertile ground out of which grows our nation's finest food and fiber. Out of this land also grows much hardship--it is sparsely populated by farmers whose fortune is subject to the whims of nature. It gave birth to the blues, and to Johnny Cash.

Cash was born in the wake of the Great Depression, the fourth of five children in a cotton farming family. He picked cotton with his hands, sang hymns at the Central Baptist Church, and sought higher ground at Pine Bluff when the great flood of 1937 sent the Mississippi's waters spilling into his family's cotton fields in Dyess, covering them with the black Mississippi mud that the next year produced the best cotton crop they'd ever seen--hardship and glory wrapped up in a busted levee that soaked his livelihood and sealed his fate as the champion of the downtrodden.

Johnny Cash's music transcended genres and generations to touch us all with stories of struggle--sometimes ending in triumph, but usually ending in trouble. His adventurous ballads and lamenting dirges could bring us down to the darkest depths of life at the same time his spirituals lifted us up to heaven.

He was bold. He was bad. He was brave. He made his peace with man and with God through his songs. He sang of outlaws and heroes, cowboys and killers, soldiers and lovers, and even a boy named Sue. He was country, folk, and rock and roll. Johnny Cash didn't sing to simply earn a living, he sang because he had much to tell.

From his life we learn to face adversity with wit and integrity, to fight back when pushed down, to hold duty and honor sacred, and to love and forgive. We lost one of our national treasures this month, but the legacy and the legend of the Man in Black will live on in the gift he gave us all.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support H. Con. Res. 282, which pays tribute to the memory of legendary singer Johnny Cash, who was born in Kingsland, Arkansas.

Johnny Cash grew up on a 20-acre cotton farm in Northeast Arkansas. Listening to his mother's folk songs, hymns, and hearing the workers in the fields, or the nearby railroad yards nurtured his love for music. The plight of the workingman and downtrodden would remain a central theme to his music throughout his rise to become one of the most influential country singers of the 20th century.

His experiences of the dark side of life, through drugs, alcohol, bad luck, and poverty have been very popular. He used his songs, books, movies and television to grab the attention of the world.

Johnny Cash remained an Arkansan by heart throughout his entire career, never forgetting the importance of his faith, his family, and his roots. In 1969, he worked closely with Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller to show the nation that prisons were not a lost cause and living conditions must be improved. At the Governor's request he performed at Cummins Prison in Grady, Arkansas, to a live

audience, along with his wife, the Statler brothers, Carl Perkins, and many more. In 1990, when devastating flood hit Arkansas farmers he was quick to jump to action. As a member of the country quartet, the Highwaymen, he persuaded the group to begin their new tour in Little Rock, Arkansas. They raised thousands of dollars for the farmers' recovery.

An eleven-time Grammy winner, Johnny Cash was recognized and honored by his native state of Arkansas. He won the Arkansas Broadcasters Association ``Arkansan of the Year'' Award and was given the Entertainers Award and the President's Award from the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame. Johnny Cash is a country music legend and will always have a special place in the hearts of many worldwide, but none more than in the hearts of his fellow Arkansans.