John R. Cash, 1932-2003
My father instilled in me a deep love for country music, a love I re-discovered about 10 years ago. With my dad, Willie Nelson was No. 1. But not far behind was Johnny Cash, a man without whom there would have been no Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings or any other modern country star. Without Johnny Cash, country music would have gone the way of polka after Hank Williams died.

Cash sang the requisite love songs, of course, but he took country music a step further. He was as close to Everyman as any artist before or since. His songs seemed to genuinely identify with the lives that many of his listeners led. The only songwriter who comes close to being able to match that skill now is Alan Jackson, and he would probably be the first to admit he couldn't carry Johnny Cash's pen.

Cash cultivated an image of a brooding, melancholy man, but you can't listen to "A Boy Named Sue" without laughing out loud. You can't hear him sing "I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die" without believing that he actually had done that very thing. (He didn't, but you still believed it anyway.)

And his swan song, the Nine Inch Nails dirge, "Hurt," was painfully, searingly, caustically appropriate -- a man looking death square in the face, conceding, but not before he grabbed your emotions one last time.

I never saw him in person, but it gives me chills to this day to hear his signature concert opening. In an age of "HOW YOU DOIN' ATLANTA!" or "DALLAS, ARE YOU READY TO ROCK????" there will never be anything more dramatic than a cavernous baritone saying simply:

"Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."

The voice is silenced. The music -- and a genre -- lives on.