Johnny was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, United States as the fourth son out of their 7 children to Ray Cash and Carrie Cloveree. His name was J. R. Cash in light of the fact that his guardians couldn't think about a name. In 1955, when marking with Sun Records, he changed his stage name to Johnny Cash. It was in the March of 1935 that the family moved to settle down in Dyess, Arkansas. He began working in cotton fields at age five, chiming in with his family while working. Their farm was drowned a couple of times, which later cheered him to compose the song "Five Feet High and Rising". His family's monetary and individual battles amid the Great Depression propelled a considerable lot of his tunes, particularly those about other individuals confronting comparable troubles. 

It was the July of 1950 when Johnny got into the United States Air Force. After essential preparing at Lackland Air Force Base and specialized preparing at Brooks Air Force Base, both in Texas, Cash was allocated to the twelfth Radio Squadron Mobile of the U.S. Aviation based armed forces Security Service at Landsberg, Germany as a Morse Code Intercept Operator to crack the code and get information coming through the USSR army. 

During one of his trainings in the June of 1951, he came across Vivian Liberto, a 17-year-old girl at a roller skating arena in her local San Antonio. They started dating and it was only for 3 weeks as Cash was send to Germany for a three-year visit. Amid that time, the couple traded several pages of adoration letters. It was in the August of 1954, one month after his release, the couple got married at St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in San Antonio. The priest for the occasion was Father Vincent Liberto, Vivian’s uncle. Together, the couple had four girls. But Cash's indulgence in drugs and liquor and keeping affairs with other ladies, and his relationship with June Carter resulted in the divorce between him and Vivian in 1966.

In 1954, the couple moved to Tennessee, where he sold apparatuses while contemplating to be a radio anchor. Around evening time he played with guitarist Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant as a band in local bars. Before Cash, Perkins and Grant were already famous as the Tennessee Two. With Johnny in, he went to Sun Records studio, wanting to get a contract for recording his songs. In the wake of auditioning for Sam Phillips, singing for the most part gospel tunes, Phillips let him know that he had stopped recording Gospels any more. 

After enjoying worldwide name and fame, in 1977 Johnny caught a terrible disease “Shy-Drager syndrome”, a dangerous neurological disorder. Treatment was done immediately but the disease never got better, resulting into diabetes. The situation got worse and in 1988 he was hospitalized for damaged lungs due to Pneumonia. While he was admitted at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Cash passed away from complications caused by diabetes at around 2:00 A.M. This was on the 12th of September 2003, less than four months after his wife had passed away. He was 71 when he passed away.