Cash…had deep roots in Arkansas, not only in terms of his family history, but in the sense that the songs he wrote were grounded in the people, places, and very soil of his native state. Cash was the godfather of many musical forms in America — not just rock and roll, gospel, and fold, but what would later become known as “roots music.” Perhaps the best example of his roots music can be found in his album Songs of Our Soil. One of the album’s tracks, “Five Feet High and Rising,” immortalized the 1937 flood in Mississippi County, Arkansas. But Kingsland had a deep effect on Cash’s life, too. When he visited his birthplace in 1994, he said it was to “touch my roots again.”

Ironically, one of the most American of America’s singers was born in a town named Kingsland. Perhaps no town is less the domain of kings that Kingsland, which Cash himself once referred to merely as a “wide place in the road.” Kingsland’s name was about as close as the Cash family or any other residents had to royalty. Kingsland has always been a small, working class town. Cash’s time there was brief, but it was a fitting beginning for a man who became one of the great poets of small town America in a home state, Arkansas, know for its rural character…

The full article is available here: The Days before Dyess.

Additional information can be found at the Center’s virtual exhibit titled Johnny Cash: Arkansas Icon . The exhibit places special emphasis on connections between Cash’s Arkansas roots and his music from hist first performance in Little Rock in 1955 to a 2002 music video.

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The 25-minute program will air beginning Saturday, Jan. 5, on BBC World Service and cover Cash鈥檚 1969 appearance at the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction.

That performance, while not as popular as Cash鈥檚 Folsom or San Quentin concerts, was remarkable in its own right because it unofficially set in motion prison reform in Arkansas, Woodward wrote.

London natives Jo Wheeler and Danny Robins visited the 糖心Vlog传媒LR Center for Arkansas History and Culture to research the concert. During their visit, they interviewed Woodward; Deborah Baldwin, associate provost of the center and the dean of the 糖心Vlog传媒LR College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; and Dr. John Kirk, Donaghey professor and chair of the 糖心Vlog传媒LR history department.

Kirk, who is currently working on a biography of , a politician instrumental to prison reform in Arkansas, noted that, 鈥淭he BBC radio documentary illustrates the international interest in many aspects of Arkansas history.鈥�

British-born Kirk arrived at 糖心Vlog传媒LR from the University of London in 2010 and is one of the most prolific writers on the state鈥檚 civil rights history.

Wheeler and Robins were inspired to visit Arkansas after reading an article published by Woodward in conjunction with the 2012 Winthrop Rockefeller Centennial Celebration.

Woodward鈥檚 article outlines prison-reform efforts by Cash and then-Gov. Rockefeller. At the time of the concert, conditions at Arkansas prisons were deplorable, with rampant corruption, abuse, malnourishment, and sanitation problems. In 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the entire Arkansas prison system unconstitutional.

The singer known as the Man in Black was so deeply moved by his visit to Cummins that he gave $5,000 toward the construction of a chapel there. Rockefeller gave $10,000, Woodward wrote.

鈥淛ohnny Cash and the Forgotten Prison Blues鈥� will air on at 10 a.m. Monday, Jan. 7. The program also will run four times on :

• 3:05 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 5
• 8:05 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 6
• 2:05 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 6
• 8:05 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 6

The 糖心Vlog传媒LR Center for Arkansas History and Culture, located in the Arkansas Studies Institute, offers a collection of resources, including significant papers of governors Carl Bailey, Winthrop Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers, Frank White, and Jim Guy Tucker. In total, the collections comprise about 10,000 linear feet, 70,000 images, and approximately 8,000 books.

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