Forever known as the country music's iconic Man in Black, and famous for dark themes and a special bond with men in jail, Johnny Cash was also a deeply spiritual Christian. It was this dual quality of a man who could sing gospel music one day and then sing of killing a man in Reno the next that kept him so elusive and popular.

John R. Cash was born into a big struggling farm family in 1932, in Arkansas. The family crop – like those of many southern households – was cotton, and John and his four siblings picked it by hand, year after year. But young John always had an ear for music, and