Sony has belatedly realized that Columbia Records’ photo archive could be used for more than just box set filler. The monolith, which is suffering from “hard times,” has founded Icon Collectibles, which is selling a 11″x12″ photo of Johnny Cash for $300. “His eyes shine with the light of deep secret knowledge and the gravitas of an artist who’s born to carry the truth in his music.” For that much money, they damn well better! Lovely one-to-two feet long photos of Billy Joel, Johnny Mathis, Muhammad Ali (who did a spoken-word album for Columbia — score, Sony!), Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Gould, Bob Dylan, and several others are also available to those with a grand to kill.
This year marks four decades since Johnny Cash infamously threw down for the inmates of Folsom Prison in California, and Jonathan Holif, who was arranging a tribute concert to mark the occasion, featuring “the country singer’s music and drummer W.S. ‘Fluke’ Holland, one of his original backup musicians,” is now crying over prison officials suddenly cancelling the show thanks to petty wrangling “over filming rights, media access and security.” (Well, the “security” part probably isn’t so petty.)
Four decades after he was hauled off to the pokey for snagging a stranger’s flowers right out of their yard, Johnny Cash will be officially let off the hook by the uptight Mississippi town that put him away in the first place:
Johnny Cash’s lakeside home in Hendersonville, TN., was destroyed by fire yesterday. The forty-year-old home–which was undergoing construction–is probably one of the most musically significant buildings in history:
Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, lived in the 13,880-square-foot home from the late 1960s until their deaths in 2003. Barry Gibb, a former member of the Bee Gees, purchased the home in 2006 and had hoped to remodel it and eventually write songs there with his wife.
