Johnny Cash

Growing up, he was called J.R., and when he enlisted in the Air Force it was as John R. He took the name Johnny when he started recording for Sun Records.

Much of his childhood was spent working in his family's cotton fields. He was a teenager when he started playing guitar and writing songs.

Cash spent a lot of time at prisons, but as an entertainer, not an inmate. He had a few overnight stays in jail on drunk and disorderly charges, but never served time. The closest he came to hard time was in October 1965 when he was arrested upon returning from Mexico when US Customs agents searched his luggage and found hundreds of illegal pills. He was fined $1000 but received a suspended sentence and didn't go to jail.