Belmont’s Johnny Cash Archives: A Resilient Moment to Start a New Chapter
Categoria: Musica
In this week's Country Update, Johnny Cash's heirs head to Belmont University to celebrate the university becoming the permanent home of the singer's artifacts.
Por Billboard | 06/08/2026
Hugs and smiles abounded when Johnny Cash ’s heirs met July 16 with a team of Belmont University representatives for a “Mark the Moment” party at the institution’s Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business. The event celebrated an agreement that makes Belmont the permanent home for Cash’s personal archives. The collection of documents and some physical items is being organized and catalogued for access by researchers and scholars, to be housed in a Johnny Cash Learning Center at a university building under construction on Music Row. As significant as the agreement was, the party’s timing had deep karmic repercussions. The event unwittingly coincided with the 40th anniversary of a dark chapter in Cash’s history: Some 40 years prior, he opened The Tennessean to see his photo plastered on the front page of the Living section with a headline he didn’t know was coming: “’Man in Black’ Without a Label.” After a 28-year run with Columbia Records, the company had dropped him without even a courtesy call. Just 11 months earlier, his bedrock tone had provided the final voice in “Highwayman,” taking him to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs along with super-group band mates Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Four decades after he was unceremoniously dismissed, Belmont’s acquisition will place a part of his legacy in the heart of Music Row, literally across the property line from where that decision was made. The new Belmont building is adjacent to a Curb College building that previously housed Columbia. Two recording studios still exist on the property, including the space in which Cash cut some of his most iconic hits: “Ring of Fire,” “What is Truth,” “Man in Black” and the June Carter duet “Jackson.” “It’s literally almost a phoenix rising from the ashes,” says Dr. Mary Ellen Pethel, director of the Learning Center. “They’re blasting right now, and that new building is going to complement those historic studios. It’s like a reunion of sorts, and it’s like all is right with the world again.” The $8.6 million acquisition occurred in part through support from Scott and Sandi Borchetta, Mike and Linda Curb and the Harper House Music Foundation, a nonprofit involved in the preservation and/or funding of music venues, education programs and other heritage projects. The Cash children — Rosanne Cash, John Carter Cash, Kathy Cash, Cindy Cash and Tara Cash Schwoebel — had wanted their father’s history to be preserved in a place where it could be mined for scholarly research and music-related study. Belmont became a partner, Pethel says, through a relationship Curb College dean Brittany Schaffer had with the Cash team. Following the July 22 announcement of the deal, Belmont has already fielded requests to explore the collection, though the school is hardly ready for that step. “People want to come research now,” Pethel says, “and I’m like, ‘They’re still in banker’s boxes.’” The collection includes more than 100 of those boxes, th