Rural Road Stories

HISTORIC DYESS COLONY AND JOHNNY CASH BOYHOOD HOME by Keith Sutton

One would be hard-pressed to find an Arkansan from any era more famous than Johnny Cash. Known to his fans as “The Man in Black” because of his favored stage attire, Cash was a towering presence in the music industry for decades. He recorded more than 1,500 songs, many of which he wrote himself. Among many other accomplishments, he won 11 Grammy awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll, Country Music, Rockabilly, Gospel Music and Nashville Songwriters halls of fame. It would be incomprehensible to imagine what American music would have been like without his contributions.

In late 1968, Johnny Cash and his wife June visited Dyess for a story in Look magazine. Cash visited his old home, which was then empty, and was photographed on the back porch there by Look photographer Joel Baldwin. Source: Library of Congress.

Now, thanks to a large group of interested citizens and organizations, the house and part of the agricultural community where Cash spent his childhood have been acquired and restored as one of Arkansas State University’s Arkansas Heritage Sites. Those who visit the site in Mississippi County come away with a much better understanding of the hardscrabble life that instilled in Johnny Cash a reverence for family, God and truth that influenced his music throughout a half-century career.

The story begins in Kingsland, (Cleveland County) in 1932. On Feb. 26 that year, a baby boy was born to Ray and Carrie Cash. They called the child J.R., short for John Ray. He was the fourth of seven siblings, the others being Margaret Louise, Jack, Joanne, Reba, Roy and Tommy.

Times were tough in Depression-era Arkansas, and people were looking to the government for relief. The Cashes were among them. Ray’s farm had failed due to plummeting cotton prices. With their family facing poverty and hunger, he and Carrie were desperate.

Help came through an innovative program created in 1934 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Works Progress Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration had acquired 16,000 acres of swampy, forested land in Mississippi County and divided it into 20- to 40-acre potential farmsteads. Families that applied and were accepted would each receive one of the plots, complete with a five-room house, barn, chicken coop, smokehouse and enough money to begin the arduous task of clearing the land and growing crops. Colonists were expected repay the government after converting the land to agricultural production.

A community center, administration building, schools, a theater and other buildings rounded out the small community. At first the settlement was simply called Colonization Project #1. But when it was officially dedicated in 1936, a year and a half after the first 13 families arrived there, it was renamed the Dyess Colony in honor of its founder, William R. Dyess, a plantation owner from Mississippi County and the first head of the Works Progress Administration in Arkansas.

Nearly 500 out-of-work Arkansas farm families — 2,500 people total — eventually settled at Dyess, including the Cashe’s, who moved from Kingsland in 1935 when J.R. was just three years old. The boy spent much of the next 15 years out in the farm fields, working alongside his parents and siblings to help pay off their debts. It wasn’t an easy life, and music was one of the ways the Cash family found to escape from some of the hardships. Songs surrounded the young J.R., be it his mother’s folk songs and hymns or the working music people sang out in the fields.

Young Cash also soaked up church music, country/ western from radio station WMPS in Memphis and broadcasts from Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. At night, he often stayed awake to listen to music drifting up from Mexican border stations.

J.R. never learned to read music. He started singing at age 4 when he accompanied his mother in the house. She bought him his first guitar for his tenth birthday, and when he was just a teenager, he performed on radio station KLCN in Blytheville.

Johnny Cash died in 2003, but fans still travel from around the world to see the place the music legend often described as key to his development: his boyhood home in the northeast Arkansas community of Dyess. Photo by Keith Sutton

continued on page 20>> Johnny Cash’s brother Tommy Cash and sister Joanne Cash Yates assisted ASU historians in the authentic restoration of the house where they grew up, right down to the color of the flowers in the kitchen. Photo by Keith Sutton

Cash’s high school yearbook photograph, 1950. Shortly after this picture was taken, Cash volunteered for the Air Force.

When he graduated from Dyess High School in 1950, he enlisted in the Air Force. After serving his hitch, he eventually made his way to Memphis’ Sun Studios and began recording music under the name Johnny Cash. It was there, at the Birthplace of Rock and Roll, where the world was introduced to his singular voice and compelling songwriting, through such eternal classics as “I Walk the Line,” “Big River” and “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Clearly, many of his songs reflected his early life at Dyess. “Pickin’ Time,” for example, recorded in 1958, includes these lyrics:

I got cotton in the bottom land It’s up and growin’ and I got a good stand My good wife and them kids of mine Gonna get new shoes, come Pickin’ Time Get new shoes come Pickin’ Time. Ev’ry night when I go to bed I thank the Lord that my kids are fed They live on beans eight days and nine But I get ‘em fat come Pickin’ Time Get ‘em fat come Pickin’ Time.

Another hit song, “Five Feet High and Risin’” (1959), was inspired by the Tyronza River floods the Cash family endured:

Well the rails are washed out north of town We gotta head for higher ground We can’t come back ‘til the water goes down, Five feet high and risin’.

As he grew older, Cash often talked about the influence his childhood on the farm in Dyess had on his music and his life. In one interview he said, “When we grew up … it was second nature that we wouldn’t live in Dyess when we were grown. It was the aim of every person to get a better job. But if I hadn’t grown up there, I wouldn’t be what I am now. It was the foundation for what I became.” Most of the original buildings and colony houses are gone now, but Arkansas State University, in partnership with the city of Dyess, has restored the remaining Dyess Colony Administration Building, turned the old movie theater and pop shop into a visitor center and completely renovated the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home.

Stop in the visitors center at 110 Center Drive in Dyess to begin your tour. Inside you can watch an orientation video, see historical exhibits and visit the gift shop. Next stop is the Administration Building museum next door with exhibits related to the establishment of the colony, lifestyles of typical colonists and the impact that growing up in Dyess had on Johnny Cash and his music. From there, visitors are shuttled to the completely renovated Johnny Cash Boyhood Home, less than two miles from the Colony Center. It is furnished as it appeared when the Cash family lived there, based on family memories.

“We’ve had visitors from all 50 states and 65 foreign countries,” says Aimie Taylor, interim curator for A-State’s Heritage Sites. “Surprisingly, it’s harder to get local people to come out here than it is to get international visitors to cross the ocean. For many Arkansans, the history of this area is taken for granted. But every time we get people to visit, they find

After being located and preserved, the piano that belonged to Johnny Cash’s mother Carrie can now be seen inside his boyhood home. Photo by Keith Sutton

something that connects them to that past, and they think, I should have come here a long time ago. I didn’t know it was like this back in those days.

“I think that’s probably the most meaningful thing we can offer to our Arkansas visitors. They tell us their stories as much as we tell them about Johnny. So a lot of the times there’s this kind of just sharing and celebration of northeast Arkansas history.” Tours begin at 9 a.m. Mondays through Saturdays (except when noted for holidays), with the last tours of the day departing for the house at 3 p.m. General admission is $10 ($8 for seniors, $5 for students).

Visitors coming from Interstate 55 should take Exit 41 (State Highway 14). Travel west 5.9 miles, then turn left onto State Highway 297 (the Johnny Cash Highway). Drive 1.4 miles to the Dyess Colony Center.

For more information, visit DyessCash.AState.edu. •

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