Rosanne Cash

Rosanne Cash (born May 24, 1955, Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.) is an American singer-songwriter who was noted for her clear ringing voice and for often deeply personal songs that blended country music with other genres, notably pop and rock.

Cash, the oldest daughter of Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto Cash, grew up in California. Her parents divorced when she was 12 years old. Although she did not intend to become a musician, she joined her father on a tour in 1973. She sought an alternate career, but when she was approached by the German record company Ariola, she agreed to record an eponymous album (1978). Though it was not widely released, it was spotted by executives at Columbia Records, and they quickly signed the singer to a contract. Her first American album, Right or Wrong (1979), was produced in Los Angeles by neotraditionalist country musician Rodney Crowell (who became Cash’s husband after the mixing of the record was completed). It signaled the arrival of a versatile singer.

Cash’s follow-up album, Seven Year Ache (1981), was her breakthrough. It yielded three singles that topped the country charts: the title cut, the ballad “Blue Moon with Heartache,” and the bluegrass-inflected “My Baby Thinks He’s a Train.” The punk-rock-influenced Rhythm & Romance (1985) scored two more number one country hits, and the single “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me” took the Grammy Award for best female country vocal performance. Four more hit singles—including “Runaway Train” and the early Johnny Cash song “Tennessee Flat Top Box”—emerged from King’s Record Shop (1987). Cash’s marital and professional partnership with Crowell later unraveled, however, and her popularity also began to cool.

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In the mid-1990s Cash moved to New York City and changed record labels, signing with Capitol Records. After vocal polyps forced her into a hiatus, she recorded the well-received Rules of Travel (2003) and Black Cadillac (2006), on which she addressed her sense of loss after the deaths of her parents. In 2007 Cash underwent surgery to relieve pressure from a brain malformation that was causing her to suffer increasingly debilitating headaches. Her next album, The List (2009), consisted of essential country songs gleaned from a list her father gave her when she was 18.

In 2014 Cash released her 12th American studio album, The River & the Thread, which was inspired by trips to Arkansas that Cash and her second husband, producer and guitarist John Leventhal, undertook in support of a project to restore the boyhood home of Cash’s father. The songs ranged from the Civil War (“When the Master Calls the Roll”) to the time of Johnny Cash’s childhood (“Sunken Lands”) and recalled periods of estrangement and homecoming. The River & the Thread won the Grammy for best Americana album, and a single from the album, “A Feather’s Not a Bird,” was honoured as both best American roots performance and best American roots song. The critically acclaimed She Remembers Everything was released in 2018 and features collaborations with Kris Kristofferson, Elvis Costello, and T Bone Burnett. Cash’s memoir, Composed, was published in 2010.