Nashville, Sept 13: Johnny Cash, music's "Man in Black," died on Friday, silencing a deep and brooding voice that for nearly 50 years sang plaintive tales of coal miners and sharecroppers, convicts and cowboys. He was 71. "Johnny died due to complications from diabetes, which resulted in respiratory failure," manager Lou Robin said in a statement. His death, at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, cast a late summer pall over Tennessee's Music City, where he was easily the industry's most iconic performer.
"It's a sad day in Tennessee but a great day in heaven," said Merle Kilgore, Cash's best man at his 1968 wedding to the late June Carter Cash and co-author of the hit "Ring of Fire."

"The Man in Black is now wearing white as he joins his wife June in the angel band," he said.

It was just four months ago that Carter Cash, a member of one of the country's most famous musical families, succumbed to complications from heart surgery at the age of 73.

Their son, also named Johnny Cash, told Reuters in August that his father, "the strongest man I've ever met," was "absolutely devastated" by her passing, though he was bearing up and had resumed studio work.

"I know the angels will sing today and heaven is a better place," added fellow entertainer George Jones. Cash's former son-in-law, Rodney Crowell, called him "a musical hero to millions ... I'm thinking Mount Rushmore."

Cash had been in and out of the hospital in the last few years.

Renowned for his black clothing typically topped with a long country preacher's coat, Cash was credited with being the inspiration for a generation of Nashville talent. He was a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Country Music Hall of Fame as well as the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Bureau Report