Life - Johnny Cash

With his Gibson in 1958. Photograph by John Hamilton

At home in California with Vivian and their girls in 1960. Photograph by Don hunstein

At the Newport Folk Festival in July 1964. Photograph by david gahr/getty

Ten years ago, one of American musics greatest-ever families lost, within months, its two most famous members when Valerie June Carter Cash died at age 73 on May 15, 2003, followed on September 12 by her husband, John, who was 71. After the mourning, the family house was sold and many personal effects were stored or claimed by the children: musical instruments, unfinished songs, unknown recordings, photographs and memories. In the intervening decade, bits and pieces of this have seen the light of day, and new Johnny Cash music has been released. Much of it is wonderful; certainly we here at LIFE, who had been in touch with both John and June through the years for stories we were working on, enjoyed hearing it. We were pleased that the record labels with which Johnny Cash had been affiliated were finding this material, cleaning it up and sharing it with the world.

Principal among those labels was Sony Music Entertainment, which in 1988 acquired Columbia Records, Johns home base for the bulk of his career. We were talking with our friends at Sony one day and a suggestion was made: You folks really ought to see our photo archives. Weve got thousands of picturesBarbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, all sorts of folks who were and are on our labels, including Columbia. Weve got Johnny Cash.

If we were excited when we heard that, we grew more so when we visited the quiet room in midtown Manhattan and began going through the meticulously catalogued files. Here was John with the children, here were the family reunions and weddings. Here were the behind-the-scenes shots from the prison concerts and studio sessions. Here were the outtakes from the photo shoots for album covers. Here was the house in California, and a wealth of color photography from the legendary lake house in Hendersonville, Tennessee. The phrase treasure trove is overused. But this was the very definition of a treasure trove.

We continued to talk with our friends at Sony, and a new line of LIFE books was imaginedthe first of which you hold in your hands. LIFE Unseen will present some of the worlds biggest stars as youve never known them. Choosing from among the best never-seen or rarely seen picturesmany of them intimate photographs made in quiet moments but which served no commercial purpose at the timewe will assemble illustrated biographies that are indispensable additions to any fans library. You may own other Johnny Cash books, but you dont have this oneuntil now.

Almost as soon as LIFEs editors started sifting through the Sony archive, we realized that we had to go further to produce something that wasnt simply a scrapbook but was, in fact, truly special: the whole big picture. Sony owned copies of some images you certainly do know: the famous silhouette shot from the cover of the classic At San Quentin album, for instance. We knew we needed to include such photography, and the Million Dollar Quartet picture from Sun Studio in Memphis, to keep the story flowing. There were clues in the archive: credit lines of talented photographers known to us for decades. And so, for instance, we approached the folks at Jim Marshall Photography, and sure enough, they found the John and Bob Dylan shot that we knew had to exist somewhere. We went to the House of Cash and obtained some of the familys material; and to fill out the early, pre-Columbia years, we found a collection at Arkansas State University. So, yes: There is material here that has been published before. But even so, most of what you encounter will be new to youfresh and alive.

How can we be so confident of that? Because we had one more idea: Lets show all of this to Johns eldest child, the acclaimed singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, and John and Junes son, the award-winning musician and producer John Carter Cash, and see what they think. Lets ask if they were surprised or moved. What good times or painful times were rekindled by these pictures from the vault? We had a fine conversation with Rosanne on a Saturday morning in spring, and were sure of two things: You will enjoy her reminiscences, which begin in the next chapter; and youre going to be surprised by these pictures. If she was, how can you not be? And John Carter sent along his memories as well, which appear in places throughout the book. He also helped us sort out the cast of characters at the guitar pull in The House on the Lake chapter. Roy! Kris! Jack Palance!

The folks at Sony clearly got us thinking actively, and apparently we got them thinking as well. The publication of this first LIFE Unseen book coincides with their release of a new album, : yet more discoveries and rarities from a music archive that is, if anything, even richer than this photographic record. Photographic record sounds prosaic. Call it, instead, a treasure trovea treasure trove that, until now, was carefully kept under wraps in New York City. Were glad we found it. We think you will be, too.

Moments like this, from 1958, fill these pages. In the background: the young girls; the boy who digs the guitarist. Photograph by Guy Gillette

Johns first child, with Vivian Liberto Cash, was Rosanne, born in 1955 in Memphis, right around when her father was recording his very first tracks there for Sun Records. As weve already mentioned, John and June, Rosannes stepmother, both died 10 years ago, and Vivian died in 2005. Rosanne is, therefore, the one still with us who was there for most all of what you will see in the pages to follow.

For more than three decades Rosanne herself has been in the highest echelon of American singer-songwriters, and in recent years has won acclaim for her fiction and nonfiction writing as well. Certainly on her last two terrific albums, Black Cadillac and The List, she has revisited her familys legacy, and thought back to the times they shared. Who better, then, to travel through these photographs? Rosanne lives in New York City today, and on a Saturday morning in the spring of 2013, she shares her thoughts after poring over these pages. As she talks, she dives deeper.