Rosanne Cash

Cash was born in 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, to Vivian and Johnny Cash, when Johnny was recording his first tracks at Sun Records. She is the first of four daughters. Her mother was Vivian Cash (née Liberto), known to be of maternal Irish, German, and African-American ancestry, and paternal Sicilian. She grew up Catholic and her paternal Liberto grandparents were immigrants from Cefalù, Palermo.

The Cash couple married in San Antonio, Texas, where Vivian was born and raised. They later lived in Memphis, Tennessee. Vivian attracted attention as Johnny Cash became a star because some observers believed her to be black African, and interracial marriage was illegal in the South. She grew up in Sicilian-American culture in San Antonio, went to White schools in the segregated state, and was registered as White on her marriage license, among other documentation of her family's racial status as White.

With Johnny Cash's increasing success in country music, in 1958 he moved the family from Memphis to California, first to Los Angeles. He later bought a farm in Ventura. Her parents separated in 1962, and divorced six years later. Cash and her sisters were raised by their mother Vivian in the isolated, rural location.

After graduating from St. Bonaventure High School about 1973, Rosanne Cash joined her father's road show for two and a half years. She first worked as a wardrobe assistant, then as a background vocalist and occasional soloist. Rosanne Cash made her studio recording debut on Johnny Cash's 1974 album The Junkie and the Juicehead Minus Me, singing lead vocal on a version of Kris Kristofferson's "Broken Freedom Song".

In 1976, Johnny Cash recorded Rosanne's song "Love Has Lost Again" on his album One Piece At A Time. This was Rosanne Cash's first professionally recorded work as a songwriter.

That same year, she briefly worked for CBS Records in London before returning to Nashville to study English and drama at Vanderbilt University. She relocated to Los Angeles to study at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Hollywood. She recorded a demo in January 1978 with Emmylou Harris's songwriter/sideman Rodney Crowell, which led to a full album with German label Ariola Records.

Cash recorded her self-titled debut album in 1978, but Ariola never released it in the United States. It has since become a collector's item. Mainly recorded and produced in Munich, Germany, with German-based musicians, it included three tracks recorded in Nashville and produced by Crowell. Though Cash was unhappy with the album, it attracted the attention of Columbia Records, which offered her a recording contract.

She began playing with Crowell's band The Cherry Bombs in California clubs. Crowell and Cash married in 1979.

That year Cash started work on her first Columbia LP. The album, Right or Wrong, was released in early 1980, and produced three Top 25 singles. The first, "No Memories Hangin' Around", a duet with country singer Bobby Bare, reached 17 on the Country Singles chart in 1979. It was followed by "Couldn't Do Nothing Right" and "Take Me, Take Me" in 1980. Although Cash was pregnant with her first child and unable to tour in support of the album, it was a critical success. Cash and Crowell moved to Nashville in 1981.

Cash's career picked up considerable momentum with the release of her second album, Seven Year Ache, in 1981. The album achieved critical raves and solid sales. The title track was a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Country Chart and crossed over to the Billboard Pop Chart, peaking at No. 22. The album yielded two additional No. 1 country hits, "My Baby Thinks He's a Train" and "Blue Moon with Heartache", and was certified Gold by the RIAA.

Cash's third album, Somewhere in the Stars (1982), was considered a disappointment after the commercial success of Seven Year Ache. But the album still reached the Top 100 of the U.S. pop album charts and included three U.S. country chart singles, "Ain't No Money", "I Wonder", and "It Hasn't Happened Yet". Cash struggled with substance abuse during this period of time; in 1984 she sought medical treatment.

After a three-year hiatus, Cash released her fourth studio album, Rhythm & Romance (1985). It yielded two No. 1 hits, "I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me" and "Never Be You", and two other Country Top 10 singles, "Hold On" and "Second to No One". Rhythm & Romance drew high critical praise for its fusion of country and pop. "I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me" won the 1985 Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance; "Hold On" won the 1987 Robert J. …

Cash has three younger sisters: Kathy, Cindy, and Tara. Her parents divorced in 1966.

Her father married June Carter in 1968, who had two daughters. The couple had a son together, John Carter Cash, Rosanne's half-brother.

Cash's stepmother and father died in 2003, and her mother in 2005.

Cash married country music singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell in 1979. They have three daughters: Caitlin Rivers, Chelsea Jane, and Carrie Kathleen. Cash also raised Crowell's daughter from a previous marriage, Hannah. Cash and Crowell divorced in 1992.

She married her second husband, John Leventhal, in 1995, and they have one son, Jakob. Cash lives with her husband and son in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

In February 2021, Cash appeared as a guest on Finding Your Roots, the PBS TV series hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. Among what was learned about her ancestors, genealogists discovered that one of Cash's 16 maternal great-great-great-grandmothers, Sarah A. Shields, was a mixed-race woman born into slavery in South Carolina, who later lived with her parents and siblings in Alabama. The researchers were unable to learn the name of her enslaved African-American mother. Sarah and her eight mixed-race siblings were all freed in 1848 by their white father, Irish-American planter William Shields, who gained the required act of the Alabama state legislature to achieve this. Sarah, her siblings and their descendants all married white as did their descendants. Many of the extended family moved to Texas, to Mexico during the Civil War, and then back to Texas. In 1870 in Texas, Lafayette Robinson, one of Cash's direct maternal ancestors, was classified as 'mulatto' on the census. With continued intermarriage with whites, descendants were accepted as white. They were classified as white in Texas in death certificates of the 1930s and the 1930 census. Along with studying documents, other researchers analyzed Cash's DNA. They found she had 3.3% sub-Saharan African markers, and African ancestry on her father's side, as well as on her mother's. This was likely from the same period of slave society in the South. Gates found that Cash and actress Angela Bassett are distant relatives through shared DNA from a common African-American ancestor. …

Cash supports several charitable organizations. She is a longtime board member of The Center To Prevent Youth Violence (CPYV), formally known as PAX, an organization dedicated to preventing gun violence among children. She was honored by PAX at its fifth-annual benefit gala in 2005.

Cash is a frequent guest teacher at the English and songwriting programs of various colleges and universities including LeMoyne, Fairleigh-Dickinson, and NYU.

Cash has been associated with Children Incorporated for more than 25 years and has sponsored many children through the organization, which works to support and educate needy children and young adults worldwide.

Cash was elected to the Century Association in 2009.

She also works with Arkansas State University on the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Project, which has restored her father's childhood home in Dyess, Arkansas. The Cash family has supported the restoration by raising money through annual music festivals. Rosanne hosted the first- and second-annual Johnny Cash Music Festivals in 2011 and 2012. She resumed rotating host duties with her half-brother John Carter when the festival resumed at Dyess in 2017.

In 2014 Cash contributed essays to the Oxford-American and the book of collected essays edited by Sari Botton Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers On Their Unshakable Love For New York. She was also featured in Gael Towey's Portraits in Creativity as a featured artist for her Profile Series.

Cash is a dedicated supporter of artists' rights in the digital age and sits on the board of the Content Creators Coalition. On June 25, 2014, Cash testified before The House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee on intellectual property rights and Internet music licensing.

In 2018, Cash was a recipient of an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music.

Cash's work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Oxford American, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and Martha Stewart Living.