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50 free Johnny Cash trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free Johnny Cash trivia questions with answers. Johnny Cash was a cotton farmer's son, an Air Force Morse-code operator who may have been the first American to hear of Stalin's death, a Sun Records labelmate of Elvis, and the only performer besides Elvis in both the Country and Rock and Roll halls of fame. This quiz follows the whole arc: the Tennessee Two and the dollar bill in the guitar neck, the prison albums, the proposal to June Carter on stage in Ontario, the ABC show at the Ryman, the Nixon set-list standoff, the Highwaymen, the ostrich, and the Rick Rubin comeback that ended with 'Hurt'. Early questions suit any radio listener (which state he was born in, who wrote 'A Boy Named Sue'). Later ones are for the faithful: which Swedish prison he recorded at, which Bee Gee bought his house, and what got named after him near Folsom in 2015. Good for a country-music quiz night or a Walk the Line watch party. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Cash, his albums and the people around him, and each question shows its source. No lyrics are quoted, so nothing here spoils the songs.
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Q 01What nickname did Cash earn from his trademark stage wardrobe?
The Man in Black
His 1975 autobiography took the name as its title and sold 1.3 million copies.
Q 02Johnny Cash was born in 1932 to poor cotton farmers in which state?
Arkansas
His boyhood home in the New Deal colony of Dyess was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
Q 03Cash spent much of his four years in the US Air Force in West Germany doing what job?
Intercepting Soviet Morse code
He is said to have been one of the first Americans to learn of Stalin's death, via Morse code, and he formed his first band, the Landsberg Barbarians, there.
Q 04Which label and producer signed Johnny Cash in 1955 after rejecting the sacred songs he auditioned with?
Sun Records and Sam Phillips
His given name was simply J. R.; the Air Force would not accept initials, so he became John R., and only became 'Johnny' when he signed.
Q 05Guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant, Cash's original backing duo, were known as what?
The Tennessee Two
With a drummer added they became the Tennessee Three, who backed him at Folsom and San Quentin.
Q 06What is the December 1956 Sun Studio jam of Cash, Presley, Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis known as?
The Million Dollar Quartet
Sam Phillips had brought in the still-unknown Lewis to add piano to a Carl Perkins session; a Broadway musical about the night opened in 2010.
Q 07Cash got the 'boom-chicka-boom' rhythm on 'I Walk the Line' by wedging what into the neck of his guitar?
A dollar bill
The 1956 single stayed on the charts for over 43 weeks and sold more than two million copies.
Q 08Which 1951 film, seen while stationed in Germany, inspired Cash's 1955 hit about a California jailhouse?
Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison
The song borrowed heavily from Gordon Jenkins's 'Crescent City Blues'; Landsberg, where Cash was posted, has a famous prison of its own.
Q 09Cash's live album At Folsom Prison was recorded on which date?
13 January 1968
He played two shows that day backed by June Carter, Carl Perkins and the Tennessee Three; the album went triple platinum in 2003.
Q 10Cash's first notable prison concert, on New Year's Day 1958, was at which prison?
San Quentin
He returned there in 1969 for the album that produced 'A Boy Named Sue'; a young Merle Haggard was famously in the audience at San Quentin.
Q 11Which children's author and cartoonist wrote 'A Boy Named Sue'?
Shel Silverstein
It became Cash's biggest Billboard Hot 100 hit and his only top-ten single there.
Q 12Who wrote the 1963 crossover hit that Cash arranged with mariachi horns after hearing it in a dream?
June Carter and Merle Kilgore
June's sister Anita recorded it first; Cash said he dreamed the song with 'Mexican horns', hence the mariachi arrangement.
Q 13Cash's 1964 concept album Bitter Tears was devoted to the plight of which group?
Native Americans
Q 21Which three artists joined Cash in the country supergroup the Highwaymen?
Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson
They released three albums between 1985 and 1995, starting with Highwayman.
Q 22Cash relapsed into painkiller addiction in 1983 after an abdominal injury caused by which animal on his farm?
An ostrich
The bird kicked and wounded him; he entered treatment at Nashville's Cumberland Heights in 1989.
Q 23In the 1976 novelty hit 'One Piece at a Time', a worker smuggles parts to build which car?
A Cadillac
Its single 'The Ballad of Ira Hayes' was largely boycotted by radio, so Cash personally lobbied DJs to play it.
Q 14Cash's 1967 duet with June Carter 'Jackson' won which honour?
A Grammy Award
Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon released their own version of it as a single from the Walk the Line soundtrack.
Q 15Where did Cash propose to June Carter in 1968?
On stage in London, Ontario
They married a week or so later, on 1 March, in Franklin, Kentucky.
Q 16The Johnny Cash Show, which ran on ABC from 1969 to 1971, was staged at which Nashville venue?
The Ryman Auditorium
The Statler Brothers opened every episode; guests included Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt in her first TV appearance.
Q 17Cash duetted with Dylan on 'Girl from the North Country' and wrote Grammy-winning liner notes for which Dylan album?
Nashville Skyline
Cash championed Dylan and other outsiders while serving as country music's most visible establishment figure.
Q 18Which two songs did Nixon's office ask Johnny Cash to play at the White House in 1970, requests he declined?
'Okie from Muskogee' and 'Welfare Cadillac'
Cash said he simply did not know them well enough on short notice; Nixon joked in his introduction that one did not tell Johnny Cash what to sing.
Q 19Cash's friendship with Billy Graham led him to co-write and narrate a 1973 film about whose life?
Jesus
He later wrote a novel about the Apostle Paul, Man in White, published in 1986.
Q 20At 48 in 1980, Johnny Cash became the youngest living inductee of which institution?
The Country Music Hall of Fame
Other than Elvis Presley, he is the only artist inducted as a performer into both the Country and the Rock and Roll halls of fame.
The narrator works on the General Motors assembly line in Detroit and cannot afford one, so he 'salami-slices' the parts out of the factory.
Q 24Which producer revived Cash's career in the 1990s with the stripped-back American Recordings series?
Rick Rubin
The 1994 debut was recorded in Cash's living room with only his Martin guitar and won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
Q 25Johnny Cash's Grammy-winning 1996 album Unchained was recorded with which backing band?
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Sylvia Massy engineered and mixed the sessions under Rick Rubin.
Q 26Cash's acclaimed late cover 'Hurt' was originally written by which musician for Nine Inch Nails?
Trent Reznor
He was initially sceptical, then said of Cash's version that 'that song isn't mine anymore'.
Q 27Which two other rock songs did Cash cover in his final years, alongside 'Hurt'?
'Rusty Cage' and 'Personal Jesus'
They came from Soundgarden and Depeche Mode respectively; he also recorded U2's Bono-penned 'The Wanderer'.
Q 28Cash's ex-wife Vivian Liberto met him in 1951 at what kind of venue in San Antonio?
A roller-skating rink
They married after his Air Force service; Rosanne, the eldest of the four, became a star in her own right.
Q 29Which brother's death in a sawmill accident when Johnny Cash was 12 haunted him for life?
Jack
Jack died of his wounds a week after the accident; the story is dramatised at the start of Walk the Line.
Q 30Which of Cash's hits was first recorded by June Carter's sister Anita, under a slightly longer title?
Ring of Fire
Anita's version was titled '(Love's) Ring of Fire' and appeared on her album Folk Songs Old and New.