Johnny Cash Returns to Postal Service Stamp
John Carter Cash, Larry Gatlin, Jamey Johnson, The Oak Ridge Boys, The Roys, Marty Stuart, Randy Travis and other entertainers paid tribute to Johnny Cash as he was inducted Wednesday into the Postal Service’s Music Icons Forever stamp series at the Grand Ole Opry Ryman Auditorium.
“With his gravelly baritone and spare percussive guitar, Johnny Cash had a distinctive musical sound — a blend of country, rock ‘n’ roll and folk — that he used to explore issues that many other popular musicians of his generation wouldn’t touch,” said U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors member Dennis Toner.
“His songs tackled sin and redemption, good and evil, selfishness, loneliness, temptation, love, loss and death. And Johnny explored these themes with a stark realism that was very different from other popular music of that time.”
Customers may purchase the Johnny Cash Forever stamp at usps.com/stamps and at Post Offices nationwide. The Music Icons series, launched May 15, 2013, with the Lydia Mendoza Forever stamp, also will honor Ray Charles with a Forever stamp later this fall. The series will continue for the next several years with inductees being announced at a later date.
The stamp features a photograph taken by Frank Bez for Columbia Records (now part of Sony Music Entertainment) during a photo session for Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash (1963).
The reverse side of the pane includes a larger version of the photograph featured on the stamp. Greg Breeding of Charlottesville, VA, served as art director and designer of the stamp.
Breeding chose a photograph taken during the photo session for Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash (1963). Breeding designed the square stamp pane to resemble the appearance of a 45 rpm record sleeve.
